Tableaux for Logics of Subinterval Structures over Dense Orderings

In this article, we develop tableau-based decision procedures for the logics of subinterval structures over dense linear orderings. In particular, we consider the two difficult cases: the relation of strict subintervals (with both endpoints strictly inside the current interval) and the relation of proper subintervals (that can share one endpoint with the current interval). For each of these logics, we establish a small pseudo-model property and construct a sound, complete and terminating tableau that searches systematically for existence of such a pseudo-model satisfying the input formulas. Both constructions are non-trivial, but the latter is substantially more complicated because of the presence of beginning and ending subintervals which require special treatment. We prove PSPACE completeness for both procedures and implement them in the generic tableau-based theorem prover Lotrec.