Neighborhood semantics
Neighborhood semantics, also known as Scott-Montague semantics, is a formal semantics for modal logics. It is a generalization, developed independently by Dana Scott and Richard Montague, of the more widely known relational semantics for modal logic. Whereas a relational frame consists of a set W of worlds and an accessibility relation R intended to indicate which worlds are alternatives to others, a neighborhood frame still has a set W of worlds, but has instead of an accessibility relation a neighborhood function
that assigns to each element of W a set of subsets of W. Intuitively, each family of subsets assigned to a world are the propositions necessary at that world, where 'proposition' is defined as a subset of W. Specifically, if M is a model on the frame, then
where
is the truth set of A.
Neighborhood semantics is used for the classical modal logics that are strictly weaker than the normal modal logic K.Correspondence between relational and neighborhood models
To every relational model M = there corresponds an equivalent neighborhood model M' = defined by
The fact that the converse fails gives a precise sense to the remark that neighborhood models are a generalization of relational ones. Another generalization of relational structures are general relational structures.
