A new combination procedure for the word problem that genera

A New Combination Procedure for the Word Problem that Generalizes Fusion Decidability Results in Modal Logics Franz Baader a,1 , Silvio Ghilardi b , Cesare Tinelli c a Institut f¨ur Theoretische Informatik, TU Dresden, Germany b Dipartimento di Scienze dell’Informazione, Universit`a degli Studi di Milano, Italy c Department of Computer Science, The University of Iowa, USA Abstract Previous results for combining decision procedures for the word problem in the non- disjoint case do not apply to equational theories induced by modal logics—which are not disjoint for sharing the theory of Boolean algebras. Conversely, decidability results for the fusion of modal logics are strongly tailored towards the special theories at hand, and thus do not generalize to other types of equational theories. In this paper, we present a new approach for combining decision procedures for the word problem in the non-disjoint case that applies to equational theories induced by modal logics, but is not restricted to them. The known fusion decidability results for modal logics are instances of our approach. However, even for equational theories induced by modal logics our results are more general since they are not restricted to so-called normal modal logics. 1 Introduction The combination of decision procedures for logical theories arises in many areas of logic in computer science, such as constraint solving, automated de- duction, term rewriting, modal logics, and description logics. In general, one has two first-order theories T and T over the signatures Σ and Σ , for which 1 2 1 2 validity of a certain type of formulae (e.g., universal, existential positive, etc.) is decidable. The question is then whether one can combine the decision pro- cedures for T and T into one for their union T ∪ T . The pr