Are the existential fragment or the positive fragment of the theory of one-step rewriting decidable?
The source page states the original problem together with its recorded qualifications and progress updates as follows.
For a given signature and rewrite system , the theory of one-step rewriting by is the first order theory of the model comprising all -ground-terms, and the binary predicate \textit{ rewrites to in one rewrite step of }.
It is well-known that
the full first-order theory is undecidable, even for strong restrictions
on the class of rewrite systems (see RTALooP entry one-step-theory). Is the
existential fragment of this theory (in other words: satisfiability
of quantifier-free formulas) decidable?
Is the positive fragment (arbitrary quantification, but no negation or implications) decidable?
It is known that the positive existential fragment is decidable [Treinen, 1996], and there are decidability results for the full existential fragment in case of restricted classes of rewrite systems [Treinen, 1996].
