Related papers: Algebraic Characterizations of Classes of Regular …
We examine the class of languages that can be defined entirely in terms of provability in an extension of the sorted type theory (Ty_n) by embedding the logic of phonologies, without introduction of special types for syntactic entities.…
Over finite words, languages of dot-depth one are expressively complete for alternation-free first-order logic. This fragment is also known as the Boolean closure of existential first-order logic. Here, the atomic formulas comprise order,…
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…
We investigate the quantifier alternation hierarchy in first-order logic on finite words. Levels in this hierarchy are defined by counting the number of quantifier alternations in formulas. We prove that one can decide membership of a…
First order formulas in a relational signature can be considered as operations on the relations of an underlying set, giving rise to multisorted algebras we call first order algebras. We present universal axioms so that an algebra satisfies…
We introduce a class of algebras that can be used as recognisers for regular tree languages. We show that it is the only such class that forms a pseudo-variety and we prove the existence of syntactic algebras. Finally, we give a more…
Regular expressions are commonly understood in terms of their denotational semantics, that is, through formal languages -- the regular languages. This view is inductive in nature: two primitives are equivalent if they are constructed in the…
We study first-order logic (FO) over the structure consisting of finite words over some alphabet $A$, together with the (non-contiguous) subword ordering. In terms of decidability of quantifier alternation fragments, this logic is…
We study regular expressions that use variables, or parameters, which are interpreted as alphabet letters. We consider two classes of languages denoted by such expressions: under the possibility semantics, a word belongs to the language if…
It is well-known that every first-order property on words is expressible using at most three variables. The subclass of properties expressible with only two variables is also quite interesting and well-studied. We prove precise structure…
I present the most fundamental features of an implemented system designed to manipulate representations of regular languages. The system is structured into two layers, allowing regular languages to be represented in an increasingly compact,…
Since the 1970s with the work of McNaughton, Papert and Sch\"utzenberger, a regular language is known to be definable in the first-order logic if and only if its syntactic monoid is aperiodic. This algebraic characterisation of a…
We investigate quantifier alternation hierarchies in first-order logic on finite words. Levels in these hierarchies are defined by counting the number of quantifier alternations in formulas. We prove that one can decide membership of a…
Hilbert's Entscheidungsproblem has given rise to a broad and productive line of research in mathematical logic, where the classification process of decidable classes of first-order sentences represent only one of the remarkable results.…
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 give a survey of the known connections between regularity conditions and amenability conditions in the setting of uniform algebras. For a uniform algebra $A$ we consider the set, $A_{lc}$, of functions in $A$ which are locally constant…
We give an algebraic characterisation of first-order logic with the neighbour relation, on finite words. For this, we consider languages of finite words over alphabets with an involution on them. The natural algebras for such languages are…
In the literature on Kleene algebra (KA), a number of variants have been proposed such as Kleene algebra with tests, commutative KA, bi-KA, and concurrent KA. The equational theories of some of these structures have then been studied in the…
Let A be a finite alphabet and let L contained in (A*)^n be an n-variable language over A. We say that L is regular if it is the language accepted by a synchronous n-tape finite state automaton, it is quasi-regular if it is accepted by an…
We study FO+, a fragment of first-order logic on finite words, where monadic predicates can only appear positively. We show that there is an FO-definable language that is monotone in monadic predicates but not definable in FO+. This…