arXiv subjects

Pietro Galliani

Publications and source records attributed to Pietro Galliani.

At least 19 recordsLinked to original sources

arXiv2025

Strongly First Order Disjunctive Embedded Dependencies in Team Semantics

First Order Team Semantics is a generalization of Tarskian Semantics in which formulas are satisfied with respect to sets of assignments. In Team Semantics, it is possible to extend First Order Logic via new types of atoms that describe dependencies between variables; some of these extensions are strictly more expressive than First Order Logic, while others are reducible to it. Many of the atoms studied in Team Semantics are inspired by Database Theory and belong in particular to the class of Disjunctive Embedded Dependencies, a very general family of dependencies that contains most of the dependencies of practical interest in the study of databases. In this work, I provide a characterization for the (domain-independent) Disjunctive Embedded Dependencies that fail to increase the expressive power of First-Order Team Semantics when added to it.

math.LO↗

arXiv2022

Strongly First Order, Domain Independent Dependencies: the Union-Closed Case

Team Semantics generalizes Tarski's Semantics by defining satisfaction with respect to sets of assignments rather than with respect to single assignments. Because of this, it is possible to use Team Semantics to extend First Order Logic via new kinds of connectives or atoms - most importantly, via dependency atoms that express dependencies between different assignments. Some of these extensions are more expressive than First Order Logic proper, while others are reducible to it. In this work, I provide necessary and sufficient conditions for a dependency atom that is domain independent (in the sense that its truth or falsity in a relation does not depend on the existence in the model of elements that do not occur in the relation) and union closed (in the sense that whenever it is satisfied by all members of a family of relations it is also satisfied by their union) to be strongly first order, in the sense that the logic obtained by adding them to First Order Logic is no more expressive than First Order Logic itself.

math.LO↗

arXiv2021

Diversity, Dependence and Independence

We introduce the concepts of dependence and independence in a very general framework. We use a concept of rank to study dependence and independence. By means of the rank we identify (total) dependence with inability to create more diversity, and (total) independence with the presence of maximum diversity. We show that our theory of dependence and independence covers a variety of dependence concepts, for example the seemingly unrelated concepts of linear dependence in algebra and dependence of variables in logic.

cs.LO↗

arXiv2021

Doubly Strongly First Order Dependencies

Team Semantics is a generalization of Tarskian Semantics that can be used to add to First Order Logic atoms and connectives expressing dependencies between the possible values of variables. Some of these extensions are more expressive than First Order Logic, while others are reducible to it. In this work, I fully characterize the (relativizable) atoms and families of atoms that do not increase the expressive power of First Order Logic with Team Semantics when they and their negations are added to it, separately or jointly (or, equivalently, when they are added to First Order Logic augmented with a contradictory negation connective applicable only to literals and dependency atoms).

math.LO↗

arXiv2019

Characterizing Strongly First Order Dependencies: The Non-Jumping Relativizable Case

Team Semantics generalizes Tarski's Semantics for First Order Logic by allowing formulas to be satisfied or not satisfied by sets of assignments rather than by single assignments. Because of this, in Team Semantics it is possible to extend the language of First Order Logic via new types of atomic formulas that express dependencies between different assignments. Some of these extensions are much more expressive than First Order Logic proper; but the problem of which atoms can instead be added to First Order Logic without increasing its expressive power is still unsolved. In this work, I provide an answer to this question under the additional assumptions (true of most atoms studied so far) that the dependency atoms are relativizable and non-jumping. Furthermore, I show that the global (or Boolean) disjunction connective can be added to any strongly first order family of dependencies without increasing the expressive power, but that the same is not true in general for non strongly first order dependencies.

math.LO↗

arXiv2019

Characterizing downwards closed, strongly first order, relativizable dependencies

In Team Semantics, a dependency notion is strongly first order if every sentence of the logic obtained by adding the corresponding atoms to First Order Logic is equivalent to some first order sentence. In this work it is shown that all nontrivial dependency atoms that are strongly first order, downwards closed, and relativizable (in the sense that the relativizations of the corresponding atoms with respect to some unary predicate are expressible in terms of them) are definable in terms of constancy atoms. Additionally, it is shown that any strongly first order dependency is safe for any family of downwards closed dependencies, in the sense that every sentence of the logic obtained by adding to First Order Logic both the strongly first order dependency and the downwards closed dependencies is equivalent to some sentence of the logic obtained by adding only the downwards closed dependencies.

math.LO↗

arXiv2018

Safe Dependency Atoms and Possibility Operators in Team Semantics

I consider the question of which dependencies are safe for a Team Semantics-based logic FO(D), in the sense that they do not increase its expressive power over sentences when added to it. I show that some dependencies, like totality, non-constancy and non-emptiness, are safe for all logics FO(D), and that other dependencies, like constancy, are not safe for FO(D) for some choices of D despite being strongly first order. I furthermore show that the possibility operator, which holds in a team if and only if its argument holds in some nonempty subteam, can be added to any logic FO(D) without increasing its expressive power over sentences.

math.LO↗

arXiv2017

Repairing Ontologies via Axiom Weakening

Ontology engineering is a hard and error-prone task, in which small changes may lead to errors, or even produce an inconsistent ontology. As ontologies grow in size, the need for automated methods for repairing inconsistencies while preserving as much of the original knowledge as possible increases. Most previous approaches to this task are based on removing a few axioms from the ontology to regain consistency. We propose a new method based on weakening these axioms to make them less restrictive, employing the use of refinement operators. We introduce the theoretical framework for weakening DL ontologies, propose algorithms to repair ontologies based on the framework, and provide an analysis of the computational complexity. Through an empirical analysis made over real-life ontologies, we show that our approach preserves significantly more of the original knowledge of the ontology than removing axioms.

