Decidability and undecidability in stand-alone feature logics
Patrick Blackburn, Edith Spaan · 1993
This paper investigates the complexity of the satisfiability problem for feature logics strong enough to code entire grammars unaided. We show that feature logics capable of both enforcing re-entrancy and stating linguistic generalisations will have undecidable satisfiability problems even when most Boolean expressivity has been discarded. We exhibit a decidable fragment, but the restrictions imposed to ensure decidability render it unfit for stand-alone use. The import of these results is discussed, and we conclude that there is a need for feature logics that are less homogeneous in their treatment of linguistic structure.