NNIL-formulas revisited: Universal models and finite model property

NNIL-formulas, introduced by Visser in 1983–1984 in a study of Σ₁-subsitutions in Heyting arithmetic, are intuitionistic propositional formulas that do not allow nesting of implication to the left. The first results about these formulas were obtained in a paper of 1995 by Visser et al. In particular, it was shown that NNIL-formulas are exactly the formulas preserved under taking submodels of Kripke models. Recently, Bezhanishvili and de Jongh observed that NNIL-formulas are also reflected by the colour-preserving monotonic maps of Kripke models. In the present paper, we first show how this observation leads to the conclusion that NNIL-formulas are preserved by arbitrary substructures not necessarily satisfying the topo-subframe condition. Then, we apply it to construct universal models for NNIL. It follows from the properties of these universal models that NNIL-formulas are also exactly the formulas that are reflected by colour-preserving monotonic maps. By using the method developed in constructing the universal models, we give a new direct proof that the logics axiomatized by NNIL-axioms have the finite model property.