1,477 research outputs found
Querying the Guarded Fragment
Evaluating a Boolean conjunctive query Q against a guarded first-order theory
F is equivalent to checking whether "F and not Q" is unsatisfiable. This
problem is relevant to the areas of database theory and description logic.
Since Q may not be guarded, well known results about the decidability,
complexity, and finite-model property of the guarded fragment do not obviously
carry over to conjunctive query answering over guarded theories, and had been
left open in general. By investigating finite guarded bisimilar covers of
hypergraphs and relational structures, and by substantially generalising
Rosati's finite chase, we prove for guarded theories F and (unions of)
conjunctive queries Q that (i) Q is true in each model of F iff Q is true in
each finite model of F and (ii) determining whether F implies Q is
2EXPTIME-complete. We further show the following results: (iii) the existence
of polynomial-size conformal covers of arbitrary hypergraphs; (iv) a new proof
of the finite model property of the clique-guarded fragment; (v) the small
model property of the guarded fragment with optimal bounds; (vi) a
polynomial-time solution to the canonisation problem modulo guarded
bisimulation, which yields (vii) a capturing result for guarded bisimulation
invariant PTIME.Comment: This is an improved and extended version of the paper of the same
title presented at LICS 201
Infinite and Bi-infinite Words with Decidable Monadic Theories
We study word structures of the form where is either
or , is the natural linear ordering on and
is a predicate on . In particular we show:
(a) The set of recursive -words with decidable monadic second order
theories is -complete.
(b) Known characterisations of the -words with decidable monadic
second order theories are transfered to the corresponding question for
bi-infinite words.
(c) We show that such "tame" predicates exist in every Turing degree.
(d) We determine, for , the number of predicates
such that and
are indistinguishable.
Through these results we demonstrate similarities and differences between
logical properties of infinite and bi-infinite words
Equivalence-Checking on Infinite-State Systems: Techniques and Results
The paper presents a selection of recently developed and/or used techniques
for equivalence-checking on infinite-state systems, and an up-to-date overview
of existing results (as of September 2004)
Effective lambda-models vs recursively enumerable lambda-theories
A longstanding open problem is whether there exists a non syntactical model
of the untyped lambda-calculus whose theory is exactly the least lambda-theory
(l-beta). In this paper we investigate the more general question of whether the
equational/order theory of a model of the (untyped) lambda-calculus can be
recursively enumerable (r.e. for brevity). We introduce a notion of effective
model of lambda-calculus calculus, which covers in particular all the models
individually introduced in the literature. We prove that the order theory of an
effective model is never r.e.; from this it follows that its equational theory
cannot be l-beta or l-beta-eta. We then show that no effective model living in
the stable or strongly stable semantics has an r.e. equational theory.
Concerning Scott's semantics, we investigate the class of graph models and
prove that no order theory of a graph model can be r.e., and that there exists
an effective graph model whose equational/order theory is minimum among all
theories of graph models. Finally, we show that the class of graph models
enjoys a kind of downwards Lowenheim-Skolem theorem.Comment: 34
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