Related papers: Quantifier Alternation in Two-Variable First-Order…

Consider a linear ordering equipped with a finite sequence of monadic predicates. If the ordering contains an interval of order type \omega or -\omega, and the monadic second-order theory of the combined structure is decidable, there exists…

We study FO+, a fragment of first-order logic on finite words, where monadic predicates can only appear positively. We show that there is an FO-definable language that is monotone in monadic predicates but not definable in FO+. This…

We develop an algebraic notion of recognizability for languages of words indexed by countable linear orderings. We prove that this notion is effectively equivalent to definability in monadic second-order (MSO) logic. We also provide three…

We study the satisfiability problem for the two-variable first-order logic over structures with one transitive relation. % We show that the problem is decidable in 2-NExpTime for the fragment consisting of formulas where existential…

We consider a language together with the subword relation, the cover relation, and regular predicates. For such structures, we consider the extension of first-order logic by threshold- and modulo-counting quantifiers. Depending on the…

We look at classes of languages associated to the fragment of first-order logic B{\Sigma}1 which disallows quantifier alternations. Each class is defined by choosing the set of predicates on positions that may be used. Two key such…

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.…

The first-order theory of addition over the natural numbers, known as Presburger arithmetic, is decidable in double exponential time. Adding an uninterpreted unary predicate to the language leads to an undecidable theory. We sharpen the…

Aiming at ontology-based data access to temporal data, we design two-dimensional temporal ontology and query languages by combining logics from the (extended) DL-Lite family with linear temporal logic LTL over discrete time (Z,<). Our main…

We introduce a first-order theory of finite full binary trees and then identify decidable and undecidable fragments of this theory. We show that the analogue of Hilbert`s 10th Problem is undecidable by constructing a many-to-one reduction…

Given two languages, a separator is a third language that contains the first one and is disjoint from the second one. We investigate the following decision problem: given two regular input languages of finite words, decide whether there…

Monadic Second-Order Logic (MSO) extends First-Order Logic (FO) with variables ranging over sets and quantifications over those variables. We introduce and study Monadic Tree Logic (MTL), a fragment of MSO interpreted on infinite-tree…

We consider the termination/non-termination property of a class of loops. Such loops are commonly used abstractions of real program pieces. Second-order logic is a convenient language to express non-termination. Of course, such property is…

We propose a fragment of many-sorted second order logic called EQSMT and show that checking satisfiability of sentences in this fragment is decidable. EQSMT formulae have an $\exists^*\forall^*$ quantifier prefix (over variables, functions…

We show that descriptive complexity's result extends in High Order Logic to capture the expressivity of Turing Machine which have a finite number of alternation and whose time or space is bounded by a finite tower of exponential. Hence we…

We study the question of whether a given regular language of finite trees can be defined in first-order logic. We develop an algebraic approach to address this question and we use it to derive several necessary and sufficient conditions for…

Nominal Logic is a version of first-order logic with equality, name-binding, renaming via name-swapping and freshness of names. Contrarily to higher-order logic, bindable names, called atoms, and instantiable variables are considered as…

We prove the undecidability of MSO on $\omega$-words extended with the second-order predicate $U_1(X)$ which says that the distance between consecutive positions in a set $X \subseteq \mathbb{N}$ is unbounded. This is achieved by showing…

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…

Fragments of first-order logic over words can often be characterized in terms of finite monoids, and identities of omega-terms are an effective mechanism for specifying classes of monoids. Huschenbett and the first author have shown how to…