Epsilon-logic is more expressive than first-order logic over finite structures

2000 ◽  
Vol 65 (4) ◽  
pp. 1749-1757 ◽  
Author(s):  
Martin Otto
Keyword(s):  
Expressive Power ◽  
Order Logic ◽  
First Order Logic ◽  
First Order ◽  
Database Theory ◽  
Finite Structures

AbstractThere are properties of finite structures that are expressible with the use of Hilbert's ∈-operator in a manner that does not depend on the actual interpretation for ∈-terms. but not expressible in plain first-order. This observation strengthens a corresponding result of Gurevich, concerning the invariant use of an auxiliary ordering in first-order logic over finite structures. The present result also implies that certain non-deterministic choice constructs, which have been considered in database theory, properly enhance the expressive power of first-order logic even as far as deterministic queries are concerned, thereby answering a question raised by Abiteboul and Vianu.

scholarly journals Successor-Invariant First-Order Logic on Classes of Bounded Degree

2021 ◽  
Vol Volume 17, Issue 3 ◽  
Author(s):  
Julien Grange
Keyword(s):  
Expressive Power ◽  
Order Logic ◽  
First Order Logic ◽  
Bounded Degree ◽  
First Order ◽  
Finite Structures ◽  
Successor Relation

We study the expressive power of successor-invariant first-order logic, which is an extension of first-order logic where the usage of an additional successor relation on the structure is allowed, as long as the validity of formulas is independent of the choice of a particular successor on finite structures. We show that when the degree is bounded, successor-invariant first-order logic is no more expressive than first-order logic.

Some Aspects of Model Theory and Finite Structures

2002 ◽  
Vol 8 (3) ◽  
pp. 380-403 ◽  
Author(s):  
Eric Rosen
Keyword(s):  
Computer Science ◽  
Complexity Theory ◽  
Model Theory ◽  
Order Logic ◽  
First Order Logic ◽  
Finite Model ◽  
Finite Model Theory ◽  
First Order ◽  
Single Sentence ◽  
Finite Structures

Model theory is concerned mainly, although not exclusively, with infinite structures. In recent years, finite structures have risen to greater prominence, both within the context of mainstream model theory, e.g., in work of Lachlan, Cherlin, Hrushovski, and others, and with the advent of finite model theory, which incorporates elements of classical model theory, combinatorics, and complexity theory. The purpose of this survey is to provide an overview of what might be called the model theory of finite structures. Some topics in finite model theory have strong connections to theoretical computer science, especially descriptive complexity theory (see [26, 46]). In fact, it has been suggested that finite model theory really is, or should be, logic for computer science. These connections with computer science will, however, not be treated here.It is well-known that many classical results of ‘infinite model theory’ fail over the class of finite structures, including the compactness and completeness theorems, as well as many preservation and interpolation theorems (see [35, 26]). The failure of compactness in the finite, in particular, means that the standard proofs of many theorems are no longer valid in this context. At present, there is no known example of a classical theorem that remains true over finite structures, yet must be proved by substantially different methods. It is generally concluded that first-order logic is ‘badly behaved’ over finite structures.From the perspective of expressive power, first-order logic also behaves badly: it is both too weak and too strong. Too weak because many natural properties, such as the size of a structure being even or a graph being connected, cannot be defined by a single sentence. Too strong, because every class of finite structures with a finite signature can be defined by an infinite set of sentences. Even worse, every finite structure is defined up to isomorphism by a single sentence. In fact, it is perhaps because of this last point more than anything else that model theorists have not been very interested in finite structures. Modern model theory is concerned largely with complete first-order theories, which are completely trivial here.

scholarly journals Taking Plurals at Face Value

2021 ◽  
pp. 8-30
Author(s):  
Salvatore Florio ◽  
Øystein Linnebo
Keyword(s):  
Philosophy Of Mathematics ◽  
Expressive Power ◽  
Order Logic ◽  
First Order Logic ◽  
Logical System ◽  
Plural Logic ◽  
First Order ◽  
Philosophical Significance ◽  
Pure Logic

Plural logic is a logical system in which plural terms and predicates figure as primitive expressions alongside the singular resources of ordinary first-order logic. The philosophical significance of this system depends on two of its alleged features: being pure logic and providing more expressive power than first-order logic. This chapter first introduces the language and axioms of plural logic and then analyzes this logic’s main philosophical applications in metaphysics, philosophy of mathematics, and semantics.

