Alberto Zanardo

Branching-Time Logic with Quantification over Branches: The Point of View of Modal Logic

In Ockhamist branching-time logic [Prior 67], formulas are meant to be evaluated on a specified branch, or history, passing through the moment at hand. The linguistic counterpart of the manifoldness of future is a possibility operator which is read as ‘at some branch, or history (passing through the moment at hand)’. Both the bundled-trees semantics [Burgess 79] and the 〈moment, history〉 semantics [Thomason 84] for the possibility operator involve a quantification over sets of moments. The Ockhamist frames are (3-modal) Kripke structures in which this second-order quantification is represented by a first-order quantification. The aim of the present paper is to investigate the notions of modal definability, validity, and axiomatizability concerning 3-modal frames which can be viewed as generalizations of Ockhamist frames.

Fibring: Completeness Preservation

A completeness theorem is established for logics with congruence endowed with general semantics (in the style of general frames). As a corollary, completeness is shown to be preserved by fibring logics with congruence provided that congruence is retained in the resulting logic. The class of logics with equivalence is shown to be closed under fibring and to be included in the class of logics with congruence. Thus, completeness is shown to be preserved by fibring logics with equivalence and general semantics. An example is provided showing that completeness is not always preserved by fibring ligics endowed with standard (non general) semantics. A categorial characterization of fibring is provided using coproducts and cocartesian liftings.

Fibring Modal First-Order Logics: Completeness Preservation

Fibring is defined as a mechanism for combining logics with a firstorder base, at both the semantic and deductive levels. A completeness theorem is established for a wide class of such logics, using a variation of the Henkin method that takes advantage of the presence of equality and inequality in the logic. As a corollary, completeness is shown to be preserved when fibring logics in that class. A modal first-order logic is obtained as a fibring where neither the Barcan formula nor its converse hold.

Synchronized Histories in Prior-Thomason Representation of Branching Time

All the above examples are apparently based on the idea that it makes sense to establish temporal comparisons among different (and incompatible) courses of affairs. What follows is a study about the possibility of expressing tempora l comparisons among different courses of affairs in some formal languages whose semantics are based on certain branching-time frames. It will be shown that the usual Pr ior-Thomason formalism [Prior 67, Thomason 84] does not suffice for this goal (section 2), so that new operators are needed; a relevant par t of this work will deal with some such new operators, their semantics and their respective strengths (sections 3 and 4). The results proved in sections 2-4 will be discussed in the last section.

A Gabbay-rule free axiomatization of T× W validity

The semantical structures called T×W frames were introduced in (Thomason, 1984) for the Ockhamist temporal-modal language, ℒO, which consists of the usual propositional language augmented with the Priorean operators P and F and with a possibility operator ⋄. However, these structures are also suitable for interpreting an extended language, ℒSO, containing a further possibility operator ⋄s which expresses synchronism among possibly incompatible histories and which can thus be thought of as a cross-history ‘simultaneity’ operator. In the present paper we provide an infinite set of axioms in ℒSO, which is shown to be strongly complete forT ×W-validity. Von Kutschera (1997) contains a finite axiomatization of T×W-validity which however makes use of the Gabbay Irreflexivity Rule (Gabbay, 1981). In order to avoid using this rule, the proof presented here develops a new technique to deal with reflexive maximal consistent sets in Henkin-style constructions.

Axiomatization of ‘Peircean’ branching-time logic

The branching-time logic called ‘Peircean’ by Arthur Prior is considered and given an infinite axiomatization. The axiomatization uses only the standard deduction rules for tense logic.

Completeness of a Branching-Time Logic with Possible Choices

In this paper we present BTC, which is a complete logic for branchingtime whose modal operator quantifies over histories and whose temporal operators involve a restricted quantification over histories in a given possible choice. This is a technical novelty, since the operators of the usual logics for branching-time such as CTL express an unrestricted quantification over histories and moments. The value of the apparatus we introduce is connected to those logics of agency that are interpreted on branching-time, as for instance Stit Logics.

Undivided and Indistinguishable Histories in Branching-Time Logics

In the tree-like representation of Time, two histories are “undivided” at a moment t whenever they share a common moment in the future of t. In the present paper, it will first be proved that Ockhamist and Peircean branching-time logics are unable to express some important sentences in which the notion of undividedness is involved. Then, a new semantics for branching-time logic will be presented. The new semantics is based on trees endowed with an “indistinguishability” function, a generalization of the notion of undividedness. It will be shown that Ockhamist and Peircean semantics can be viewed as limit cases of the semantics developed in this paper.

Topological aspects of branching-time semantics

The aim of this paper is to present a new perspective under which branching-time semantics can be viewed. The set of histories (maximal linearly ordered sets) in a tree structure can be endowed in a natural way with a topological structure. Properties of trees and of bundled trees can be expressed in topological terms. In particular, we can consider the new notion of topological validity for Ockhamist temporal formulae. It will be proved that this notion of validity is equivalent to validity with respect to bundled trees.

From Linear to Branching-Time Temporal Logics: Transfer of Semantics and Definability

This paper investigates logical aspects of combining linear orders as semantics for modal and temporal logics, with modalities for possible paths, resulting in a variety of branching time logics over classes of trees. Here we adopt a unified approach to the Priorean, Peircean and Ockhamist semantics for branching time logics, by considering them all as fragments of the latter, obtained as combinations, in various degrees, of languages and semantics for linear time with a modality for possible paths. We then consider a hierarchy of natural classes of trees and bundled trees arising from a given class of linear orders and show that in general they provide different semantics. We also discuss transfer of definability from linear orders to trees and introduce a uniform translation from Priorean to Peircean formulae which transfers definability of properties of linear orders to definability of properties of all paths in trees.