Subdistributivity and superdistributivity of binary operations (Q2269183)

This paper is essentially a detailed survey of different works regarding the distributivity, also intended in the weaker forms of left and right distributivity, of a class of common binary operations like seminorms and semiconorms, means and so on. The authors show the explicit purpose to correct some mistakes found in preceding papers regarding this topic in the literature (see citation [22] in Example 3.5 at page 192 or citation [6] at the bottom of page 194). In Sections 2 and 3, the authors fundamentally present a list of well-known results with the attempt to clarify the ``state of the art''. Some new results are contained in the third section, where the authors' efforts aim at showing the super or sub distributivity between some relevant t-norms and t-conorms: the proofs are really simple, even if clearly presented. In the last section, there is an attempt to show some connections between distributivity and domination of a binary operation \(F\) with respect to another one \(G\). Among different quotations of well-known results, the new ones are Theorems 5.3 and 5.4. The first one, for instance, directly shows, through an easy chain of inequalities, that left and right super distributivity of \(F\) with respect to \(G\geq\max\) implies domination of \(F\) on \(G\), while the second is somehow the converse, replacing \(G\geq\max\) with subidempotency of \(G\). Finally, I have to point out some errors. 1) The counterexample provided in Example 4.5, at page 195, is wrong, because the operation \[ F(x,y)=x+y-x\,\min(x,y) \] is not increasing (check for instance \(F(x_1,y)>F(x_2,y)\), with \(x_1=0.6,\,x_2=0.7\) and \(y=0.8\)). 2) In Example 4.14, the points of the real unit square indicated for proving that the operation \[ F(x,y)=\frac{\min(x+y,2x)}{2} \] is not bisymmetric, are wrong. There is also a misprint in Example 3.6, where, in the chain of equations regarding \(L_1\), just before the final step, there should be \(T_0(1/4,3/4)\) instead of \(T_0(1/4,1/2)\).