Expressiveness and completeness of an interval tense logic (Q2277246)

The paper contains an investigation of some logical properties of interval-based temporal logics, in particular the system HS devised by Halpern and Shoham. With respect to expressiveness, it is shown that HS has a greater capacity to distinguish ordinals than any point-based formalism. On the other hand it is proved that no finite set of temporal operators can be expressively complete over the class of dense linear interval structures. Concerning completeness of HS-logics, sound and complete axiomatizations are provided for classes like the linear orderings, discrete linear orderings and the ordering of the rationals. An important aspect of the paper is that it treats the modal logic of intervals as a two-dimensional logic, viewing intervals as points in a plane.