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Finite automata whose computations can be reversed, at any point, by knowing the last k symbols read from the input, for a fixed k, are considered. These devices and their accepted languages are called k-reversible automata and k-reversible…
We investigate the state complexity of the shuffle operation on regular languages initiated by Campeanu et al. and studied subsequently by Brzozowski et al. We shift the problem into the combinatorics domain by turning the problem of state…
We treat here the interrelation between formal languages and those dynamical systems that can be described by cellular automata (CA). There is a well-known injective map which identifies any CA-invariant subshift with a central formal…
We characterize the minimum-length sequences of independent lazy simple transpositions whose composition is a uniformly random permutation. For every reduced word of the reverse permutation there is exactly one valid way to assign…
Let $k\ge 2$. We prove that the characteristic sequence of a regular language over a $k$-letter alphabet is $k$-automatic. More generally, if $t\ge 2$ and $t,k$ are multiplicatively dependent, we show that the characteristic sequence of a…
A formal series in noncommuting variables $\Sigma$ over the rationals is a mapping $\Sigma^* \to \mathbb Q$. We say that a series is commutative if the value in the output does not depend on the order of the symbols in the input. The…
The regular separability problem asks, for two given languages, if there exists a regular language including one of them but disjoint from the other. Our main result is decidability, and PSpace-completeness, of the regular separability…
Mazurkiewicz traces describe concurrent behaviors of distributed systems. Trace-closed word languages, which are "linearizations" of trace languages, constitute a weaker notion of concurrency but still give us tools to investigate the…
The literature on word-representable graphs is quite rich, and a number of variations of the original definition have been proposed over the years. We are initiating a systematic study of such variations based on formal languages. In our…
If $\mathcal{A}$ is a finite set (alphabet), the shift dynamical system consists of the space $\mathcal{A}^{\mathbb{N}}$ of sequences with entries in $\mathcal{A}$, along with the left shift operator $S$. Closed $S$-invariant subsets are…
We introduce the notion of multipass automata as a generalization of pushdown automata and study the classes of languages accepted by such machines. The class of languages accepted by deterministic multipass automata is exactly the Boolean…
Motivated by the question of which completely regular semigroups have context-free word problem, we show that for certain classes of languages $\mathfrak{C}$(including context-free), every completely regular semigroup that is a union of…
We study the sweep complexity of DFA in one-way jumping mode answering several questions posed earlier. This measure is the number of times in the worst case that such machines have to return to the beginning of their input after having…
Indexed languages are interesting in computational linguistics because they are the least class of languages in the Chomsky hierarchy that has not been shown not to be adequate to describe the string set of natural language sentences. We…
A regular language $L$ is union-free if it can be represented by a regular expression without the union operation. A union-free language is deterministic if it can be accepted by a deterministic one-cycle-free-path finite automaton; this is…
We present MSO and FO logics with predicates `between' and `neighbour' that characterise various fragments of the class of regular languages that are closed under the reverse operation. The standard connections that exist between MSO and FO…
The downward and upward closures of a regular language $L$ are obtained by collecting all the subwords and superwords of its elements, respectively. The downward and upward interiors of $L$ are obtained dually by collecting words having all…
Hairpin completion and its variant called bounded hairpin completion are operations on formal languages, inspired by a hairpin formation in molecular biology. Another variant called hairpin lengthening has been recently introduced and…
A word-to-word function is continuous for a class of languages~$\mathcal{V}$ if its inverse maps $\mathcal{V}$_languages to~$\mathcal{V}$. This notion provides a basis for an algebraic study of transducers, and was integral to the…
The field of Natural Language Processing has experienced a dramatic leap in capabilities with the recent introduction of huge Language Models. Despite this success, natural language problems that involve several compounded steps are still…