Formula size games for modal logic and μ\mu-calculus

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 $\mathrm{FO}$ and (basic) modal logic $\mathrm{ML}$. We also present a version of the game for the modal $\mu$-calculus $\mathrm{L}_\mu$ and show that $\mathrm{FO}$ is also non-elementarily more succinct than $\mathrm{L}_\mu$.Comment: This is a preprint of an article published in Journal of Logic and Computation Published by Oxford University Press. arXiv admin note: substantial text overlap with arXiv:1604.0722

Succinctness and Formula Size Games

Tämä väitöskirja tutkii erilaisten logiikoiden tiiviyttä kaavan pituuspelien avulla. Logiikan tiiviys viittaa ominaisuuksien ilmaisemiseen tarvittavien kaavojen kokoon. Kaavan pituuspelit ovat hyväksi todettu menetelmä tiiviystulosten todistamiseen. Väitöskirjan kontribuutio on kaksiosainen. Ensinnäkin väitöskirjassa määritellään kaavan pituuspeli useille logiikoille ja tarjotaan näin uusia menetelmiä tulevaan tutkimukseen. Toiseksi näitä pelejä ja muita menetelmiä käytetään tiiviystulosten todistamiseen tutkituille logiikoille. Tarkemmin sanottuna väitöskirjassa määritellään uudet parametrisoidut kaavan pituuspelit perusmodaalilogiikalle, modaaliselle μ-kalkyylille, tiimilauselogiikalle ja yleistetyille säännöllisille lausekkeille. Yleistettyjen säännöllisten lausekkeiden pelistä esitellään myös variantit, jotka vastaavat säännöllisiä lausekkeita ja uusia “RE over star-free” -lausekkeita, joissa tähtiä ei esiinny komplementtien sisällä. Pelejä käytetään useiden tiiviystulosten todistamiseen. Predikaattilogiikan näytetään olevan epäelementaarisesti tiiviimpi kuin perusmodaalilogiikka ja modaalinen μ-kalkyyli. Tiimilauselogiikassa tutkitaan systemaattisesti yleisten riippuvuuksia ilmaisevien atomien määrittelemisen tiiviyttä. Klassinen epäelementaarinen tiiviysero predikaattilogiikan ja säännöllisten lausekkeiden välillä osoitetaan uudelleen yksinkertaisemmalla tavalla ja saadaan tähtien lukumäärälle “RE over star-free” -lausekkeissa hierarkia ilmaisuvoiman suhteen. Monissa yllämainituista tuloksista hyödynnetään eksplisiittisiä kaavoja peliargumenttien lisäksi. Tällaisia kaavoja ja tyyppien laskemista hyödyntäen saadaan epäelementaarisia ala- ja ylärajoja yksittäisten sanojen määrittelemisen tiiviydelle predikaattilogiikassa ja monadisessa toisen kertaluvun logiikassa.This thesis studies the succinctness of various logics using formula size games. The succinctness of a logic refers to the size of formulas required to express properties. Formula size games are some of the most successful methods of proof for results on succinctness. The contribution of the thesis is twofold. Firstly, we define formula size games for several logics, providing methods for future research. Secondly, we use these games and other methods to prove results on the succinctness of the studied logics. More precisely, we develop new parameterized formula size games for basic modal logic, modal μ-calculus, propositional team logic and generalized regular expressions. For the generalized regular expression game we introduce variants that correspond to regular expressions and the newly defined RE over star-free expressions, where stars do not occur inside complements. We use the games to prove a number of succinctness results. We show that first-order logic is non-elementarily more succinct than both basic modal logic and modal μ-calculus. We conduct a systematic study of the succinctness of defining common atoms of dependency in propositional team logic. We reprove a classic non-elementary succinctness gap between first-order logic and regular expressions in a much simpler way and establish a hierarchy of expressive power for the number of stars in RE over star-free expressions. Many of the above results utilize explicit formulas in addition to game arguments. We use such formulas and a type counting argument to obtain non-elementary lower and upper bounds for the succinctness of defining single words in first-order logic and monadic second-order logic

On the relative succinctness of some modal logics

The aim of this thesis is to compare several extensions of multimodal logic in terms of their representational succinctness on different classes of models. Succinctness is a natural refinement on the notion of expressivity. Intuitively, given two logics L1 and L2, we say that L1 expresses more succinctly than L2 some properties of a class of models if the L1-formulae expressing the properties in question are significantly shorter than all the equivalent L2-formulae. The precise technical interpretation of "significantly shorter" depends on the case at hand and may mean "exponentially shorter", "nonelementary shorter", etc. This work was motivated by the question of whether public announcement logic (PAL) is exponentially more succinct than multimodal logic (ML) on the class S5 of Kripke models with underlying structures in which all relations are reflexive, symmetric, and transitive. Using techniques based on a generalisation of Ehrenfeucht-Fra��ss�e games called Adler- Immerman games, we show that extending ML in two di�erent ways: by allowing formulae [

Inheritance and complementation : a case study of easy adjectives and related nouns

