The ground-negative fragment of first-order logic is -complete

1999 ◽  
Vol 64 (3) ◽  
pp. 984-990 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrei Voronkov

AbstractWe prove that for a natural class of first-order formulas the validity problem is -complete.

1993 ◽  
Vol 58 (1) ◽  
pp. 291-313 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert S. Lubarsky

Inductive definability has been studied for some time already. Nonetheless, there are some simple questions that seem to have been overlooked. In particular, there is the problem of the expressibility of the μ-calculus.The μ-calculus originated with Scott and DeBakker [SD] and was developed by Hitchcock and Park [HP], Park [Pa], Kozen [K], and others. It is a language for including inductive definitions with first-order logic. One can think of a formula in first-order logic (with one free variable) as defining a subset of the universe, the set of elements that make it true. Then “and” corresponds to intersection, “or” to union, and “not” to complementation. Viewing the standard connectives as operations on sets, there is no reason not to include one more: least fixed point.There are certain features of the μ-calculus coming from its being a language that make it interesting. A natural class of inductive definitions are those that are monotone: if X ⊃ Y then Γ (X) ⊃ Γ (Y) (where Γ (X) is the result of one application of the operator Γ to the set X). When studying monotonic operations in the context of a language, one would need a syntactic guarantor of monotonicity. This is provided by the notion of positivity. An occurrence of a set variable S is positive if that occurrence is in the scopes of exactly an even number of negations (the antecedent of a conditional counting as a negation). S is positive in a formula ϕ if each occurrence of S is positive. Intuitively, the formula can ask whether x ∊ S, but not whether x ∉ S. Such a ϕ can be considered an inductive definition: Γ (X) = {x ∣ ϕ(x), where the variable S is interpreted as X}. Moreover, this induction is monotone: as X gets bigger, ϕ can become only more true, by the positivity of S in ϕ. So in the μ-calculus, a formula is well formed by definition only if all of its inductive definitions are positive, in order to guarantee that all inductive definitions are monotone.


1982 ◽  
Vol 47 (3) ◽  
pp. 572-586
Author(s):  
John T. Baldwin ◽  
Douglas E. Miller

One of the first results in model theory [12] asserts that a first-order sentence is preserved in extensions if and only if it is equivalent to an existential sentence.In the first section of this paper, we analyze a natural program for extending this result to a class of languages extending first-order logic, notably including L(Q) and L(aa), respectively the languages with the quantifiers “there exist un-countably many” and “for almost all countable subsets”.In the second section we answer a question of Bruce [3] by showing that this program cannot resolve the question for L(Q). We also consider whether the natural class of “generalized Σ-sentences” in L(Q) characterizes the class of sentences preserved in extensions, refuting the relativized version but leaving the unrestricted question open.In the third section we show that the analogous class of L(aa)-sentences preserved in extensions does not include (up to elementary equivalence) all such sentences. This particular candidate class was nominated, rather tentatively, by Bruce [3].In the fourth section we show that under rather general conditions, if L is a countably compact extension of first-order logic and T is an ℵ1-categorical first-order theory, then L is trivial relative to T.


2009 ◽  
Vol 19 (12) ◽  
pp. 3091-3099 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gui-Hong XU ◽  
Jian ZHANG

Author(s):  
Tim Button ◽  
Sean Walsh

Chapters 6-12 are driven by questions about the ability to pin down mathematical entities and to articulate mathematical concepts. This chapter is driven by similar questions about the ability to pin down the semantic frameworks of language. It transpires that there are not just non-standard models, but non-standard ways of doing model theory itself. In more detail: whilst we normally outline a two-valued semantics which makes sentences True or False in a model, the inference rules for first-order logic are compatible with a four-valued semantics; or a semantics with countably many values; or what-have-you. The appropriate level of generality here is that of a Boolean-valued model, which we introduce. And the plurality of possible semantic values gives rise to perhaps the ‘deepest’ level of indeterminacy questions: How can humans pin down the semantic framework for their languages? We consider three different ways for inferentialists to respond to this question.


2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michał Walicki

Abstract Graph normal form, introduced earlier for propositional logic, is shown to be a normal form also for first-order logic. It allows to view syntax of theories as digraphs, while their semantics as kernels of these digraphs. Graphs are particularly well suited for studying circularity, and we provide some general means for verifying that circular or apparently circular extensions are conservative. Traditional syntactic means of ensuring conservativity, like definitional extensions or positive occurrences guaranteeing exsitence of fixed points, emerge as special cases.


1991 ◽  
Vol 15 (2) ◽  
pp. 123-138
Author(s):  
Joachim Biskup ◽  
Bernhard Convent

In this paper the relationship between dependency theory and first-order logic is explored in order to show how relational chase procedures (i.e., algorithms to decide inference problems for dependencies) can be interpreted as clever implementations of well known refutation procedures of first-order logic with resolution and paramodulation. On the one hand this alternative interpretation provides a deeper insight into the theoretical foundations of chase procedures, whereas on the other hand it makes available an already well established theory with a great amount of known results and techniques to be used for further investigations of the inference problem for dependencies. Our presentation is a detailed and careful elaboration of an idea formerly outlined by Grant and Jacobs which up to now seems to be disregarded by the database community although it definitely deserves more attention.


2019 ◽  
Vol 29 (8) ◽  
pp. 1311-1344 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lauri T Hella ◽  
Miikka S Vilander

Abstract We propose a new version of formula size game for modal logic. The game characterizes the equivalence of pointed Kripke models up to formulas of given numbers of modal operators and binary connectives. Our game is similar to the well-known Adler–Immerman game. However, due to a crucial difference in the definition of positions of the game, its winning condition is simpler, and the second player does not have a trivial optimal strategy. Thus, unlike the Adler–Immerman game, our game is a genuine two-person game. We illustrate the use of the game by proving a non-elementary succinctness gap between bisimulation invariant first-order logic $\textrm{FO}$ and (basic) modal logic $\textrm{ML}$. We also present a version of the game for the modal $\mu $-calculus $\textrm{L}_\mu $ and show that $\textrm{FO}$ is also non-elementarily more succinct than $\textrm{L}_\mu $.


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