Related papers: Expressing Properties in Second and Third Order Lo…
We show that ESO universal Horn logic (existential second logic where the first order part is a universal Horn formula) is insufficient to capture P, the class of problems decidable in polynomial time. This statement is true in the presence…
We propose a fragment of many-sorted second order logic called EQSMT and show that checking satisfiability of sentences in this fragment is decidable. EQSMT formulae have an $\exists^*\forall^*$ quantifier prefix (over variables, functions…
We study the expressive power of fragments of inclusion and independence logic defined by restricting the number k of universal quantifiers in formulas. Assuming the so-called strict semantics for these logics, we relate these fragments of…
We study descriptive complexity of counting complexity classes in the range from #P to #$\cdot$NP. A corollary of Fagin's characterization of NP by existential second-order logic is that #P can be logically described as the class of…
We describe a class calculus that is expressive enough to describe and improve its own learning process. It can design and debug programs that satisfy given input/output constraints, based on its ontology of previously learned programs. It…
Large complexity classes, like the exponential time hierarchy, received little attention in terms of finding complete problems. In this work a generalization of propositional logic is investigated which fills this gap with the introduction…
Fagin's seminal result characterizing $\mathsf{NP}$ in terms of existential second-order logic started the fruitful field of descriptive complexity theory. In recent years, there has been much interest in the investigation of quantitative…
We study an extension of FO^2[<], first-order logic interpreted in finite words, in which formulas are restricted to use only two variables. We adjoin to this language two-variable atomic formulas that say, `the letter a appears between…
We address questions of logic and expressibility in the context of random rooted trees. Infiniteness of a rooted tree is not expressible as a first order sentence, but is expressible as an existential monadic second order sentence (EMSO).…
First-order logic (FO) can express many algorithmic problems on graphs, such as the independent set and dominating set problem, parameterized by solution size. On the other hand, FO cannot express the very simple algorithmic question of…
We argue that in some KR applications, we want to quantify over sets of concepts formally represented by symbols in the vocabulary. We show that this quantification should be distinguished from second-order quantification and…
It is well-known that every first-order property on words is expressible using at most three variables. The subclass of properties expressible with only two variables is also quite interesting and well-studied. We prove precise structure…
In this work we investigate the computational complexity of the satisfiability problem of sub-fragments of the Bernays-Schoenfinkel class of first-order logic, also known as EPR (Effectively Propositional). While Bernays-Schoenfinkel is…
According to a theorem of Courcelle monadic second-order logic and guarded second-order logic (where one can also quantify over sets of edges) have the same expressive power over the class of all countable $k$-sparse hypergraphs. In the…
The quantified Boolean formula problem (QBF) is a well-known PSpace-complete problem with rich expressive power, and is generally viewed as the SAT analogue for PSpace. Given that many problems today are solved in practice by reducing to…
We study formal languages which are capable of fully expressing quantitative probabilistic reasoning and do-calculus reasoning for causal effects, from a computational complexity perspective. We focus on satisfiability problems whose…
Planar graphs are known to allow subexponential algorithms running in time $2^{O(\sqrt n)}$ or $2^{O(\sqrt n \log n)}$ for most of the paradigmatic problems, while the brute-force time $2^{\Theta(n)}$ is very likely to be asymptotically…
Over the past two decades several fragments of first-order logic have been identified and shown to have good computational and algorithmic properties, to a great extent as a result of appropriately describing the image of the standard…
A dichotomy result of Sevenster (2014) completely classified the quantifier prefixes of regular Independence-Friendly (IF) logic according to the patterns of quantifier dependence they contain. On one hand, prefixes that contain "Henkin" or…
We investigate machine models similar to Turing machines that are augmented by the operations of a first-order structure $\mathcal{R}$, and we show that under weak conditions on $\mathcal{R}$, the complexity class $\text{NP}(\mathcal{R})$…