Related papers: A short proof that $O_2$ is an MCFL
We give a new proof of Salvati's theorem that the group language $O_2$ is $2$ multiple context free. Unlike Salvati's proof, our arguments do not use any idea specific to two-dimensions. This raises the possibility that the argument might…
Classifying formal languages according to the expressiveness of grammars able to generate them is a fundamental problem in computational linguistics and, therefore, in the theory of computation. Furthermore, such kind of analysis can give…
Commutative properties in formal languages pose problems at the frontier of computer science, computational linguistics and computational group theory. A prominent problem of this kind is the position of the language $O_n$, the language…
To Rogers (1994) we owe the insight that monadic second order predicate logic with multiple successors (MSO) is well suited in many respects as a realistic formal base for syntactic theorizing. However, the agreeable formal properties of…
This paper is a continuation of the study of topological properties of omega context free languages (omega-CFL). We proved before that the class of omega-CFL exhausts the hierarchy of Borel sets of finite rank, and that there exist some…
The \emph{word problem} of a group $G = \langle \Sigma \rangle$ can be defined as the set of formal words in $\Sigma^*$ that represent the identity in $G$. When viewed as formal languages, this gives a strong connection between classes of…
Context-free grammars are not able to model cross-serial dependencies in natural languages. To overcome this issue, Seki et al. introduced a generalization called $m$-multiple context-free grammars ($m$-MCFGs), which deal with $m$-tuples of…
We show that if a context-free grammar generates a language whose lexicographic ordering is well-ordered of type less than $\omega^2$, then its order type is effectively computable.
We present a necessary condition for an infinite language to be multiple context-free, which we call a Substitution Lemma. We apply it to show a sample selection of languages are not multiple context-free, including the word problem of the…
It is known that if a B\"uchi context-free language (BCFL) consists of scattered words, then there is an integer $n$, depending only on the language, such that the Hausdorff rank of each word in the language is bounded by $n$. Every BCFL is…
We present a categorical formalism for context-free languages with morphisms given by correspondences obtained from rational transductions. We show that D0L-systems are a special case of the correspondences that define morphisms in this…
We consider context-free languages equipped with the lexicographic ordering. We show that when the lexicographic ordering of a context-free language is scattered, then its Hausdorff rank is less than $\omega^\omega$. As a corollary of this…
Let $A_N$ denote nondeterministic automatic complexity and \[ L_{k,c}=\{x\in [k]^* : A_N(x)> |x|/c\}. \] In particular, $L_{k,2}$ is the language of all $k$-ary words for which $A_N$ is maximal, while $L_{k,3}$ gives a rough dividing line…
We introduce $L^2_{K,P}$, a monadic second-order language for reasoning about trees which characterizes the strongly Context-Free Languages in the sense that a set of finite trees is definable in $L^2_{K,P}$ iff it is (modulo a projection)…
We give in this paper additional answers to questions of Lescow and Thomas [Logical Specifications of Infinite Computations, In:"A Decade of Concurrency", Springer LNCS 803 (1994), 583-621], proving new topological properties of omega…
We study Monadic Second-Order Logic (MSO) over finite words, extended with (non-uniform arbitrary) monadic predicates. We show that it defines a class of languages that has algebraic, automata-theoretic and machine-independent…
We survey recent results on the topological complexity of context-free omega-languages which form the second level of the Chomsky hierarchy of languages of infinite words. In particular, we consider the Borel hierarchy and the Wadge…
Context-free languages can be characterized in several ways. This article studies projective linearisations of languages of simple dependency trees, i.e., dependency trees in which a node can govern at most one node with a given syntactic…
Motivated by recent connections to factorised databases, we analyse the efficiency of representations by context free grammars (CFGs). Concretely, we prove a recent conjecture by Kimelfeld, Martens, and Niewerth (ICDT 2025), that for finite…
We prove that the \emph{permutation closure} of a multiple context-free language is multiple context-free, which extends work of Okhotin and Sorokin [LATA 2020] who showed closure under \emph{cyclic shift}, and complements work of…