Parameterized Complexity of Elimination Distance to First-Order Logic Properties

In this paper, we present a system that translates first order logic (FOL) formulas into natural language (NL) sentences. The motivation comes from an intelligent tutoring system teaching logic as a knowledge representation language, where it is used as a means for feedback to the users. FOL to NL conversion is achieved by using a rule-based approach, where we exploit the pattern matching capabilities of rules. So, the system consists of a rule-based component and a lexicon. The rule-based unit implements the conversion process, which is based on a linguistic analysis of a FOL sentence, and the lexicon provides lexical and grammatical information that helps in producing the NL sentences. The whole system is implemented in Jess, a java-based expert system shell. The conversion process currently covers a restricted set of FOL formulas.

Liveness properties are traditionally proven using a ranking function that maps system states to some well-founded set. Carrying out such proofs in first-order logic enables automation by SMT solvers. However, reasoning about many natural ranking functions is beyond reach of existing solvers. To address this, we introduce the notion of implicit rankings — first-order formulas that soundly approximate the reduction of some ranking function without defining it explicitly. We provide recursive constructors of implicit rankings that can be instantiated and composed to induce a rich family of implicit rankings. Our constructors use quantifiers to approximate reasoning about useful primitives such as cardinalities of sets and unbounded sums that are not directly expressible in first-order logic. We demonstrate the effectiveness of our implicit rankings by verifying liveness properties of several intricate examples, including Dijkstra’s k-state, 4-state and 3-state self-stabilizing protocols.

We study property testing of properties that are definable in first-order logic (FO) in the bounded-degree graph and relational structure models. We show that any FO property that is defined by a formula with quantifier prefix ∃∗∀∗ is testable (i.e., testable with constant query complexity), while there exists an FO property that is expressible by a formula with quantifier prefix ∀∗∃∗ that is not testable. In the dense graph model, a similar picture is long known (Alon, Fischer, Krivelevich, Szegedy, Combinatorica 2000), despite the very different nature of the two models. In particular, we obtain our lower bound by a first-order formula that defines a class of bounded-degree expanders, based on zig-zag products of graphs. We expect this to be of independent interest. We then prove testability of some first-order properties that speak about isomorphism types of neighbourhoods, including testability of 1-neighbourhood-freeness, and r-neighbourhood-freeness under a mild assumption on the degrees.

Knowledge and reasoning in design systems

We study tree languages that can be defined in Δ 2 . These are tree languages definable by a first-order formula whose quantifier prefix is $\exists^*\forall^*$, and simultaneously by a first-order formula whose quantifier prefix is $\forall^*\exists^*$, both formulas over the signature with the descendant relation. We provide an effective characterization of tree languages definable in Δ 2 . This characterization is in terms of algebraic equations. Over words, the class of word languages definable in Δ 2 forms a robust class, which was given an effective algebraic characterization by Pin and Weil [11].

Concrete domains have been introduced in description logic (DL) to enable reference to concrete objects (such as numbers) and predefined predicates on these objects (such as numerical comparisons) when defining concepts. The primary research goal in this context was to find restrictions on the concrete domain such that its integration into certain DLs preserves decidability or tractability. In this article, we complement these investigations by studying the abstract expressive power of both first-order and description logics extended with concrete domains, i.e., we analyze which classes of first-order interpretations can be expressed using these logics, compared to what their counterparts without concrete domains can express. We demonstrate that, under natural conditions on the concrete domain D (which also play a role for decidability), extensions of first-order logic (FOL) or the well-known DL ALC with D share important formal characteristics with FOL, such as the compactness and the Löwenheim-Skolem properties. Nevertheless, these conditions do not ensure that the abstract expressive power of the extensions we consider is contained in that of FOL, though in some cases it is. To be more precise, we show, on the one hand, that unary concrete domains leave the abstract expressive power within FOL if we are allowed to introduce auxiliary predicates. As a by-product, we obtain (semi-)decidability results for some fragments of FOL extended with the concrete domains considered in this article. On the other hand, we show that the ability to express equality between elements of D , another condition employed in the context of showing decidability of ALC ( D ), is sufficient to push the abstract expressive power of most first-order fragments with concrete domains beyond that of FOL. While for such concrete domains D decidability is retained for ALC ( D ), we show that the availability of equality in D causes undecidability of the two-variable fragment of FOL( D ), although the two-variable fragment of FOL is decidable.

