We describe a logic which is the same as first-order logic except that it allows control over the information that passes down from formulas to subformulas. For example the logic is adequate to express branching quantifiers. We describe a compositional semantics for this logic; in particular this gives a compositional meaning to formulas of the 'information-friendly' language of Hintikka and Sandu. For first-order formulas the semantics reduces to Tarski's semantics for first-order logic. We prove that two formulas have the same (...) interpretation in all structures if and only if replacing an occurrence of one by an occurrence of the other in a sentence never alters the truth-value of the sentence in any structure. (shrink)

The semantics of the independence friendly logic of Hintikka and Sandu is usually defined via a game of imperfect information. We give a definition in terms of a game of perfect information. We also give an Ehrenfeucht-Fraïssé game adequate for this logic and use it to define a Distributive Normal Form for independence friendly logic.