Related papers: On Cloning Context-Freeness
We study Monadic Second-Order Logic (MSO) over finite words, extended with (non-uniform arbitrary) monadic predicates. We show that it defines a class of languages that has algebraic, automata-theoretic and machine-independent…
We consider a specific class of tree structures that can represent basic structures in linguistics and computer science such as XML documents, parse trees, and treebanks, namely, finite node-labeled sibling-ordered trees. We present…
Floyd languages (FL), alias Operator Precedence Languages, have recently received renewed attention thanks to their closure properties and local parsability which allow one to apply automatic verification techniques (e.g. model checking)…
Classifying formal languages according to the expressiveness of grammars able to generate them is a fundamental problem in computational linguistics and, therefore, in the theory of computation. Furthermore, such kind of analysis can give…
Regular languages (RL) are the simplest family in Chomsky's hierarchy. Thanks to their simplicity they enjoy various nice algebraic and logic properties that have been successfully exploited in many application fields. Practically all of…
A class of graph languages is definable in Monadic Second-Order logic (MSO) if and only if it consists of sets of models of MSO formul{\ae}. If, moreover, there is a computable bound on the tree-widths of the graphs in each such set, the…
In this paper we study the logical aspects of branching automata, as defined by Lodaya and Weil. We first prove that the class of languages of finite N-free posets recognized by branching automata is closed under complementation. Then we…
Since the early Sixties and Seventies it has been known that the regular and context-free languages are characterized by definability in the monadic second-order theory of certain structures. More recently, these descriptive…
In this paper we describe an approach to constraint-based syntactic theories in terms of finite tree automata. The solutions to constraints expressed in weak monadic second order (MSO) logic are represented by tree automata recognizing the…
We present a new proof that $O_2$ is a multiple context-free language. It contrasts with a recent proof by Salvati (2015) in its avoidance of concepts that seem specific to two-dimensional geometry, such as the complex exponential function.…
Regular word grammars are restricted context-free grammars that define all the recognizable languages of words. This paper generalizes regular grammars from words to certain classes of graphs, by defining regular grammars for unordered…
We study the Monadic Second Order (MSO) Hierarchy over colourings of the discrete plane, and draw links between classes of formula and classes of subshifts. We give a characterization of existential MSO in terms of projections of tilings,…
Rational word languages can be defined by several equivalent means: finite state automata, rational expressions, finite congruences, or monadic second-order (MSO) logic. The robust subclass of aperiodic languages is defined by: counter-free…
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…
Context-free languages can be characterized in several ways. This article studies projective linearisations of languages of simple dependency trees, i.e., dependency trees in which a node can govern at most one node with a given syntactic…
We develop an algebraic notion of recognizability for languages of words indexed by countable linear orderings. We prove that this notion is effectively equivalent to definability in monadic second-order (MSO) logic. We also provide three…
Order-invariant formulas access an ordering on a structure's universe, but the model relation is independent of the used ordering. Order invariance is frequently used for logic-based approaches in computer science. Order-invariant formulas…
We use monadic second-order logic to define two-dimensional subshifts, or sets of colorings of the infinite plane. We present a natural family of quantifier alternation hierarchies, and show that they all collapse to the third level. In…
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…
MSO transductions are binary relations between structures which are defined using monadic second-order logic. MSO transductions form a category, since they are closed under composition. We show that many notions from language theory, such…