Related papers: Star-free languages and local divisors
Given a word $w$ over a finite alphabet, we consider, in three special cases, the generalised star-height of the languages in which $w$ occurs as a contiguous subword (factor) an exact number of times and of the languages in which $w$…
A language L is closed if L = L*. We consider an operation on closed languages, L-*, that is an inverse to Kleene closure. It is known that if L is closed and regular, then L-* is also regular. We show that the analogous result fails to…
We consider a notion of planarity for two-way finite automata and transducers, inspired by Temperley-Lieb monoids of planar diagrams. We show that this restriction captures star-free languages and first-order transductions.
We consider a set of natural operations on languages, and prove that the orbit of any language L under the monoid generated by this set is finite and bounded, independently of L. This generalizes previous results about complement, Kleene…
A regular language $L$ is union-free if it can be represented by a regular expression without the union operation. A union-free language is deterministic if it can be accepted by a deterministic one-cycle-free-path finite automaton; this is…
We identify a subclass of the regular commutative languages that is closed under the iterated shuffle, or shuffle closure. In particular, it is regularity-preserving on this subclass. This subclass contains the commutative group languages…
In this paper we continue a classical work of Sch\"utzenberger on codes with bounded synchronization delay. He was interested to characterize those regular languages where the groups in the syntactic monoid belong to a variety $H$. He…
A set of words, also called a language, is letter-balanced if the number of occurrences of each letter only depends on the length of the word, up to a constant. Similarly, a language is factor-balanced if the difference of the number of…
We prove that the codes issued from the elimination of any subalphabet in a trace monoid are finite state recognizable. This implies in particular that the transitive factorizations of the trace monoids are recognizable by (boolean)…
We give a new proof of the Krohn-Rhodes Theorem using local divisors. The proof provides nearly as good a decomposition in terms of size as the holonomy decomposition of Eilenberg, avoids induction on the size of the state set, and works…
We study the language-theoretic properties of the word problem, in the sense of Duncan & Gilman, of weakly compressible monoids, as defined by Adian & Oganesian. We show that if $\mathcal{C}$ is a reversal-closed super-$\operatorname{AFL}$,…
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…
We study the variety ZG of monoids where the elements that belong to a group are central, i.e., commute with all other elements. We show that ZG is local, that is, the semidirect product ZG * D of ZG by definite semigroups is equal to LZG,…
Starting from Boolean algebras of languages closed under quotients and using duality theoretic insights, we derive the notion of Boolean spaces with internal monoids as recognisers for arbitrary formal languages of finite words over finite…
Let $\cal R$ be an ordered vector space over an ordered division ring. We prove that every definable set $X$ is a finite union of relatively open definable subsets which are definably simply-connected, settling a conjecture from [5]. The…
Let $\Sigma = X\cup X^{-1} = \{ x_1 ,x_2 ,..., x_m ,x_1^{-1} ,x_2^{-1} ,..., x_m^{-1} \}$ and let $G$ be a group with set of generators $\Sigma$. Let $\mathfrak{L} (G) =\left\{ \left. \omega \in \Sigma^* \; \right\vert \;\omega \equiv e \;…
A regular language has the zero-one law if its asymptotic density converges to either zero or one. We prove that the class of all zero-one languages is closed under Boolean operations and quotients. Moreover, we prove that a regular…
The goal of this paper is twofold. In addition to the results stated in the next paragraph, we present some classical results on absoluteness relevant to functional analysis that are well known to logicians but not nearly as well advertised…
Piecewise testable languages form the first level of the Straubing-Th\'erien hierarchy. The membership problem for this level is decidable and testing if the language of a DFA is piecewise testable is NL-complete. The question has not yet…
We prove several results concerning finitely generated submonoids of the free monoid. These results generalize those known for free submonoids. We prove in particular that if $X=Y\circ Z$ is a composition of finite sets of words with $Y$…