Abstract
We prove some results about the limitations of the expressive power of quantifiers on finite structures. We define the concept of a bounded quantifier and prove that every relativizing quantifier which is bounded is already first-order definable (Theorem 3.8). We weaken the concept of congruence closed (see [6]) to weakly congruence closed by restricting to congruence relations where all classes have the same size. Adapting the concept of a thin quantifier (Caicedo [1]) to the framework of finite structures, we define the concept of a meager quantifier. We show that no proper extension of first-order logic by means of meager quantifiers is weakly congruence closed (Theorem 4.9). We prove the failure of the full congruence closure property for logics which extend first-order logic by means of meager quantifiers, arbitrary monadic quantifiers, and the Härtig quantifier (Theorem 6.1).
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Flum, J., Schiehlen, M. & Väänänen, J. Quantifiers and Congruence Closure. Studia Logica 62, 315–340 (1999). https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1005190726000
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1005190726000