We consider various extensions of first-order logic. Informally, a logic 𝓛 is an extension of first-order logic if every sentence of first-order logic is also a sentence of 𝓛. We also require that 𝓛 is closed under conjunction and negation and has other basic properties of a logic. In Section 9.4, we list the properties that formally define the notion of an extension of first-order logic. Prior to Section 9.4, we provide various natural examples of such extensions. In Sections 9.1–9.3, we consider, respectively, second-order logic, infinitary logics, and logics with fixed-point operators. We do not provide a thorough treatment of any one of these logics. Indeed, we could easily devote an entire chapter to each. Rather, we define each logic and provide examples that demonstrate the expressive power of the logics. In particular, we show that none of these logics has compactness. In the final Section 9.4, we prove that if a proper extension of first-order logic has compactness, then the Downward Löwenhiem–Skolem theorem must fail for that logic. This is Lindstrom’s theorem. The Compactness theorem and Downward Löwenheim–Skolem theorem are two crucial results for model theory. Every property of first-order logic from Chapter 4 is a consequence of these two theorems. Lindström’s theorem implies that the only extension of first-order logic possessing these properties is first-order logic itself. Second-order logic is the extension of first-order logic that allows quantification of relations. The symbols of second-order logic are the same symbols used in first-order logic. The syntax of second-order logic is defined by adding one rule to the syntax of first-order logic. The additional rule makes second-order logic far more expressive than first-order logic. Specifically, the syntax of second-order logic is defined as follows. Any atomic first-order formula is a formula of second-order logic. Moreover, we have the following four rules: (R1) If φ is a formula then so is ￢φ. (R2) If φ and ψ are formulas then so is φ ∧ ψ. (R3) If φ is a formula, then so is ∃x φ for any variable x.

While a number of weak consistency mechanisms have been developed in recent years to improve performance and ensure availability in distributed, replicated systems, ensuring the correctness of transactional applications running on top of such systems remains a difficult and important problem. Serializability is a well-understood correctness criterion for transactional programs; understanding whether applications are serializable when executed in a weakly-consistent environment, however remains a challenging exercise. In this work, we combine a dependency graph-based characterization of serializability and leverage the framework of abstract executions to develop a fully-automated approach for statically finding bounded serializability violations under any weak consistency model. We reduce the problem of serializability to satisfiability of a formula in First-Order Logic (FOL), which allows us to harness the power of existing SMT solvers. We provide rules to automatically construct the FOL encoding from programs written in SQL (allowing loops and conditionals) and express consistency specifications as FOL formula. In addition to detecting bounded serializability violations, we also provide two orthogonal schemes to reason about unbounded executions by providing sufficient conditions (again, in the form of FOL formulae) whose satisfiability implies the absence of anomalies in any arbitrary execution. We have applied the proposed technique on TPC-C, a real-world database program with complex application logic, and were able to discover anomalies under Parallel Snapshot Isolation (PSI), and verify serializability for unbounded executions under Snapshot Isolation (SI), two consistency mechanisms substantially weaker than serializability.

A successor-invariant first-order formula is a formula that has access to an\nauxiliary successor relation on a structure's universe, but the model relation\nis independent of the particular interpretation of this relation. It is well\nknown that successor-invariant formulas are more expressive on finite\nstructures than plain first-order formulas without a successor relation. This\nnaturally raises the question whether this increase in expressive power comes\nat an extra cost to solve the model-checking problem, that is, the problem to\ndecide whether a given structure together with some (and hence every) successor\nrelation is a model of a given formula. It was shown earlier that adding\nsuccessor-invariance to first-order logic essentially comes at no extra cost\nfor the model-checking problem on classes of finite structures whose underlying\nGaifman graph is planar [Engelmann et al., 2012], excludes a fixed minor\n[Eickmeyer et al., 2013] or a fixed topological minor [Eickmeyer and\nKawarabayashi, 2016; Kreutzer et al., 2016]. In this work we show that the\nmodel-checking problem for successor-invariant formulas is fixed-parameter\ntractable on any class of finite structures whose underlying Gaifman graphs\nform a class of bounded expansion. Our result generalises all earlier results\nand comes close to the best tractability results on nowhere dense classes of\ngraphs currently known for plain first-order logic.\n