cs.AI↗

arXiv2016

Dynamic Logics of Imperfect Information: from Teams and Games to Transitions

We introduce a new semantical formalism for logics of imperfect information, based on Game Logic (and, in particular, on van Benthem, Ghosh and Lu's Concurrent Dynamic Game Logic). This new kind of semantics combines aspects from game theoretic semantics and from team semantics, and demonstrates how logics of imperfect information can be seen as languages for reasoning about games. Finally we show that, for a very expressive fragment of our language, a simpler semantics is available.

math.LO↗

arXiv2016

Gray-box inference for structured Gaussian process models

We develop an automated variational inference method for Bayesian structured prediction problems with Gaussian process (GP) priors and linear-chain likelihoods. Our approach does not need to know the details of the structured likelihood model and can scale up to a large number of observations. Furthermore, we show that the required expected likelihood term and its gradients in the variational objective (ELBO) can be estimated efficiently by using expectations over very low-dimensional Gaussian distributions. Optimization of the ELBO is fully parallelizable over sequences and amenable to stochastic optimization, which we use along with control variate techniques and state-of-the-art incremental optimization to make our framework useful in practice. Results on a set of natural language processing tasks show that our method can be as good as (and sometimes better than) hard-coded approaches including SVM-struct and CRFs, and overcomes the scalability limitations of previous inference algorithms based on sampling. Overall, this is a fundamental step to developing automated inference methods for Bayesian structured prediction.

stat.ML↗

arXiv2014

Dialetheism, Game Theoretic Semantics, and Paraconsistent Team Semantics

We introduce a variant of Dependence Logic in which truth is defined not in terms of existence of winning strategies for the Proponent (Eloise) in a semantic game, but in terms of lack of winning strategies for the Opponent (Abelard). We show that this language is a conservative but paraconsistent extension of First Order Logic, that its validity problem can be reduced to that of First Order Logic, that it capable of expressing its own truth and validity predicates, and that it is expressively equivalent to Universal Second Order Logic. Furthermore, we prove that a Paraconsistent Non-dependence Logic formula is consistent if and only if it is equivalent to some First Order Logic sentence; and we show that, on the other hand, all Paraconsistent Dependence Logic sentences are equivalent to some First Order sentence with respect to truth (but not necessarily with respect to falsity).

math.LO↗

arXiv2014

On Strongly First-Order Dependencies

We prove that the expressive power of first-order logic with team semantics plus contradictory negation does not rise beyond that of first-order logic (with respect to sentences), and that the totality atoms of arity k +1 are not definable in terms of the totality atoms of arity k. We furthermore prove that all first-order nullary and unary dependencies are strongly first order, in the sense that they do not increase the expressive power of first order logic if added to it.

math.LO↗

arXiv2013

Upwards Closed Dependencies in Team Semantics

We prove that adding upwards closed first-order dependency atoms to first-order logic with team semantics does not increase its expressive power (with respect to sentences), and that the same remains true if we also add constancy atoms. As a consequence, the negations of functional dependence, conditional independence, inclusion and exclusion atoms can all be added to first-order logic without increasing its expressive power. Furthermore, we define a class of bounded upwards closed dependencies and we prove that unbounded dependencies cannot be defined in terms of bounded ones.

math.LO↗

arXiv2013

On Dependence Logic

We give an overview of some developments in dependence and independence logic. This is a tiny selection, intended for a newcomer, from a rapidly growing literature on the topic. Furthermore, we discuss conditional independence atoms and we prove that conditional and non-conditional independence logic are equivalent. Finally, we briefly discuss an application of our logics to belief representation.

math.LO↗

arXiv2013

Transition Semantics - The Dynamics of Dependence Logic

We examine the relationship between Dependence Logic and game logics. A variant of Dynamic Game Logic, called Transition Logic, is developed, and we show that its relationship with Dependence Logic is comparable to the one between First-Order Logic and Dynamic Game Logic discussed by van Benthem. This suggests a new perspective on the interpretation of Dependence Logic formulas, in terms of assertions about reachability in games of im- perfect information against Nature. We then capitalize on this intuition by developing expressively equivalent variants of Dependence Logic in which this interpretation is taken to the foreground.

math.LO↗

arXiv2013

The Doxastic Interpretation of Team Semantics

We advance a doxastic interpretation for many of the logical connectives considered in Dependence Logic and in its extensions, and we argue that Team Semantics is a natural framework for reasoning about beliefs and belief updates.

cs.AI↗

arXiv2013

Inclusion Logic and Fixed Point Logic

We investigate the properties of Inclusion Logic, that is, First Order Logic with Team Semantics extended with inclusion dependencies. We prove that Inclusion Logic is equivalent to Greatest Fixed Point Logic, and we prove that all union-closed first-order definable properties of relations are definable in it. We also provide an Ehrenfeucht-Fraïssé game for Inclusion Logic, and give an example illustrating its use.

cs.LO↗

arXiv2013

Hierarchies in independence logic

We study the expressive power of fragments of inclusion and independence logic defined either by restricting the number of universal quantifiers or the arity of inclusion and independence atoms in formulas. Assuming the so-called lax semantics for these logics, we relate these fragments of inclusion and independence logic to familiar sublogics of existential second-order logic. We also show that, with respect to the stronger strict semantics, inclusion logic is equivalent to existential second-order logic.

math.LO↗