Arity hierarchies for quantifiers closed under partial polymorphisms
Abstract
We investigate the expressive power of generalized quantifiers closed under partial polymorphism conditions motivated by the study of constraint satisfaction problems. We answer a number of questions arising from the work of Dawar and Hella (CSL 2024) where such quantifiers were introduced. For quantifiers closed under partial near-unanimity polymorphisms, we establish hierarchy results clarifying the interplay between the arity of the polymorphisms and of the quantifiers: The expressive power of -ary quantifiers closed under -ary partial near-unanimity polymorphisms is strictly between the class of all quantifiers of arity and . We also establish an infinite hierarchy based on the arity of quantifiers with a fixed arity of partial near-unanimity polymorphisms. Finally, we prove inexpressiveness results for quantifiers with a partial Maltsev polymorphism. The separation results are proved using novel algebraic constructions in the style of Cai-F\"urer-Immerman and the quantifier pebble games of Dawar and Hella (2024).
Cite
@article{arxiv.2511.11326,
title = {Arity hierarchies for quantifiers closed under partial polymorphisms},
author = {Anuj Dawar and Lauri Hella and Benedikt Pago},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2511.11326},
year = {2025}
}
Comments
accepted for publication at CSL 2026