Related papers: Going Higher in First-Order Quantifier Alternation…
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…
It is well-known that every first-order property on words is expressible using at most three variables. The subclass of properties expressible with only two variables is also quite interesting and well-studied. We prove precise structure…
We give a simple new proof that regular languages defined by first-order sentences with no quantifier alteration can be defined by such sentences in which only regular atomic formulas appear. Earlier proofs of this fact relied on arguments…
We consider two-variable first-order logic $\text{FO}^2$ and its quantifier alternation hierarchies over both finite and infinite words. Our main results are forbidden patterns for deterministic automata (finite words) and for Carton-Michel…
The dot-depth hierarchy of Brzozowski and Cohen classifies the star-free languages of finite words. By a theorem of McNaughton and Papert, these are also the first-order definable languages. The dot-depth rose to prominence following the…
Alternating quantifier depth is a natural measure of difficulty required to express first order logical sentences. We define a sequence of first order properties on rooted, locally finite trees in a recursive manner, and provide rigorous…
We consider a language together with the subword relation, the cover relation, and regular predicates. For such structures, we consider the extension of first-order logic by threshold- and modulo-counting quantifiers. Depending on the…
We can measure the complexity of a logical formula by counting the number of alternations between existential and universal quantifiers. Suppose that an elementary first-order formula $\varphi$ (in $\mathcal{L}_{\omega,\omega}$) is…
Exactly solving first-order constraints (i.e., first-order formulas over a certain predefined structure) can be a very hard, or even undecidable problem. In continuous structures like the real numbers it is promising to compute approximate…
We study tree languages that can be defined in \Delta_2 . These are tree languages definable by a first-order formula whose quantifier prefix is forall exists, and simultaneously by a first-order formula whose quantifier prefix is . For the…
Nominal Logic is a version of first-order logic with equality, name-binding, renaming via name-swapping and freshness of names. Contrarily to higher-order logic, bindable names, called atoms, and instantiable variables are considered as…
We stratify intuitionistic first-order logic over $(\forall,\to)$ into fragments determined by the alternation of positive and negative occurrences of quantifiers (Mints hierarchy). We study the decidability and complexity of these…
We study fragments of dependence logic defined either by restricting the number k of universal quantifiers or the width of dependence atoms in formulas. We find the sublogics of existential second-order logic corresponding to these…
An important endeavor in computer science is to understand the expressive power of logical formalisms over discrete structures, such as words. Naturally, "understanding" is not a mathematical notion. This investigation requires therefore a…
We consider grammar-restricted exact learning of formulas and terms in finite variable logics. We propose a novel and versatile automata-theoretic technique for solving such problems. We first show results for learning formulas that…
The theory of finite term algebras provides a natural framework to describe the semantics of functional languages. The ability to efficiently reason about term algebras is essential to automate program analysis and verification for…
We investigate the following problem: given a sample of classified strings, find a first-order sentence of minimal quantifier rank that is consistent with the sample. We represent strings as successor string structures, that is, finite…
We show that the decidability of the first-order theory of the language that combines Boolean algebras of sets of uninterpreted elements with Presburger arithmetic operations. We thereby disprove a recent conjecture that this theory is…
We introduce the finite-horizon first-order rank profile of a language $L \subseteq \Sigma^*$: the least quantifier rank needed by an $\mathrm{FO}[<]$ sentence to classify membership in $L$ correctly on all words of length at most $n$. The…
Polynomial closure is a standard operator which is applied to a class of regular languages. In the paper, we investigate three restrictions called left (LPol), right (RPol) and mixed polynomial closure (MPol). The first two were known while…