Related papers: An algebraic approach to MSO-definability on count…
A celebrated 1969 theorem of Michael Rabin is that the MSO theory of the real order where the monadic quantifier is allowed only to range over the sets of rational numbers, is decidable. In 1975 Saharon Shelah proved that if the monadic…
We study the question of whether, for a given class of finite graphs, one can define, for each graph of the class, a linear ordering in monadic second-order logic, possibly with the help of monadic parameters. We consider two variants of…
We show that separability and second-countability are first-order properties among topological spaces definable in o-minimal expansions of $(\mathbb{R},<)$. We do so by introducing first-order characterizations -- definable separability and…
For fragments L of first-order logic (FO) with counting quantifiers, we consider the definability problem, which asks whether a given L-formula can be equivalently expressed by a formula in some fragment of L without counting, and the more…
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…
A non-deterministic recursion scheme recognizes a language of finite trees. This very expressive model can simulate, among others, higher-order pushdown automata with collapse. We show decidability of the diagonal problem for schemes. This…
The principle behind algebraic language theory for various kinds of structures, such as words or trees, is to use a compositional function from the structures into a finite set. To talk about compositionality, one needs some way of…
We show a theorem on monadic second-order k-ary queries on finite words. It may be illustrated by the following example: if the number of results of a query on binary strings is O(number of 0s $\times$ number of 1s), then each result can be…
Many applications of denotational semantics, such as higher-order model checking or the complexity of normalization, rely on finite semantics for monomorphic type systems. We exhibit such a finite semantics for a polymorphic purely linear…
We use the recently developed theory of forest algebras to find algebraic characterizations of the languages of unranked trees and forests definable in various logics. These include the temporal logics CTL and EF, and first-order logic over…
Sets with atoms serve as an alternative to ZFC foundations for mathematics, where some infinite, though highly symmetric sets, behave in a finitistic way. Therefore, one can try to carry over analysis of the classical algorithms from finite…
This work addresses the problem of computing measures of recognisable sets of infinite trees. An algorithm is provided to compute the probability measure of a tree language recognisable by a weak alternating automaton, or equivalently…
Monadic second order logic and linear temporal logic are two logical formalisms that can be used to describe classes of infinite words, i.e., first-order models based on the natural numbers with order, successor, and finitely many unary…
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…
A binary relation on graphs is recursively enumerable if and only if it can be computed by a formula in monadic second-order logic. The latter means that the formula defines a set of graphs, in the usual way, such that each "computation…
Weighted monadic second-order logic is a weighted extension of monadic second-order logic that captures exactly the behaviour of weighted automata. Its semantics is parameterized with respect to a semiring on which the values that weighted…
Monadic decomposibility --- the ability to determine whether a formula in a given logical theory can be decomposed into a boolean combination of monadic formulas --- is a powerful tool for devising a decision procedure for a given logical…
The ordered structures of natural, integer, rational and real numbers are studied in this thesis. The theories of these numbers in the language of order are decidable and finitely axiomatizable. Also, their theories in the language of order…
In many instances in first order logic or computable algebra, classical theorems show that many problems are undecidable for general structures, but become decidable if some rigidity is imposed on the structure. For example, the set of…
Inspired by distributed algorithms, we introduce a new class of finite graph automata that recognize precisely the graph languages definable in monadic second-order logic. For the cases of words and trees, it has been long known that the…