Related papers: A finer reparameterisation theorem for MSO and FO …
We study tree-to-tree transformations that can be defined in first-order logic or monadic second-order logic. We prove a decomposition theorem, which shows that every transformation can be obtained from prime transformations, such as…
We study the problem of enumerating the answers to a query formulated in monadic second order logic (MSO) over an unranked forest F that is compressed by a straight-line program (SLP) D. Our main result states that this can be done after…
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…
For which unary predicates $P_1, \ldots, P_m$ is the MSO theory of the structure $\langle \mathbb{N}; <, P_1, \ldots, P_m \rangle$ decidable? We survey the state of the art, leading us to investigate combinatorial properties of…
Superposition is an established decision procedure for a variety of first-order logic theories represented by sets of clauses. A satisfiable theory, saturated by superposition, implicitly defines a minimal term-generated model for the…
We focus on formulae $\exists X.\, \varphi(\vec{Y}, X)$ of monadic second-order logic over the full binary tree, such that the witness $X$ is a well-founded set. The ordinal rank $\mathrm{rank}(X) < \omega_1$ of such a set $X$ measures its…
We deal with the monadic (second-order) theory of order. We prove all known results in a unified way, show a general way of reduction, prove more results and show the limitation on extending them. We prove (CH) that the monadic theory of…
A string $w$ is called a minimal absent word (MAW) for a string $S$ if $w$ does not occur as a substring in $S$ and all proper substrings of $w$ occur in $S$. MAWs are well-studied combinatorial string objects that have potential…
Traditionally, finite automata theory has been used as a framework for the representation of possibly infinite sets of strings. In this work, we introduce the notion of second-order finite automata, a formalism that combines finite automata…
String transductions that are definable in monadic second-order (mso) logic (without the use of parameters) are exactly those realized by deterministic two-way finite state transducers. Nondeterministic mso definable string transductions…
We investigate the expressive power of first-order quantifications in the context of monadic second-order logic over pictures. We show that k+1 set quantifier alternations allow to define a picture language that cannot be defined using k…
We introduce and study a new complexity function in combinatorics on words, which takes into account the smallest second occurrence time of a factor of an infinite word. We characterize the eventually periodic words and the Sturmian words…
We study the expressive power and succinctness of order-invariant sentences of first-order (FO) and monadic second-order (MSO) logic on structures of bounded tree-depth. Order- invariance is undecidable in general and, thus, one strives for…
We extend first-order logic to include variadic function symbols, and prove a substitution lemma. Two applications are given: one to bounded quantifier elimination and one to the definability of certain Borel sets.
A central computational task in database theory, finite model theory, and computer science at large is the evaluation of a first-order sentence on a finite structure. In the context of this task, the \emph{width} of a sentence, defined as…
Monadic decomposability is a notion of variable independence, which asks whether a given formula in a first-order theory is expressible as a Boolean combination of monadic predicates in the theory. Recently, Veanes et al. showed the…
Monadic decomposibility --- the ability to determine whether a formula in a given logical theory can be decomposed into a boolean combination of monadic formulas --- is a powerful tool for devising a decision procedure for a given logical…
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…
Regular model checking is an exploration technique for infinite state systems where state spaces are represented as regular languages and transition relations are expressed using rational relations over infinite (or finite) strings. We…
Suppose we are asked to index a text $T [0..n - 1]$ such that, given a pattern $P [0..m - 1]$, we can quickly report the maximal substrings of $P$ that each occur in $T$ at least $k$ times. We first show how we can add $O (r \log n)$ bits…