English

Tree Rewriting Calculi for Strictly Positive Logics

Logic in Computer Science 2025-04-28 v1 Logic

Abstract

We study strictly positive logics in the language L+\mathscr{L}^+, which constructs formulas from \top, propositional variables, conjunction, and diamond modalities. We begin with the base system K+\bf K^+, the strictly positive fragment of polymodal K\bf K, and examine its extensions obtained by adding axioms such as monotonicity, transitivity, and the hierarchy-sensitive interaction axiom (J)(\sf J), which governs the interplay between modalities of different strengths. The strongest of these systems is the Reflection Calculus (RC\bf RC), which corresponds to the strictly positive fragment of polymodal GLP\bf GLP. Our main contribution is a formulation of these logics as tree rewriting systems, establishing both adequacy and completeness through a correspondence between L+\mathscr{L}^+ formulas and inductively defined modal trees. We also provide a normalization of the rewriting process, which has exponential complexity when axiom (J)(\sf J) is absent; otherwise we provide a double-exponential bound. By introducing tree rewriting calculi as practical provability tools for strictly positive logics, we aim to deepen their proof-theoretic analysis and computational applications.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2504.18240,
  title  = {Tree Rewriting Calculi for Strictly Positive Logics},
  author = {Sofía Santiago-Fernández and David Fernández-Duque and Joost J. Joosten},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2504.18240},
  year   = {2025}
}
R2 v1 2026-06-28T23:11:06.589Z