Related papers: Positive First-order Logic on Words and Graphs
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…
We provide elementary algorithms for two preservation theorems for first-order sentences (FO) on the class \^ad of all finite structures of degree at most d: For each FO-sentence that is preserved under extensions (homomorphisms) on \^ad, a…
Proofs are traditionally syntactic, inductively generated objects. This paper reformulates first-order logic (predicate calculus) with proofs which are graph-theoretic rather than syntactic. It defines a combinatorial proof of a formula…
We study on which classes of graphs first-order logic (FO) and monadic second-order logic (MSO) have the same expressive power. We show that for all classes C of graphs that are closed under taking subgraphs, FO and MSO have the same…
Rational word languages can be defined by several equivalent means: finite state automata, rational expressions, finite congruences, or monadic second-order (MSO) logic. The robust subclass of aperiodic languages is defined by: counter-free…
Whether it be in normal form games, or in fair allocations, or in voter preferences in voting systems, a certain pattern of reasoning is common. From a particular profile, an agent or a group of agents may have an incentive to shift to a…
A graph class $\mathscr{C}$ is called monadically stable if one cannot interpret, in first-order logic, arbitrary large linear orders in colored graphs from $\mathscr{C}$. We prove that the model checking problem for first-order logic is…
Monadic second order logic and linear temporal logic are two logical formalisms that can be used to describe classes of infinite words, i.e., first-order models based on the natural numbers with order, successor, and finitely many unary…
We introduce a novel decidable fragment of first-order logic. The fragment is one-dimensional in the sense that quantification is limited to applications of blocks of existential (universal) quantifiers such that at most one variable…
We prove preservation theorems for $\mathcal{L}_{\omega_1, G}$, the countable fragment of Vaught's closed game logic. These are direct generalizations of the theorems of \L{}o\'s-Tarski (resp. Lyndon) on sentences of $\mathcal{L}_{\omega_1,…
We investigate the expressive power of first-order quantifications in the context of monadic second-order logic over pictures. We show that k+1 set quantifier alternations allow to define a picture language that cannot be defined using k…
We deal with first-order definability in the substructure ordering $(\mathcal{D}; \sqsubseteq)$ of finite directed graphs. In two papers, the author has already investigated the first-order language of the embeddability ordering $(…
We study two extensions of FO2[<], 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 consider first-order logic over the subword ordering on finite words, where each word is available as a constant. Our first result is that the $\Sigma_1$ theory is undecidable (already over two letters). We investigate the decidability…
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…
We study the expressive power and succinctness of order-invariant sentences of first-order (FO) and monadic second-order (MSO) logic on structures of bounded tree-depth. Order- invariance is undecidable in general and, thus, one strives for…
We study elementary modal logics, i.e. modal logic considered over first-order definable classes of frames. The classical semantics of modal logic allows infinite structures, but often practical applications require to restrict our…
Logical transductions provide a very useful tool to encode classes of structures inside other classes of structures. In this paper we study first-order (FO) transductions and the quasiorder they induce on infinite classes of finite graphs.…
We show that if we enrich first order logic by allowing quantification over isomorphisms between definable ordered fields the resulting logic, L(Q_{Of}), is fully compact. In this logic, we can give standard compactness proofs of various…
This paper investigates the expressiveness of a fragment of first-order sentences in Gaifman normal form, namely the positive Boolean combinations of basic local sentences. We show that they match exactly the first-order sentences preserved…