A propositional modal logic of time intervals

Abstract

: In certain areas of artificial intelligence there is need to represent continuous change and to make statements that are interpreted with respect to time intervals rather than time points. To this end we develop a modal temporal logic based on time intervals, a logic which can be viewed as a generalization of pointbased modal temporal logic. We discuss related logics, give an intuitive presentation of the new logic, and define its formal syntax and semantics. We make no assumption about the underlying nature of time, allowing it to be discrete (such as the natural numbers) or continuous (such as the rationals or the reals), linear or branching, complete (such as the reals) or not (such as the rationals). We show, however, that there are formulas in the logic that allow us to distinguish all these situations. We also give a translation of our logic into first-order logic, which allows us to apply some results on first-order logic to our modal one. Finally, we consider the difficulty o...