Related papers: One Quantifier Alternation in First-Order Logic wi…

While modal extensions of decidable fragments of first-order logic are usually undecidable, their monodic counterparts, in which formulas in the scope of modal operators have at most one free variable, are typically decidable. This only…

We study the expressive power of the two-variable fragment of order-invariant first-order logic. This logic departs from first-order logic in two ways: first, formulas are only allowed to quantify over two variables. Second, formulas can…

We consider two-variable first-order logic FO2 over infinite words. Restricting the number of nested negations defines an infinite hierarchy; its levels are often called the half-levels of the FO2 quantifier alternation hierarchy. For every…

During the last decades, a lot of effort was put into identifying decidable fragments of first-order logic. Such efforts gave birth, among the others, to the two-variable fragment and the guarded fragment, depending on the type of…

The regular languages with a neutral letter expressible in first-order logic with one alternation are characterized. Specifically, it is shown that if an arbitrary $\Sigma_2$ formula defines a regular language with a neutral letter, then…

We study the logic FO(~), the extension of first-order logic with team semantics by unrestricted Boolean negation. It was recently shown axiomatizable, but otherwise has not yet received much attention in questions of computational…

We extend the two-variable logic on data words with guarded regular binary predicates of the form $\widetilde{L}(x,y)$ that is true if positions $x$ and $y$ are in the same class and the factor strictly between $x$ and $y$ is in the regular…

We show that the existence of a first-order formula separating two monadic second order formulas over countable ordinal words is decidable. This extends the work of Henckell and Almeida on finite words, and of Place and Zeitoun on…

We study FO+, a fragment of first-order logic on finite words, where monadic predicates can only appear positively. We show that there is a FO-definable language that is monotone in monadic predicates but not definable in FO+. This provides…

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…

We study the positive logic FO+ on finite words, and its fragments, pursuing and refining the work initiated in [Kuperberg 2023]. First, we transpose notorious logic equivalences into positive first-order logic: FO+ is equivalent to LTL+ ,…

We prove that, similarly to known PSpace-completeness of recognising FO(<)-definability of the language L(A) of a DFA A, deciding both FO(<,C)- and FO(<,MOD)-definability are PSpace-complete. (Here, FO(<,C) extends the first-order logic…

The study of various decision problems for logic fragments has a long history in computer science. This paper is on the membership problem for a fragment of first-order logic over infinite words; the membership problem asks for a given…

We provide a decidable characterization of regular forest languages definable in FO2(<h,<v). By FO2(<h,<v) we refer to the two variable fragment of first order logic built from the descendant relation and the following sibling relation. In…

For fragments L of first-order logic (FO) with counting quantifiers, we consider the definability problem, which asks whether a given L-formula can be equivalently expressed by a formula in some fragment of L without counting, and the more…

We investigate an operator on classes of languages. For each class $C$, it outputs a new class $FO^2(I_C)$ associated with a variant of two-variable first-order logic equipped with a signature$I_C$ built from $C$. For $C = \{\emptyset,…

This paper introduces an abstract notion of fragments of monadic second-order logic. This concept is based on purely syntactic closure properties. We show that over finite words, every logical fragment defines a lattice of languages with…

Hilbert's Entscheidungsproblem has given rise to a broad and productive line of research in mathematical logic, where the classification process of decidable classes of first-order sentences represent only one of the remarkable results.…

We study extensions of expressive decidable fragments of first-order logic with circumscription, in particular the two-variable fragment FO$^2$, its extension C$^2$ with counting quantifiers, and the guarded fragment GF. We prove that if…

Quantified modal logic provides a natural logical language for reasoning about modal attitudes even while retaining the richness of quantification for referring to predicates over domains. But then most fragments of the logic are…