Many of the formalisms used in Attribute Value grammar are notational variants of languages of propositional modal logic, and testing whether two Attribute Value descriptions unify amounts to testing for modal satisfiablity. In this paper we put this observation to work. We study the complexity of the satisfiability problem for nine modal languages which mirror different aspects of AVS description formalisms, including the ability to express re-entrancy, the ability to express generalisations, and the ability to express recursive constraints. Two main techniques are used: either Kripke models with desirable properties are constructed, or modalities are used to simulate fragments of Propositional Dynamic Logic. Further possibilities for the application of modal logic in computational linguistics are noted. Attribute Value Structures (AVSs) are probably the most widely used means of representing linguistic structure in current computational linguistics, and the process of unifying...

Feature logics form a class of specialized logics which have proven especially useful in classifying and constraining the linguistic objects known as feature structures. Linguistically, these structures have their origin in the work of the Prague school of linguistics, followed by the work of Chomsky and Halle in The Sound Pattern of English [16]. Feature structures have been reinvented several times by computer scientists: in the theory of data structures, where they are known as record structures, in artificial intelligence, where they are known as frame or slot-value structures, in the theory of data bases, where they are called "complex objects", and in computati

By representing transition systems as coalgebras, the three main ingredients of their theory: coalgebra, homomorphism, and bisimulation, can be seen to be in a precise correspondence to the basic notions of universal algebra: \Sigma-algebra, homomorphism, and substitutive relation (or congruence). In this paper, some standard results from universal algebra (such as the three isomorphism theorems and facts on the lattices of subalgebras and congruences) are reformulated (using the afore mentioned correspondence) and proved for transition systems. AMS Subject Classification (1991): 68Q10, 68Q55 CR Subject Classification (1991): D.3.1, F.1.2, F.3.2 Keywords & Phrases: Transition system, bisimulation, universal coalgebra, universal algebra, congruence, homomorphism. Note: This paper will appear in `Modal Logic and Process Algebra', edited by Ponse, De Rijke and Venema [PRV95]. 2 Table of Contents 1 Introduction : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : ...

. Set constraints are inclusion relations between sets of ground terms over a ranked alphabet. They have been used extensively in program analysis and type inference. Here we present an equational axiomatization of the algebra of set constraints. Models of these axioms are called termset algebras. They are related to the Boolean algebras with operators of J'onsson and Tarski. We also define a family of combinatorial models called topological term automata, which are essentially the term automata studied by Kozen, Palsberg, and Schwartzbach endowed with a topology such that all relevant operations are continuous. These models are similar to Kripke frames for modal or dynamic logic. We establish a Stone duality between termset algebras and topological term automata, and use this to derive a completeness theorem for a related multidimensional modal logic. Finally, we prove a small model property by filtration, and argue that this result contains the essence of several algorithms appearing...

We investigate set constraints over set expressions with Tarskian functional and relational operations. Unlike the Herbrand constructor symbols used in recent set constraint formalisms, the meaning of a Tarskian function symbol is interpreted in an arbitrary first order structure. We show that satisfiability of Tarskian set constraints is decidable in nondeterministic doubly exponential time. We also consider various extensions of the basic language and show that: satisfiability of Tarskian set constraints with recursion (µ-sets) is undecidable but satisfiability for Tarskian set constraints with µ-sets but without function symbols is linear time equivalent to satisfiability in the propositional µ-calculus and is therefore decidable in deterministic exponential time.

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A boolean algebra is shown to be completely representable if and only if it is atomic, whereas it is shown that neither the class of completely representable relation algebras nor the class of completely representable cylindric algebras of any fixed dimension (at least 3) are elementary.

this paper for a discussion on the merits or otherwise of Kripke semantics and its "sufficiency" extension. Just as Kripke frames are dual to a class of Boolean algebras with modal operators [18, 24], one can build a duality for frames and Boolean algebras with sufficiency operators. Mixed structures occur when modal and sufficiency operators arise from the same accessibility relation. In this paper we introduce the classes of sufficiency algebras and that of mixed algebras which include both a modal and a sufficiency operator, and study representation and duality theory for these classes of algebras. We also give examples for classes of first-order definable frames, where such operators are required for a "modal-style" axiomatisation. 2 Why sufficiency and mixed algebras?

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In this paper we present a method for automated theorem proving in manyvalued logics whose algebra of truth values is a nite distributive lattice with operators. This class of many-valued logics includes many logics that occur in a natural way in applications. The method uses the Priestley dual of the algebra of truth values instead of the algebra itself; this dual is used as a finite set of possible worlds. We first present a procedure that constructs, for every formula in the language of such a logic, a set of signed clauses such that is a theorem if and only if is unsatisfiable. Compared to related approaches, the method presented here leads in many cases to a reduction of the number of clauses that are generated, especially when the set of truth values is not linearly ordered. We then discuss several possibilities for checking the unsatisfiability of , among which a version of signed hyperresolution, and give several examples.