Related papers: Positive First-order Logic on Words and Graphs

We study FO+, a fragment of first-order logic on finite words, where monadic predicates can only appear positively. We show that there is a FO-definable language that is monotone in monadic predicates but not definable in FO+. This provides…

We study the positive logic FO+ on finite words, and its fragments, pursuing and refining the work initiated in [Kuperberg 2023]. First, we transpose notorious logic equivalences into positive first-order logic: FO+ is equivalent to LTL+ ,…

We consider first-order logic with monoidal quantifiers over words. We show that all languages with a neutral letter, definable using the addition numerical predicate are also definable with the order predicate as the only numerical…

We contribute to the refined understanding of the language-logic-algebra interplay in the context of first-order properties of countable words. We establish decidable algebraic characterizations of one variable fragment of FO as well as…

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…

These notes present the essentials of first- and second-order monadic logics on strings with introductory purposes. We discuss Monadic First-Order logic and show that it is strictly less expressive than Finite-State Automata, in that it…

It is well known that the classic {\L}o\'s-Tarski preservation theorem fails in the finite: there are first-order definable classes of finite structures closed under extensions which are not definable (in the finite) in the existential…

While modal extensions of decidable fragments of first-order logic are usually undecidable, their monodic counterparts, in which formulas in the scope of modal operators have at most one free variable, are typically decidable. This only…

We consider two-variable first-order logic on finite words with a fixed number of quantifier alternations. We show that all languages with a neutral letter definable using the order and finite-degree predicates are also definable with the…

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…

This paper establishes model-theoretic properties of $\mathrm{FOE}^{\infty}$, a variation of monadic first-order logic that features the generalised quantifier $\exists^\infty$ (`there are infinitely many'). We provide syntactically defined…

We show that over the class of linear orders with additional binary relations satisfying some monotonicity conditions, monadic first-order logic has the three-variable property. This generalizes (and gives a new proof of) several known…

We study the question of whether a given regular language of finite trees can be defined in first-order logic. We develop an algebraic approach to address this question and we use it to derive several necessary and sufficient conditions for…

We propose FC, a new logic on words that combines finite model theory with the theory of concatenation - a first-order logic that is based on word equations. Like the theory of concatenation, FC is built around word equations; in contrast…

We show that the existence of a first-order formula separating two monadic second order formulas over countable ordinal words is decidable. This extends the work of Henckell and Almeida on finite words, and of Place and Zeitoun on…

We give topological and algebraic characterizations as well as language theoretic descriptions of the following subclasses of first-order logic FO[<] for omega-languages: Sigma_2, FO^2, the intersection of FO^2 and Sigma_2, and Delta_2 (and…

We study an extension of FO^2[<], first-order logic interpreted in finite words, in which formulas are restricted to use only two variables. We adjoin to this language two-variable atomic formulas that say, `the letter a appears between…

One of the main reasons for the correspondence of regular languages and monadic second-order logic is that the class of regular languages is closed under images of surjective letter-to-letter homomorphisms. This closure property holds for…

First-order logic (FO) can express many algorithmic problems on graphs, such as the independent set and dominating set problem, parameterized by solution size. On the other hand, FO cannot express the very simple algorithmic question of…

We consider the logic MSO+U, which is monadic second-order logic extended with the unbounding quantifier. The unbounding quantifier is used to say that a property of finite sets holds for sets of arbitrarily large size. We prove that the…