When building tableau for temporal logic formulae, applying a two-pass construction, we first check the validity of the given tableaux input by creating a tableau graph, and then, in the second "pass", we check if all the eventualities are satisfied. In one-pass tableaux checking the validity of the input does not require these auxiliary constructions. This paper continues the development of one-pass tableau method for temporal logics introducing tree-style one-pass tableau systems for Computation Tree Logic (CTL) and shows how this can be extended to capture Extended CTL (ECTL). A distinctive feature here is the utilisation, for the core tableau construction, of the concept of a context of an eventuality which forces its earliest fulfilment. Relevant algorithms for obtaining a systematic tableau for these branching-time logics are also defined. We prove the soundness and completeness of the method. With these developments of a tree-shaped one-pass tableau for CTL and ECTL, we have formalisms which are well suited for the automation and are amenable for the implementation, and for the formulation of dual sequent calculi. This brings us one step closer to the application of one-pass context-based tableaux in certified model checking for a variety of CTL-type branching-time logics.

The standard model checking setup analyses whether the given system specification satisfies a dedicated temporal property of the system, providing a positive answer here or a counter-example. At the same time, it is often useful to have an explicit proof that certifies the satisfiability. This is exactly what the certified model checking (CMC) has been introduced for. The paper argues that one-pass (context-based) tableau for PLTL can be efficiently used in the CMC setting, emphasising the following two advantages of this technique. First, the use of the context in which the eventualities occur, forces them to fulfil as soon as possible. Second, a dual to the tableau sequent calculus can be used to formalise the certificates. The combination of the one-pass tableau and the dual sequent calculus enables us to provide not only counter-examples for unsatisfied properties, but also proofs for satisfied properties that can be checked in a proof assistant. In addition, the construction of the tableau is enriched by an embedded solver, to which we dedicate those (propositional) computational tasks that are costly for the tableaux rules applied solely. The combination of the above techniques is particularly helpful to reason about large (system) specifications.

Formal ontologies are axiomatizations in a logic-based formalism. The development of formal ontologies is generating considerable research on the use of automated reasoning techniques and tools that help in ontology engineering. One of the main aims is to refine and to improve axiomatizations for enabling automated reasoning tools to efficiently infer reliable information. Defects in the axiomatization cannot only cause wrong inferences, but can also hinder the inference of expected information, either by increasing the computational cost of or even preventing the inference. In this paper, we introduce a novel, fully automatic white-box testing framework for first-order logic (FOL) ontologies. Our methodology is based on the detection of inference-based redundancies in the given axiomatization. The application of the proposed testing method is fully automatic since (i) the automated generation of tests is guided only by the syntax of axioms and (ii) the evaluation of tests is performed by automated theorem provers (ATPs). Our proposal enables the detection of defects and serves to certify the grade of suitability—for reasoning purposes—of every axiom. We formally define the set of tests that are (automatically) generated from any axiom and prove that every test is logically related to redundancies in the axiom from which the test has been generated. We have implemented our method and used this implementation to automatically detect several non-trivial defects that were hidden in various FOL ontologies. Throughout the paper we provide illustrative examples of these defects, explain how they were found and how each proof—given by an ATP—provides useful hints on the nature of each defect. Additionally, by correcting all the detected defects, we have obtained an improved version of one of the tested ontologies: Adimen-SUMO.

Temporal logic has become essential for various areas in computer science, most notably for the specification and verification of hardware and software systems. For the specification purposes rich temporal languages are required that, in particular, can express fairness constraints. For linear-time logics which deal with fairness in the linear-time setting, one-pass and two-pass tableau methods have been developed. In the repository of the CTL-type branching-time setting, the well-known logics ECTL and ECTL^+ were developed to explicitly deal with fairness. However, due to the syntactical restrictions, these logics can only express restricted versions of fairness. The logic CTL^*, often considered as "the full branching-time logic" overcomes these restrictions on expressing fairness. However, this logic itself, is extremely challenging for the application of verification techniques, and the tableau technique, in particular. For example, there is no one-pass tableau construction for this logic, while it is known that one-pass tableau has an additional benefit enabling the formulation of dual sequent calculi that are often treated as more "natural" being more friendly for human understanding. Based on these two considerations, the following problem arises - are there logics that have richer expressiveness than ECTL^+ yet "simpler" than CTL^* for which a one-pass tableau can be developed? In this paper we give a solution to this problem. We present a tree-style one-pass tableau for a sub-logic of CTL^* that we call ECTL^#, which is more expressive than ECTL^+ allowing the formulation of a new range of fairness constraints with "until" operator. The presentation of the tableau construction is accompanied by an algorithm for constructing a systematic tableau, for any given input of admissible branching-time formulae. We prove the termination, soundness and completeness of the method. As tree-shaped one-pass tableaux are well suited for the automation and are amenable for the implementation and for the formulation of sequent calculi, our results also open a prospect of relevant developments of the automation and implementation of the tableau method for ECTL^#, and of a dual sequent calculi.

