Related papers: The hardest language for grammars with context ope…
We study the links between the topological complexity of an omega context free language and its degree of ambiguity. In particular, using known facts from classical descriptive set theory, we prove that non Borel omega context free…
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 languages are widely used to describe the syntax of programming languages and natural languages. Usually, we describe a context-free language mathematically with the help of context-free grammar (for generation) or pushdown…
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…
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…
First we define a unification grammar formalism called the Tree Homomorphic Feature Structure Grammar. It is based on Lexical Functional Grammar (LFG), but has a strong restriction on the syntax of the equations. We then show that this…
L systems generalise context-free grammars by incorporating parallel rewriting, and generate languages such as EDT0L and ET0L that are strictly contained in the class of indexed languages. In this paper we show that many of the languages…
Anisimov and Seifert show that a group has a regular word problem ifand only if it is finite. Muller and Schupp (together with Dunwoody's accessibility result) show that a group has context free word problem if and only if it is virtually…
Whether language models (LMs) have inductive biases that favor typologically frequent grammatical properties over rare, implausible ones has been investigated, typically using artificial languages (ALs) (White and Cotterell, 2021;…
We present a novel parsing algorithm for all context-free languages, based on computing the relation between configurations and reaching transitions in a recursive transition network. Parsing complexity w.r.t. input length matches the state…
We consider the cyclic closure of a language, and its generalisation to the operators $C^k$ introduced by Brandst\"adt. We prove that the cyclic closure of an indexed language is indexed, and that if $L$ is a context-free language then…
The word problem of a finitely generated group is the formal language of words over the generators which are equal to the identity in the group. If this language happens to be context-free, then the group is called context-free. Finitely…
Let $G$ be a finitely generated group, $A$ a finite set of generators and $K$ a subgroup of $G$. We call the pair $(G,K)$ context-free if the set of all words over $A$ that reduce in $G$ to an element of $K$ is a context-free language. When…
Regular word grammars are restricted context-free grammars that define all the recognizable languages of words. This paper generalizes regular grammars from words to certain classes of graphs, by defining regular grammars for unordered…
We present a new approach to formal language theory using Kolmogorov complexity. The main results presented here are an alternative for pumping lemma(s), a new characterization for regular languages, and a new method to separate…
It is known that context-free grammars can be extended to generating graphs resulting in graph grammars; one of such fundamental approaches is hyperedge replacement grammars. On the other hand there are type-logical grammars which also…
String diagrams provide a convenient graphical framework which may be used for equational reasoning about morphisms of monoidal categories. However, unlike term rewriting, rewriting string diagrams results in shorter equational proofs,…
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…
Bilingual lexical processing is shaped by the complex interplay of phonological, orthographic, and semantic features of two languages within an integrated mental lexicon. In humans, this is evident in the ease with which cognate words -…
We discuss the definability of finite graphs in first-order logic with two relation symbols for adjacency and equality of vertices. The logical depth $D(G)$ of a graph $G$ is equal to the minimum quantifier depth of a sentence defining $G$…