Finest Syntax Splittings of Ranking Functions and Total Preorders on Worlds

The notion of syntax splitting was initially introduced by Parikh for belief sets, and one key observation is that every belief set has a unique finest syntax splitting, i.e., a syntax splitting that refines every other syntax splitting of that belief set. Later, the notion of syntax splitting was extended to ranking functions and total preorders on worlds (TPOs), which are two common models for belief states in the context of iterated belief revision. In this paper, we prove that ranking functions also have unique finest syntax splittings, i.e., every ranking function has a syntax splitting that refines all other syntax splittings of that ranking function. Using this, we can show that the syntax splittings of a ranking function κ are exactly the coarsenings of the finest splitting of κ. For TPOs we show that, in contrast to ranking functions, the coarsening of a syntax splitting of a TPO ⪯ is not necessarily a syntax splitting of ⪯. Despite that we can prove that every TPO has a unique finest syntax splitting that refines all other syntax splittings of that TPO.