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A fundamental theme in automata theory is regular languages of words and trees, and their many equivalent definitions. Salvati has proposed a generalization to regular languages of simply typed $\lambda$-terms, defined using denotational…
Let $A$ be an alphabet and $SP^\diamond(A)$ denote the class of all countable N-free partially ordered sets labeled by $A$, in which chains are scattered linear orderings and antichains are finite. We characterize the rational languages of…
A sequence of real numbers (x_n) is Benford if the significands, i.e. the fraction parts in the floating-point representation of (x_n) are distributed logarithmically. Similarly, a discrete-time irreducible and aperiodic finite-state Markov…
These are lecture notes on the algebraic approach to regular languages. The classical algebraic approach is for finite words; it uses semigroups instead of automata. However, the algebraic approach can be extended to structures beyond…
We analyse the pseudofinite monadic second order theory of words over a fixed finite alphabet. In particular we present an axiomatisation of this theory, working in a one-sorted first order framework. The analysis hinges on the fact that…
We study the language-theoretic aspects of the word problem, in the sense of Duncan & Gilman, of free products of semigroups and monoids. First, we provide algebraic tools for studying classes of languages known as super-AFLs, which…
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…
We define compact automata and show that every language has a unique minimal compact automaton. We also define recognition of languages by compact left semitopological monoids and construct the analogue of the syntactic monoid in this…
We consider the infinite one-sided sequence generated by the period-doubling substitution $\sigma(a,b)=(ab,aa)$, denoted by $\mathbb{D}$. Since $\mathbb{D}$ is uniformly recurrent, each factor $\omega$ appears infinite many times in the…
We relate two measures of complexity of regular languages. The first is syntactic complexity, that is, the cardinality of the syntactic semigroup of the language. That semigroup is isomorphic to the semigroup of transformations of states…
Regular synchronization languages can be used to define rational relations of finite words, and to characterize subclasses of rational relations, like automatic or recognizable relations. We provide a systematic study of the decidability of…
We provide syntactic derivative-like operations, defined by recursion on regular expressions, in the styles of both Brzozowski and Antimirov, for trace closures of regular languages. Just as the Brzozowski and Antimirov derivative…
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…
We consider some questions about formal languages that arise when inverses of letters, words and languages are defined. The reduced representation of a language over the free monoid is its unique equivalent representation in the free group.…
We study a model of one-way quantum automaton where only measurement operations are allowed ($\mon$). We give an algebraic characterization of $\lmo(\Sigma)$, showing that the syntactic monoids of the languages in $\lmo(\Sigma)$ are exactly…
This paper introduces an abstract notion of fragments of monadic second-order logic. This concept is based on purely syntactic closure properties. We show that over finite words, every logical fragment defines a lattice of languages with…
This paper provides short proofs of two fundamental theorems of finite semigroup theory whose previous proofs were significantly longer, namely the two-sided Krohn-Rhodes decomposition theorem and Henckell's aperiodic pointlike theorem,…
To Rogers (1994) we owe the insight that monadic second order predicate logic with multiple successors (MSO) is well suited in many respects as a realistic formal base for syntactic theorizing. However, the agreeable formal properties of…
We develop an effective and natural approach to interpret any semigroup admitting a special language of greedy normal forms as an automaton semigroup,namely the semigroup generated by a Mealy automaton encoding the behaviour of such a…
The syntactic complexity of a regular language is the cardinality of its syntactic semigroup. The syntactic complexity of a subclass of the class of regular languages is the maximal syntactic complexity of languages in that class, taken as…