scholarly journals The Triguarded Fragment of First-Order Logic

10.29007/m8ts ◽  
2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sebastian Rudolph ◽  
Mantas Simkus

Past research into decidable fragments of first-order logic (FO) has produced two very prominent fragments: the guarded fragment GF, and the two-variable fragment FO2. These fragments are of crucial importance because they provide significant insights into decidabil- ity and expressiveness of other (computational) logics like Modal Logics (MLs) and various Description Logics (DLs), which play a central role in Verification, Knowledge Represen- tation, and other areas. In this paper, we take a closer look at GF and FO2, and present a new fragment that subsumes them both. This fragment, called the triguarded fragment (denoted TGF), is obtained by relaxing the standard definition of GF: quantification is required to be guarded only for subformulae with three or more free variables. We show that, in the absence of equality, satisfiability in TGF is N2ExpTime-complete, but becomes NExpTime-complete if we bound the arity of predicates by a constant (a natural assumption in the context of MLs and DLs). Finally, we observe that many natural extensions of TGF, including the addition of equality, lead to undecidability.

Author(s):  
Pierre Bourhis ◽  
Michael Morak ◽  
Andreas Pieris

Cross products form a useful modelling tool that allows us to express natural statements such as "elephants are bigger than mice", or, more generally, to define relations that connect every instance in a relation with every instance in another relation. Despite their usefulness, cross products cannot be expressed using existing guarded ontology languages, such as description logics (DLs) and guarded existential rules. The question that comes up is whether cross products are compatible with guarded ontology languages, and, if not, whether there is a way of making them compatible. This has been already studied for DLs, while for guarded existential rules remains unanswered. Our goal is to give an answer to the above question. To this end, we focus on the guarded fragment of first-order logic (which serves as a unifying framework that subsumes many of the aforementioned ontology languages) extended with cross products, and we investigate the standard tasks of satisfiability and query answering. Interestingly, we isolate relevant fragments that are compatible with cross products.


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 $.


Author(s):  
Rohit Parikh

Church’s theorem, published in 1936, states that the set of valid formulas of first-order logic is not effectively decidable: there is no method or algorithm for deciding which formulas of first-order logic are valid. Church’s paper exhibited an undecidable combinatorial problem P and showed that P was representable in first-order logic. If first-order logic were decidable, P would also be decidable. Since P is undecidable, first-order logic must also be undecidable. Church’s theorem is a negative solution to the decision problem (Entscheidungsproblem), the problem of finding a method for deciding whether a given formula of first-order logic is valid, or satisfiable, or neither. The great contribution of Church (and, independently, Turing) was not merely to prove that there is no method but also to propose a mathematical definition of the notion of ‘effectively solvable problem’, that is, a problem solvable by means of a method or algorithm.


2011 ◽  
pp. 24-43
Author(s):  
J. Bruijn

This chapter introduces a number of formal logical languages which form the backbone of the Semantic Web. They are used for the representation of both ontologies and rules. The basis for all languages presented in this chapter is the classical first-order logic. Description logics is a family of languages which represent subsets of first-order logic. Expressive description logic languages form the basis for popular ontology languages on the Semantic Web. Logic programming is based on a subset of first-order logic, namely Horn logic, but uses a slightly different semantics and can be extended with non-monotonic negation. Many Semantic Web reasoners are based on logic programming principles and rule languages for the Semantic Web based on logic programming are an ongoing discussion. Frame Logic allows object-oriented style (frame-based) modeling in a logical language. RuleML is an XML-based syntax consisting of different sublanguages for the exchange of specifications in different logical languages over the Web.


1999 ◽  
Vol 64 (2) ◽  
pp. 747-760 ◽  
Author(s):  
Szabolcs Mikulás ◽  
Maarten Marx

AbstractIn this paper we show that relativized versions of relation set algebras and cylindric set algebras have undecidable equational theories if we include coordinatewise versions of the counting operations into the similarity type. We apply these results to the guarded fragment of first-order logic.


10.29007/z359 ◽  
2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Emanuel Kieronski ◽  
Adam Malinowski

The triguarded fragment of first-order logic is an extension of the guarded fragment in which quantification for subformulas with at most two free variables need not be guarded. Thus, it unifies two prominent decidable logics: the guarded fragment and the two-variable fragment. Its satisfiability problem is known to be undecidable in the presence of equality, but becomes decidable when equality is forbidden. We consider an extension of the tri- guarded fragment without equality by transitive relations, allowing them to be used only as guards. We show that the satisfiability problem for the obtained formalism is decidable and 2-ExpTime-complete, that is, it is of the same complexity as for the analogous exten- sion of the classical guarded fragment. In fact, in our satisfiability test we use a decision procedure for the latter as a subroutine. We also show how our approach, consisting in exploiting some existing results on guarded logics, can be used to reprove some known facts, as well as to derive some other new results on triguarded logics.


2018 ◽  
Vol 16 (3) ◽  
pp. 5-15
Author(s):  
V. V. Tselishchev

The application of game-theoretic semantics for first-order logic is based on a certain kind of semantic assumptions, directly related to the asymmetry of the definition of truth and lies as the winning strategies of the Verifier (Abelard) and the Counterfeiter (Eloise). This asymmetry becomes apparent when applying GTS to IFL. The legitimacy of applying GTS when it is transferred to IFL is based on the adequacy of GTS for FOL. But this circumstance is not a reason to believe that one can hope for the same adequacy in the case of IFL. Then the question arises if GTS is a natural semantics for IFL. Apparently, the intuitive understanding of negation in natural language can be explicated in formal languages in various ways, and the result of an incomplete grasp of the concept in these languages can be considered a certain kind of anomalies, in view of the apparent simplicity of the explicated concept. Comparison of the theoretical-model and game theoretic semantics in application to two kinds of language – the first-order language and friendly-independent logic – allows to discover the causes of the anomaly and outline ways to overcome it.


2005 ◽  
Vol 70 (1) ◽  
pp. 223-234 ◽  
Author(s):  
Balder ten Cate

AbstractSeveral extensions of the basic modal language are characterized in terms of interpolation. Our main results are of the following form: Language L′ is the least expressive extension of L with interpolation. For instance, let ℳ(D) be the extension of the basic modal language with a difference operator [7], First-order logic is the least expressive extension of ℳ(D) with interpolation. These characterizations are subsequently used to derive new results about hybrid logic, relation algebra and the guarded fragment.


Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document