The axiomatic presentation of modal systems and the standard formulations of natural deduction and sequent calculus for modal logic are reviewed, together with the difficulties that emerge with these approaches. Generalizations of standard proof systems are then presented. These include, among others, display calculi, hypersequents, and labelled systems, with the latter surveyed from a closer perspective.

We present a rooted hypersequent calculus for modal propositional logic S5. We show that all rules of this calculus are invertible and that the rules of weakening, contraction, and cut are admissible. Soundness and completeness are established as well.

In the paper a decision procedure for S5 is presented which uses a cut-free sequent calculus with additional rules allowing a reduction to normal modal forms. It utilizes the fact that in S5 every formula is equivalent to some 1-degree formula, i.e. a modally-flat formula with modal functors having only boolean formulas in its scope. In contrast to many sequent calculi for S5 the presented system does not introduce any extra devices. Thus it is a standard version of SC but (...) with some additional simple rewrite rules. The procedure combines the proces of saturation of sequents with reduction of their elements to some normal modal form. (shrink)

The paper is a brief survey of some sequent calculi which do not follow strictly the shape of sequent calculus introduced by Gentzen. We propose the following rough classification of all SC: Systems which are based on some deviations from the ordinary notion of a sequent are called generalised; remaining ones are called ordinary. Among the latter we distinguish three types according to the proportion between the number of primitive sequents and rules. In particular, in one of these types, called (...) Gentzen’s type, we have a subtype of standard SC due to Gentzen. Hence by nonstandard ones we mean all these ordinary SC where other kinds of rules are applied than those admitted in standard Gentzen’s sequent calculi. We describe briefly some of the most interesting or important nonstandard SC belonging to the three abovementioned types. (shrink)

We see a systematic set of cut-free axiomatisations for all the basic normal modal logics formed by some combination the axioms d, t, b, 4, 5. They employ a form of deep inference but otherwise stay very close to Gentzen’s sequent calculus, in particular they enjoy a subformula property in the literal sense. No semantic notions are used inside the proof systems, in particular there is no use of labels. All their rules are invertible and the rules cut, weakening and (...) contraction are admissible. All systems admit a straightforward terminating proof search procedure as well as a syntactic cut elimination procedure. (shrink)

Hypersequent calculus, developed by A. Avron, is one of the most interesting proof systems suitable for nonclassical logics. Although HC has rather simple form, it increases significantly the expressive power of standard sequent calculi. In particular, HC proved to be very useful in the field of proof theory of various nonclassical logics. It may seem surprising that it was not applied to temporal logics so far. In what follows, we discuss different approaches to formalization of logics of linear frames and (...) provide a cut-free HC formalization ofKt4.3, the minimal temporal logic of linear frames, and some of its extensions. The novelty of our approach is that hypersequents are defined not as finite sets but as finite lists of ordinary sequents. Such a solution allows both linearity of time flow, and symmetry of past and future, to be incorporated by means of six temporal rules. Extensions of the basic calculus with simple structural rules cover logics of serial and dense frames. Completeness is proved by Schütte/Hintikka-style argument using models built from saturated hypersequents. (shrink)