Mechanisms for representing lexically the bulk of syntactic and semantic information for a language have been under active development, as is evident in the recent studies contained in this volume. Our study serves to highlight some of the most useful tools available for structured lexical representation, in particular, (multiple) inheritance, default specification, and lexical rules. It then illustrates the value of these mechanisms in illuminating one corner of the lexicon involving an unusual kind of complementation among a group of adjectives exemplified by easy. The virtures of the structured lexicon are its succinctness and its tendency to highlight significant clusters of linguistic properties. From its succinctness follow two practical advantages, namely its ease of maintenance and modifiability. In order to suggest how important these may be practically, we extend the analysis of adjectival complementation in several directions. These further illustrate how the use of inheritance in lexical representation permits exact and explicit characterizations of phenomena in the language under study. We demonstrate how the use of the mechanisms employed in the analysis of easy enable us to give a unified account of related phenomena featuring nouns like pleasure, and even the adverbs (adjectival specifiers) too and enough. Along the way we motivate some elaborations of the Head-Driven Phrase Structure Grammar (HPSG) framework in which we couch our analysis, and offer several avenues for further study of this part of the English lexicon

Computational aspects of voting: a literature survey

Preference aggregation is a topic of study in different fields such as philosophy, mathematics, economics and political science. Recently, computational aspects of preference aggregation have gained especial attention and “computational politics” has emerged as a marked line of research in computer science with a clear concentration on voting protocols. The field of voting systems, rooted in social choice theory, has expanded notably in both depth and breadth in the last few decades. A significant amount of this growth comes from studies concerning the computational aspects of voting systems. This thesis comprehensively reviews the work on voting systems (from a computing perspective) by listing, classifying and comparing the results obtained by different researchers in the field. This survey covers a wide range of new and historical results yet provides a profound commentary on related work as individual studies and in relation to other related work and to the field in general. The deliverables serve as an overview where students and novice researchers in the field can start and also as a depository that can be referred to when searching for specific results. A comprehensive literature survey of the computational aspects of voting is a task that has not been undertaken yet and is initially realized here. Part of this research was dedicated to creating a web-depository that contains material and references related to the topic based on the survey. The purpose was to create a dynamic version of the survey that can be updated with latest findings and as an online practical reference

Relation-changing modal logics

Tesis (Doctor en Cs. de la Computación)--Universidad Nacional de Córdoba, Facultad de Matemática, Astronomía y Física, 2014.En esta tesis investigamos operadores modales dinámicos que pueden cambiar el modelo durante la evaluación de una fórmula. En particular, extendemos el lenguaje modal básico con modalidades que son capaces de invertir, borrar o agregar pares de elementos relacionados. Estudiamos la versión local de los operadores (es decir,la realización de modificaciones desde el punto de evaluación) y la versión global(cambiar arbitrariamente el modelo). Investigamos varias propiedades de los lenguajes introducidos, desde un punto de vista abstracto. En primer lugar, se introduce la semántica formal de los modificadores de modelo, e inmediatamente se introduce una noción de bisimulación. Las bisimulaciones son una herramienta importante para investigar el poder expresivo de los lenguajes introducidos en esta tesis. Se demostró que todas los lenguajes son incomparables entre sí en términos de poder expresivo (a excepción de los dos versiones de swap, aunque conjeturamos que también ́en son incomparables). Continuamos por investigar el comportamiento computacional de este tipo de operadores. En primer lugar, demostramos que el problema de satisfactibilidad para las versiones locales de las lógicas que cambian la relación que investigamos es indecidible. También demostramos que el problema de model checking es PSPACE-completo para las seis lógicas. Finalmente, investigamos model checking fijando el modelo y fijando la fórmula (problemas conocidos como complejidad de fórmula y complejidad del programa, respectivamente). Es posible también definir métodos para comprobar satisfactibilidad que no necesariamente terminan. Introducimos métodos de tableau para las lógicas que cambian las relaciones y demostramos que todos estos métodos son correctos y completos y mostramos algunos aplicaciones. En la última parte de la tesis, se discute un contexto concreto en el que pueden aplicarse las lógicas modales que cambian la relación: Lógicas Dinámicas Epistémicas (DEL, por las siglas en inglés). Definimos una lógica que cambia la relación capaz de codificar DEL, e investigamos su comportamiento computacional.In this thesis we study dynamic modal operators that can change the model during the evaluation of a formula. In particular, we extend the basic modal language with modalities that are able to swap, delete or add pairs of related elements of the domain. We call the resulting logics Relation-Changing Modal Logics. We study local version of the operators (performing modifications from the evaluation point) and global version (changing arbitrarily edges in the model). We investigate several properties of the given languages, from an abstract point of view. First, we introduce the formal semantics of the model modifiers, afterwards we introduce a notion of bisimulation. Bisimulations are an important tool to investigate the expressive power of the languages introduced in this thesis. We show that all the languages are incomparable among them in terms of expressive power (except for the two versions of swap, which we conjecture are also incomparable). We continue by investigating the computational behaviour of this kind of operators. First, we prove that the satisfiability problem for some of the relation-changing modal logics we investigate is undecidable. Then, we prove that the model checking problem is PSpace-complete for the six logics. Finally, we investigate model checking fixing the model and fixing the formula (problems known as formula and program complexity, respectively). We show that it is possible to define complete but non-terminating methods to check satisfiability. We introduce tableau methods for relation-changing modal logics and we prove that all these methods are sound and complete, and we show some applications. In the last part of the thesis, we discuss a concrete context in which we can apply relation-changing modal logics: Dynamic Epistemic Logics (DEL). We motivate the use of the kind of logics that we investigate in this new framework, and we introduce some examples of DEL. Finally, we define a new relation-changing modal logic that embeds DEL and we investigate its computational behaviour.Fil: Fervari, Raúl Alberto. Universidad Nacional de Córdoba. Facultad de Matemática, Astronomía, Física; Argentina