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## Algorithmic properties of modal logics with restricted languages

University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, 2019.

Modal logics, both propositional and predicate, have been used in computer science since the late 1970s. One of the most important properties of modal logics of relevance to their applications in computer science is the complexity of their satisﬁability problem. The complexity of satisﬁability for modal logics is rather high: it ranges from NP-complete to undecidable for propositional logics and is undecidable for predicate logics. This has, for a long time, motivated research in drawing the borderline between tractable and intractable fragments of propositional modal logics as well as between decidable and undecidable fragments of predicate modal logics. In the present thesis, we investigate some very natural restrictions on the languages of propositional and predicate modal logics and show that placing those restrictions does not decrease complexity of satisﬁability. For propositional languages, we consider restricting the number of propositional variables allowed in the construction of formulas, while for predicate languages, we consider restricting the number of individual variables as well as the number and arity of predicate letters allowed in the construction of formulas. We develop original techniques, which build on and develop the techniques known from the literature, for proving that satisﬁability for a ﬁnite-variable fragment of a propositional modal logic is as computationally hard as satisﬁability for the logic in the full language and adapt those techniques to predicate modal logics and prove undecidability of fragments of such logics in the language with a ﬁnite number of unary predicate letters as well as restrictions on the number of individual variables. The thesis is based on four articles published or accepted for publication. They concern propositional dynamic logics, propositional branchingand alternating-time temporal logics, propositional logics of symmetric rela tions, and ﬁrst-order predicate modal and intuitionistic logics. In all cases, we identify the “minimal,” with regard to the criteria mentioned above, fragments whose satisﬁability is as computationally hard as satisﬁability for the entire logic.