We introduce a new framework to evaluate and improve first-order (FO) ontologies using automated theorem provers (ATPs) on the basis of competency questions (CQs). Our framework includes both the adaptation of a methodology for evaluating ontologies to the framework of first-order logic and a new set of non-trivial CQs designed to evaluate FO versions of SUMO, which significantly extends the very small set of CQs proposed in the literature. Most of these new CQs have been automatically generated from a small set of patterns and the mapping of WordNet to SUMO. Applying our framework, we demonstrate that Adimen-SUMO v2.2 outperforms TPTP-SUMO. In addition, using the feedback provided by ATPs we have set an improved version of Adimen-SUMO (v2.4). This new version outperforms the previous ones in terms of competency. For instance, "Humans can reason" is automatically inferred from Adimen-SUMO v2.4, while it is neither deducible from TPTP-SUMO nor Adimen-SUMO v2.2.

We report on the results of evaluating the competency of a first-order ontology for its use with automated theorem provers (ATPs). The evaluation follows the adaptation of the methodology based on competency questions (CQs) [4] to the framework of first-order logic, which is presented in [2], and is applied to Adimen-SUMO [1]. The set of CQs used for this evaluation has been automatically generated from a small set of semantic patterns and the mapping of WordNet to SUMO. Analysing the results, we can conclude that it is feasible to use ATPs for working with Adimen-SUMO v2.4, enabling the resolution of goals by means of performing non-trivial inferences.

We present a mechanically verified implementation of the sorting algorithm Natural Mergesort that consists of a few methods specified by their contracts of pre/post conditions. Methods are annotated with assertions that allow the automatic verification of the contract satisfaction. This program-proof is made using the state-of-the-art verifier Dafny . We verify not only the standard sortedness property, but also that the algorithm performs a stable sort. Throughout the article, we provide and explain the complete text of the program-proof.

In this article, we present a declarative propositional temporal logic programming language called TeDiLog that is a combination of the temporal and disjunctive paradigms in logic programming. TeDiLog is, syntactically, a sublanguage of the well-known Propositional Linear-time Temporal Logic (PLTL). TeDiLog allows both eventualities and always-formulas to occur in clause heads and also in clause bodies. To the best of our knowledge, TeDiLog is the first declarative temporal logic programming language that achieves this high degree of expressiveness. We establish the logical foundations of our proposal by formally defining operational and logical semantics for TeDiLog and by proving their equivalence. The operational semantics of TeDiLog relies on a restriction of the invariant-free temporal resolution procedure for PLTL that was introduced by Gaintzarain et al. in [2013]. We define a fixpoint semantics that captures the reverse (bottom-up) operational mechanism and prove its equivalence with the logical semantics. We also provide illustrative examples and comparison with other proposals.

In this paper, the authors present Adimen-SUMO, an operational ontology to be used by first-order theorem provers in intelligent systems that require sophisticated reasoning capabilities (e.g. Natural Language Processing, Knowledge Engineering, Semantic Web infrastructure, etc.). Adimen-SUMO has been obtained by automatically translating around 88% of the original axioms of SUMO (Suggested Upper Merged Ontology). Their main interest is to present in a practical way the advantages of using first-order theorem provers during the design and development of first-order ontologies. First-order theorem provers are applied as inference engines for reengineering a large and complex ontology in order to allow for formal reasoning. In particular, the authors’ study focuses on providing first-order reasoning support to SUMO. During the process, they detect, explain and repair several important design flaws and problems of the SUMO axiomatization. As a by-product, they also provide general design decisions and good practices for creating operational first-order ontologies of any kind.