Related papers: On logical hierarchies within FO^2-definable langu…
We explore from an algebraic viewpoint the properties of the tree languages definable with a first-order formula involving the ancestor predicate, using the description of these languages as those recognized by iterated block products of…
Concatenation hierarchies are classifications of regular languages. All such hierarchies are built through the same construction process: start from an initial class of languages and build new levels using two generic operations.…
We study an extension of FO^2[<], first-order logic interpreted in finite words, in which formulas are restricted to use only two variables. We adjoin to this language two-variable atomic formulas that say, `the letter a appears between…
The dot-depth hierarchy of Brzozowski and Cohen classifies the star-free languages of finite words. By a theorem of McNaughton and Papert, these are also the first-order definable languages. The dot-depth rose to prominence following the…
We study Two-Variable First-Order Logic, FO2, under semantic constraints that model hierarchically structured data. Our first logic extends FO2 with a linear order < and a chain of increasingly coarser equivalence relations E_1, E_2, ... .…
The class of Unambiguous Star-Free Regular Languages (UL) was defined by Schutzenberger as the class of languages defined by Unambiguous Polynomials. UL has been variously characterized (over finite words) by logics such as TL[X_a,Y_a],…
We introduce the finite-horizon first-order rank profile of a language $L \subseteq \Sigma^*$: the least quantifier rank needed by an $\mathrm{FO}[<]$ sentence to classify membership in $L$ correctly on all words of length at most $n$. The…
We use monadic second-order logic to define two-dimensional subshifts, or sets of colorings of the infinite plane. We present a natural family of quantifier alternation hierarchies, and show that they all collapse to the third level. In…
This paper introduces an abstract notion of fragments of monadic second-order logic. This concept is based on purely syntactic closure properties. We show that over finite words, every logical fragment defines a lattice of languages with…
This is an extended survey of the results concerning a hierarchy of languages that is tightly connected with the quantifier alternation hierarchy within the two-variable fragment of first order logic of the linear order.
We give an algebraic characterization of the tree languages that are defined by logical formulas using certain Lindstr\"om quantifiers. An important instance of our result concerns first-order definable tree languages. Our characterization…
We study the logic FO(~), the extension of first-order logic with team semantics by unrestricted Boolean negation. It was recently shown axiomatizable, but otherwise has not yet received much attention in questions of computational…
We investigate the expressive power of first-order quantifications in the context of monadic second-order logic over pictures. We show that k+1 set quantifier alternations allow to define a picture language that cannot be defined using k…
We study FO+, a fragment of first-order logic on finite words, where monadic predicates can only appear positively. We show that there is a FO-definable language that is monotone in monadic predicates but not definable in FO+. This provides…
Monadic second order logic and linear temporal logic are two logical formalisms that can be used to describe classes of infinite words, i.e., first-order models based on the natural numbers with order, successor, and finitely many unary…
This paper explores the fine-grained structure of classes of regular languages maintainable in fragments of first-order logic within the dynamic descriptive complexity framework of Patnaik and Immerman. A result by Hesse states that the…
In this paper we address the decision problem for a fragment of set theory with restricted quantification which extends the language studied in [4] with pair related quantifiers and constructs, in view of possible applications in the field…
We study two extensions of FO2[<], first-order logic interpreted in finite words, in which formulas are restricted to use only two variables. We adjoin to this language two-variable atomic formulas that say, "the letter $a$ appears between…
In this article we provide effective characterisations of regular languages of infinite trees that belong to the low levels of the Wadge hierarchy. More precisely we prove decidability for each of the finite levels of the hierarchy; for the…
We consider first-order logic with monoidal quantifiers over words. We show that all languages with a neutral letter, definable using the addition numerical predicate are also definable with the order predicate as the only numerical…