Paper detail

Complete Axiomatizations of Fragments of Monadic Second-Order Logic on Finite Trees

We consider a specific class of tree structures that can represent basic structures in linguistics and computer science such as XML documents, parse trees, and treebanks, namely, finite node-labeled sibling-ordered trees. We present axiomatizations of the monadic second-order logic (MSO), monadic transitive closure logic (FO(TC1)) and monadic least fixed-point logic (FO(LFP1)) theories of this class of structures. These logics can express important properties such as reachability. Using model-theoretic techniques, we show by a uniform argument that these axiomatizations are complete, i.e., each formula that is valid on all finite trees is provable using our axioms. As a backdrop to our positive results, on arbitrary structures, the logics that we study are known to be non-recursively axiomatizable.