It is natural to view concept and role definitions in Description Logics as expressing monadic and dyadic predicates in Predicate Calculus. We show that the descriptions built using the constructors usually considered in the DL literature are characterized exactly as the predicates definable by formulas in ¨L³, the subset of First Order Predicate Calculus with monadic and dyadic predicates which allows only three variable symbols. In order to handle “number bounds”, we allow numeric quantifiers, and for transitive closure of roles we use infinitary disjunction. Using previous results in the literature concerning languages with limited numbers of variables, we get as corollaries the existence of formulae of FOPC which cannot be expressed as descriptions. We also show that by omitting role composition, descriptions express exactly the formulae in ¨L², which is known to be decidable.

A theory satisfies the k-variable property if every first-order formula is equivalent to a formula with at most k bound variables (possibly reused). Gabbay has shown that a model of temporal logic satisfies the k-variable property for some k if and only if there exists a finite basis for the temporal connectives over that model. We give a model-theoretic method for establishing the k-variable property, involving a restricted Ehrenfeucht-Fraisse game in which each player has only k pebbles. We use the method to unify and simplify results in the literature for linear orders. We also establish new k-variable properties for various theories of bounded-degree trees, and in each case obtain tight upper and lower bounds on k. This gives the first finite basis theorems for branching-time models of temporal logic. 1 Introduction A first-order theory \Sigma satisfies the k-variable property if every first-order formula is equivalent under \Sigma to a formula with at most k bound variables (pos...

Abstract. Although it is known that reachability in undirected finite graphs can be expressed by an existential monadic second-order sentence, our main result is that this is not the case for directed finite graphs (even in the presence of certain “built-in ” relations, such as the successor relation). The proof makes use of Ehrenfeucht-Frai’sse games, along with probabilistic arguments. However, we show that for directed finite graphs with degree at most k, reachability is expressible by an existential monadic second-order sentence. $1. Introduction. If s and t denote distinguished points in a directed (resp. undirected) graph, then we say that a graph is (s, t)-connected if there is a directed (undirected) path from s to t. We sometimes refer to the problem of deciding whether a given directed (undirected) graph with two given points sand t is (s, t)-connected as the directed (undirected) reachability problem.

. We introduce the concept of a class of graphs being locally tree-decomposable. There are numerous examples of locally treedecomposable classes, among them the class of planar graphs and all classes of bounded valence or of bounded tree-width. We show that for each locally tree-decomposable class C of graphs and for each property ' of graphs that is denable in rst-order logic, there is a linear time algorithm deciding whether a given graph G 2 C has property '. 1 Introduction It is an important task in the theory of algorithms to nd feasible instances of otherwise intractable algorithmic problems. A notion that has turned out to be extremely useful in this context is that of tree-width of a graph. 3-Colorability, Hamiltonicity, and many other NP-complete properties of graphs can be decided in linear time when restricted to graphs whose tree-width is bounded by a xed constant (see [Bod97] for a survey). Courcelle [Cou90] proved a meta-theorem, which easily implies numer...

The extensions of first-order logic with a least fixed point operator (FO + LFP) and with a partial fixed point operator (FO + PFP) are known to capture the complexity classes P and PSPACE respectively in the presence of an ordering relation over finite structures. Recently, Abiteboul and Vianu [Abiteboul and Vianu, 1991b] investigated the relationship of these two logics in the absence of an ordering, using a machine model of generic computation. In particular, they showed that the two languages have equivalent expressive power if and only if P = PSPACE. These languages can also be seen as fragments of an infinitary logic where each formula has a bounded number of variables, L ! 1! (see, for instance, [Kolaitis and Vardi, 1990]). We investigate this logic of finite structures and provide a normal form for it. We also present a treatment of the results in [Abiteboul and Vianu, 1991b] from this point of view. In particular, we show that we can write a formula of FO + LFP that defines ...

We identify the computational complexity of the satisfiability problem for FO², the fragment of first-order logic consisting of all relational first-order sentences with at most two distinct variables. Although this fragment was shown to be decidable a long time ago, the computational complexity of its decision problem has not been pinpointed so far. In 1975 Mortimer proved that FO² has the finite-model property, which means that if an FO²-sentence is satisfiable, then it has a finite model. Moreover, Mortimer showed that every satisfiable FO²-sentence has a model whose size is at most doubly exponential in the size of the sentence. In this paper, we improve Mortimer's bound by one exponential and show that every satisfiable FO²-sentence has a model whose size is at most exponential in the size of the sentence. As a consequence, we establish that the satisfiability problem for FO² is NEXPTIME-complete.

The computational complexity of a problem is usually defined in terms of the resources required on some machine model of computation. An alternative view looks at the complexity of describing the problem (seen as a collection of relational structures) in a logic, measuring logical resources such as the number of variables, quantifiers, operators, etc. A close correspondence has been observed between these two, with many natural logics corresponding exactly to independently defined complexity classes. For the complexity classes that are generally identified with feasible computation, such characterizations require the presence of a linear order on the domain of every structure, in which case the class PTIME is characterized by an extension of first-order logic by means of an inductive operator. No logical characterization of feasible computation is known for unordered structures. We approach this question from two directions. On the one hand, we seek to accurately characterize the expre...

We study the expressive power of inflationary fixed-point logic IFP and inflationary fixed-point logic with counting IFP+C on planar graphs. We prove the following results: (1) IFP captures polynomial time on 3-connected planar graphs, and IFP+C captures polynomial time on arbitrary planar graphs. (2) Planar graphs can be characterized up to isomorphism in a logic with finitely many variables and counting. This answers a question of Immerman [7]. (3) The class of planar graphs is definable in IFP. This answers a question of Dawar and Gr adel [16]. 1. Introduction The basic problem of descriptive complexity theory is to find a logic L for a given complexity class K such that an isomorphism invariant property of finite structures can be defined in L if, and only if, it belongs to K. If this is the case, we say that L captures K. A restricted version of this problem is to capture a complexity class K on a class C of structures. In this case only properties of structures in C have to be...

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We consider extensions of first order logic (FO) and fixed point logic (FP) by means of generalized quantifiers in the sense of Lindstrom. We show that adding a finite set of such quantifiers to FP fails to capture PTIME, even over a fixed signature. This strengthens results in [10] and [15]. We also prove a stronger version of this result for PSPACE, which enables us to establish a weak version of a conjecture formulated in [16]. These results are obtained by defining a notion of element type for bounded variable logics with finitely many generalized quantifiers. Using these, we characterize the classes of finite structures over which the infinitary logic L ! 1! extended by a finite set of generalized quantifiers Q is no more expressive than first order logic extended by the quantifiers in Q . 1 Introduction Computational complexity measures the complexity of a problem in terms of the resources, such as time, space, or hardware, required to solve the problem relative to a given ma...