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This article fits in the area of research that investigates the application of topological duality methods to problems that appear in theoretical computer science. One of the eventual goals of this approach is to derive results in…

The call-by-value language RML may be viewed as a canonical restriction of Standard ML to ground-type references, augmented by a "bad variable" construct in the sense of Reynolds. We consider the fragment of (finitary) RML terms of order at…

The \emph{Entscheidungsproblem}, or the classical decision problem, asks whether a given formula of first-order logic is satisfiable. In this work, we consider an extension of this problem to regular first-order \emph{theories}, i.e.,…

We consider the first-order theory of random variables with the probabilistic independence relation, which concerns statements consisting of random variables, the probabilistic independence symbol, logical operators, and existential and…

In this paper, we consider the satisfiability problem for string logic with equations, regular membership and Presburger constraints over length functions. The difficulty comes from multiple occurrences of string variables making…

We consider the fragment F of first order arithmetic in which quantification is restricted to ''for all but finitely many.'' We show that the integers form an F-elementary substructure of the real numbers. Consequently, the F-theory of…

Group languages are regular languages recognized by finite groups, or equivalently by finite automata in which each letter induces a permutation on the set of states. We investigate the separation problem for this class of languages: given…

We prove that the first-order theory of any function field K of characteristic p>2 is undecidable in the language of rings without parameters. When K is a function field in one variable whose constant field is algebraic over a finite field,…

We consider a family U of finite universes. The second order quantifier Q_R, means for each u in U quantifying over a set of n(R)-place relations isomorphic to a given relation. We define a natural partial order on such quantifiers called…

A policy describes the conditions under which an action is permitted or forbidden. We show that a fragment of (multi-sorted) first-order logic can be used to represent and reason about policies. Because we use first-order logic, policies…

We extend the two-variable logic on data words with guarded regular binary predicates of the form $\widetilde{L}(x,y)$ that is true if positions $x$ and $y$ are in the same class and the factor strictly between $x$ and $y$ is in the regular…

The spectrum of a first-order logic sentence is the set of natural numbers that are cardinalities of its finite models. In this paper we study the hierarchy of first-order spectra based on the number of variables. It has been conjectured…

In Apt and Bezem [AB99] (see cs.LO/9811017) we provided a computational interpretation of first-order formulas over arbitrary interpretations. Here we complement this work by introducing a denotational semantics for first-order logic.…

We show that the first-order theory of Sturmian words over Presburger arithmetic is decidable. Using a general adder recognizing addition in Ostrowski numeration systems by Baranwal, Schaeffer and Shallit, we prove that the first-order…

We identify a number of decidable and undecidable fragments of first-order concatenation theory. We also give a purely universal axiomatization which is complete for the fragments we identify. Furthermore, we prove some normal-form results.

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…

The finite satisfiability problem of monadic second order logic is decidable only on classes of structures of bounded tree-width by the classic result of Seese (1991). We prove the following problem is decidable: Input: (i) A monadic second…

We show that for any two distinct words $ s_1, s_2 $ over an arbitrary alphabets, there exists a deterministic finite automaton with $ O(\log^2 n) $ states that accepts $ s_1 $ and rejects $ s_2 $. This improves the previous upper bound of…

We investigate the decidability and computational complexity of (deductive) conservative extensions in fragments of first-order logic (FO), with a focus on the two-variable fragment FO$^2$ and the guarded fragment GF. We prove that…

We consider entailment problems involving powerful constraint languages such as frontier-guarded existential rules in which we impose additional semantic restrictions on a set of distinguished relations. We consider restricting a relation…