scholarly journals Local Normal Forms for First-Order Logic with Applications to Games and Automata

1999 ◽  
Vol Vol. 3 no. 3 ◽  
Author(s):  
Thomas Schwentick ◽  
Klaus Barthelmann
Keyword(s):  
Normal Forms ◽  
Winning Strategy ◽  
Expressive Power ◽  
Second Order ◽  
Order Logic ◽  
First Order Logic ◽  
First Order ◽  
Relational Structures ◽  
Second Order Logic ◽  
Monadic Second Order Logic

International audience Building on work of Gaifman [Gai82] it is shown that every first-order formula is logically equivalent to a formula of the form ∃ x_1,...,x_l, \forall y, φ where φ is r-local around y, i.e. quantification in φ is restricted to elements of the universe of distance at most r from y. \par From this and related normal forms, variants of the Ehrenfeucht game for first-order and existential monadic second-order logic are developed that restrict the possible strategies for the spoiler, one of the two players. This makes proofs of the existence of a winning strategy for the duplicator, the other player, easier and can thus simplify inexpressibility proofs. \par As another application, automata models are defined that have, on arbitrary classes of relational structures, exactly the expressive power of first-order logic and existential monadic second-order logic, respectively.

scholarly journals A Duality Theoretic View on Limits of Finite Structures

2020 ◽  
pp. 299-318
Author(s):  
Mai Gehrke ◽  
Tomáš Jakl ◽  
Luca Reggio
Keyword(s):  
Computer Science ◽  
Expressive Power ◽  
Order Logic ◽  
The Other ◽  
First Order Logic ◽  
Priestley Duality ◽  
Systematic Theory ◽  
Finite Structures ◽  
The One ◽  
Logic In Computer Science

AbstractA systematic theory of structural limits for finite models has been developed by Nešetřil and Ossona de Mendez. It is based on the insight that the collection of finite structures can be embedded, via a map they call the Stone pairing, in a space of measures, where the desired limits can be computed. We show that a closely related but finer grained space of measures arises — via Stone-Priestley duality and the notion of types from model theory — by enriching the expressive power of first-order logic with certain “probabilistic operators”. We provide a sound and complete calculus for this extended logic and expose the functorial nature of this construction.The consequences are two-fold. On the one hand, we identify the logical gist of the theory of structural limits. On the other hand, our construction shows that the duality-theoretic variant of the Stone pairing captures the adding of a layer of quantifiers, thus making a strong link to recent work on semiring quantifiers in logic on words. In the process, we identify the model theoretic notion of types as the unifying concept behind this link. These results contribute to bridging the strands of logic in computer science which focus on semantics and on more algorithmic and complexity related areas, respectively.

scholarly journals Successor-Invariant First-Order Logic on Classes of Bounded Degree (Extended Abstract)

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Julien Grange
Keyword(s):  
Expressive Power ◽  
Order Logic ◽  
First Order Logic ◽  
Bounded Degree ◽  
First Order ◽  
Successor Relation

We study the expressive power of successor-invariant first-order logic, which is an extension of first-order logic where the usage of a successor relation on the vertices of the graph is allowed, as long as the validity of formulas is independent on the choice of a particular successor. We show that when the degree is bounded, successor-invariant first-order logic is no more expressive than first-order logic.

Successor-invariant first-order logic on finite structures

2007 ◽  
Vol 72 (2) ◽  
pp. 601-618 ◽  
Author(s):  
Benjamin Rossman
Keyword(s):  
Binary Relation ◽  
Order Logic ◽  
First Order Logic ◽  
First Order ◽  
Arbitrary Choice ◽  
Finite Structures ◽  
Successor Relation ◽  
Order Invariant

AbstractWe consider successor-invariant first-order logic (FO + succ)inv, consisting of sentences Φ involving an “auxiliary” binary relation S such that (, S1) ⊨ Φ ⇔ (, S2) ⊨ Φ for all finite structures and successor relations S1, S2 on . A successor-invariant sentence Φ has a well-defined semantics on finite structures with no given successor relation: one simply evaluates Φ on (, S) for an arbitrary choice of successor relation S. In this article, we prove that (FO + succ)inv is more expressive on finite structures than first-order logic without a successor relation. This extends similar results for order-invariant logic [8] and epsilon-invariant logic [10].