A successor-invariant first-order formula is a formula that has access to an auxiliary successor relation on a structure's universe, but the model relation is independent of the particular interpretation of this relation. It is well known that successor-invariant formulas are more expressive on finite structures than plain first-order formulas without a successor relation. This naturally raises the question whether this increase in expressive power comes at an extra cost to solve the model-checking problem, that is, the problem to decide whether a given structure together with some (and hence every) successor relation is a model of a given formula. It was shown earlier that adding successor-invariance to first-order logic essentially comes at no extra cost for the model-checking problem on classes of finite structures whose underlying Gaifman graph is planar [1], excludes a fixed minor [2] or a fixed topological minor [3], [4]. In this work we show that the model-checking problem for successor-invariant formulas is fixed-parameter tractable on any class of finite structures whose underlying Gaifman graphs form a class of bounded expansion. Our result generalises all earlier results and comes close to the best tractability results on nowhere dense classes of graphs currently known for plain first-order logic.

Density elimination by substitutions is introduced as a uniform method for removing applications of the Takeuti-Titani density rule from proofs in first-order hypersequent calculi. For a large class of calculi, density elimination by this method is guaranteed by known sufficient conditions for cut-elimination. Moreover, adding the density rule to any axiomatic extension of a simple first-order logic gives a logic that is rational complete; i.e., complete with respect to linearly and densely ordered algebras: a precursor to showing that it is a fuzzy logic (complete for algebras with a real unit interval lattice reduct). Hence the sufficient conditions for cut-elimination guarantee rational completeness for a large class of first-order substructural logics.

Automated theorem provers for first-order logic usually operate on sets of first-order clauses. It is well-known that the translation of a formula in full first-order logic to a clausal normal form (CNF) can crucially affect performance of a theorem prover. In our recent work we introduced a modification of first-order logic extended by the first class boolean sort and syntactical constructs that mirror features of programming languages. We called this logic FOOL. Formulas in FOOL can be translated to ordinary first-order formulas and checked by first-order theorem provers. While this translation is straightforward, it does not result in a CNF that can be efficiently handled by state-of-the-art theorem provers which use superposition calculus. In this paper we present a new CNF translation algorithm for FOOL that is friendly and efficient for superposition-based first-order provers. We implemented the algorithm in the Vampire theorem prover and evaluated it on a large number of problems coming from formalisation of mathematics and program analysis. Our experimental results show an increase of performance of the prover with our CNF translation compared to the naive translation.

We present a sound and complete calculus for an expressive sorted first-order logic. Sorts are extended to the semantic and pragmatic use of unary predicates. A sort may denote an empty set and the sort structure can be created by making use of the full first-order language. Technically spoken, we allow sort declarations to be used in the same way than ordinary atoms. Therefore we can compile every first-order logic formula into our logic.

Logical equivalence between logic programs that are firstorder logic formulas holds between few logic programs, partly because first-order logic does not allow auxiliary programs and data structures to be hidden. As a result of not having such abstractions, logical equivalence will force these auxiliaries to be present in any equivalence program. Higher-order quantification can be use to hide predicates and function symbols. If such higher-order quantification is restricted so that operationally, only hiding is specified, then the cost of such higher-order quantifiers within proof search can be small: one only needs to deal with adding new eigenvariables and clauses involving such eigenvariables. On the other hand, the specification of hiding via quantification can allow for novel and interesting proofs of logical equivalence between programs. This paper will present several example of how reasoning directly on a logic program can benefit significantly if higher-order quantification is used to provide abstractions.KeywordsLogic ProgramLogic ProgrammingSecurity ProtocolLinear LogicHorn ClauseThese keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.

Our theorem proving system named TTP (which is short for Teaching Theorem Proving) can construct the natural deduction proofs of the first-order logic formulas with quantifiers. It is written in CLISP. It has 4 learning models. Students can use the system to do their logic homework step by step and learn the skills of proving logic theorems. If they don't know how to prove the theorems, they can ask for hints. In our university about 300 students used the system to learn logic and do homework during 3 years, they did 2000 problems in logic.