Related papers: Going higher in the First-order Quantifier Alterna…
We investigate quantifier alternation hierarchies in first-order logic on finite words. Levels in these hierarchies are defined by counting the number of quantifier alternations in formulas. We prove that one can decide membership of a…
We investigate the expressive power of quantifier alternation hierarchy of first-order logic over words. This hierarchy includes the classes ${\Sigma}_i$ (sentences having at most $i$ blocks of quantifiers starting with an $\exists$) and…
The study of various decision problems for logic fragments has a long history in computer science. This paper is on the membership problem for a fragment of first-order logic over infinite words; the membership problem asks for a given…
We show that each level of the quantifier alternation hierarchy within FO^2[<] -- the 2-variable fragment of the first order logic of order on words -- is a variety of languages. We then use the notion of condensed rankers, a refinement of…
We consider the quantifier alternation hierarchy within two-variable first-order logic FO^2[<,suc] over finite words with linear order and binary successor predicate. We give a single identity of omega-terms for each level of this…
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 investigate a famous decision problem in automata theory: separation. Given a class of language C, the separation problem for C takes as input two regular languages and asks whether there exists a third one which belongs to C, includes…
We consider first-order logic over the subword ordering on finite words, where each word is available as a constant. Our first result is that the $\Sigma_1$ theory is undecidable (already over two letters). We investigate the decidability…
We investigate the decidability of the definability problem for fragments of first order logic over finite words enriched with modular predicates. Our approach aims toward the most generic statements that we could achieve, which…
We consider two-variable first-order logic on finite words with a fixed number of quantifier alternations. We show that all languages with a neutral letter definable using the order and finite-degree predicates are also definable with the…
We consider the class of languages defined in the 2-variable fragment of the first-order logic of the linear order. Many interesting characterizations of this class are known, as well as the fact that restricting the number of quantifier…
We characterize the languages in the individual levels of the quantifier alternation hierarchy of first-order logic with two variables by identities. This implies decidability of the individual levels. More generally we show that the…
We consider the two-variable fragment FO^2[<] of first-order logic over finite words. Numerous characterizations of this class are known. Th\'erien and Wilke have shown that it is decidable whether a given regular language is definable in…
We study first-order logic (FO) over the structure consisting of finite words over some alphabet $A$, together with the (non-contiguous) subword ordering. In terms of decidability of quantifier alternation fragments, this logic is…
We consider two-variable first-order logic FO2 over infinite words. Restricting the number of nested negations defines an infinite hierarchy; its levels are often called the half-levels of the FO2 quantifier alternation hierarchy. For every…
We show that for any $i > 0$, it is decidable, given a regular language, whether it is expressible in the $\Sigma_i[<]$ fragment of first-order logic FO[<]. This settles a question open since 1971. Our main technical result relies on the…
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…
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…
The regular languages with a neutral letter expressible in first-order logic with one alternation are characterized. Specifically, it is shown that if an arbitrary $\Sigma_2$ formula defines a regular language with a neutral letter, then…
We investigate two problems for a class C of regular word languages. The C-membership problem asks for an algorithm to decide whether an input language belongs to C. The C-separation problem asks for an algorithm that, given as input two…