Minimal predicates, fixed-points, and definability

2005 ◽  
Vol 70 (3) ◽  
pp. 696-712 ◽  
Author(s):  
Johan Van Benthem
Keyword(s):  
Mathematical Logic ◽  
Fixed Points ◽  
Expressive Power ◽  
Correspondence Theory ◽  
Order Logic ◽  
First Order Logic ◽  
Technical Result ◽  
Unique Existence ◽  
First Order ◽  
Preservation Theorem

AbstractMinimal predicates P satisfying a given first-order description ϕ(P) occur widely in mathematical logic and computer science. We give an explicit first-order syntax for special first-order ‘PIA conditions’ ϕ(P) which guarantees unique existence of such minimal predicates. Our main technical result is a preservation theorem showing PIA-conditions to be expressively complete for all those first-order formulas that are preserved under a natural model-theoretic operation of ‘predicate intersection’. Next, we show how iterated predicate minimization on PIA-conditions yields a language MIN(FO) equal in expressive power to LFP(FO), first-order logic closed under smallest fixed-points for monotone operations. As a concrete illustration of these notions, we show how our sort of predicate minimization extends the usual frame correspondence theory of modal logic, leading to a proper hierarchy of modal axioms: first-order-definable, first-order fixed-point definable, and beyond.

Towards a characterization of order-invariant queries over tame graphs

2009 ◽  
Vol 74 (1) ◽  
pp. 168-186 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael Benedikt ◽  
Luc Segoufin
Keyword(s):  
Linear Order ◽  
Expressive Power ◽  
Order Logic ◽  
First Order Logic ◽  
Finite Graphs ◽  
Bounded Treewidth ◽  
First Order ◽  
A New Technique ◽  
Order Invariant

AbstractThis work deals with the expressive power of logics on finite graphs with access to an additional “arbitrary” linear order. The queries that can be expressed this way are the order-invariant queries for the logic. For the standard logics used in computer science, such as first-order logic, it is known that access to an arbitrary linear order increases the expressiveness of the logic. However, when we look at the separating examples, we find that they have satisfying models whose Gaifman Graph is complex – unbounded in valence and in treewidth. We thus explore the expressiveness of order-invariant queries over well-behaved graphs. We prove that first-order order-invariant queries over strings and trees have no additional expressiveness over first-order logic in the original signature. We also prove new upper bounds on order-invariant queries over bounded treewidth and bounded valence graphs. Our results make use of a new technique of independent interest: the application of algebraic characterizations of definability to show collapse results.

Finite Variable Logics in Descriptive Complexity Theory

1998 ◽  
Vol 4 (4) ◽  
pp. 345-398 ◽  
Author(s):  
Martin Grohe
Keyword(s):  
Model Theory ◽  
Order Logic ◽  
First Order Logic ◽  
Complexity Classes ◽  
Finite Model ◽  
Polynomial Space ◽  
Finite Model Theory ◽  
First Order ◽  
First Order Theory ◽  
Finite Structures

Throughout the development of finite model theory, the fragments of first-order logic with only finitely many variables have played a central role. This survey gives an introduction to the theory of finite variable logics and reports on recent progress in the area.For each k ≥ 1 we let Lk be the fragment of first-order logic consisting of all formulas with at most k (free or bound) variables. The logics Lk are the simplest finite-variable logics. Later, we are going to consider infinitary variants and extensions by so-called counting quantifiers.Finite variable logics have mostly been studied on finite structures. Like the whole area of finite model theory, they have interesting model theoretic, complexity theoretic, and combinatorial aspects. For finite structures, first-order logic is often too expressive, since each finite structure can be characterized up to isomorphism by a single first-order sentence, and each class of finite structures that is closed under isomorphism can be characterized by a first-order theory. The finite variable fragments seem to be promising candidates with the right balance between expressive power and weakness for a model theory of finite structures. This may have motivated Poizat [67] to collect some basic model theoretic properties of the Lk. Around the same time Immerman [45] showed that important complexity classes such as polynomial time (PTIME) or polynomial space (PSPACE) can be characterized as collections of all classes of (ordered) finite structures definable by uniform sequences of first-order formulas with a fixed number of variables and varying quantifier-depth.

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