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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…
We address questions of logic and expressibility in the context of random rooted trees. Infiniteness of a rooted tree is not expressible as a first order sentence, but is expressible as an existential monadic second order sentence (EMSO).…
The study of graph queries in database theory has spanned more than three decades, resulting in a multitude of proposals for graph query languages. These languages differ in the mechanisms. We can identify three main families of languages,…
A two-dimensional finite automaton has a read-only input head that moves in four directions on a finite array of cells labelled by symbols of the input alphabet. A three-way two-dimensional automaton is prohibited from making upward moves,…
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 study the satisfiability problem of symbolic tree automata and decompose it into the satisfiability problem of the existential first-order theory of the input characters and the existential monadic second-order theory of the indices of…
We propose a hybrid-dynamic first-order logic as a formal foundation for specifying and reasoning about reconfigurable systems. As the name suggests, the formalism we develop extends (many-sorted) first-order logic with features that are…
Over the past two decades several fragments of first-order logic have been identified and shown to have good computational and algorithmic properties, to a great extent as a result of appropriately describing the image of the standard…
A data tree is an unranked ordered tree whose every node is labelled by a letter from a finite alphabet and an element ("datum") from an infinite set, where the latter can only be compared for equality. The article considers alternating…
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…
Analogous to regular string and tree languages, regular languages of directed acyclic graphs (DAGs) are defined in the literature. Although called regular, those DAG-languages are more powerful and, consequently, standard problems have a…
We consider pushdown systems that store, instead of a single word, a Mazurkiewicz trace on its stack. These systems are special cases of valence automata over graph monoids and subsume multi-stack systems. We identify a class of such…
We prove that the property of being closed (resp., palindromic, rich, privileged trapezoidal, balanced) is expressible in first-order logic for automatic (and some related) sequences. It therefore follows that the characteristic function of…
We investigate the decidability of the emptiness problem for three classes of distributed automata. These devices operate on finite directed graphs, acting as networks of identical finite-state machines that communicate in an infinite…
It is proved that the family of tree languages recognized by nondeterministic tree-walking automata is not closed under complementation, solving a problem raised by Boja\'nczyk and Colcombet ("Tree-walking automata do not recognize all…
We investigate families of infinite automata for context-sensitive languages. An infinite automaton is an infinite labeled graph with two sets of initial and final vertices. Its language is the set of all words labelling a path from an…
It is well known that for a regular tree language it is decidable whether or not it can be recognized by a deterministic top-down tree automaton (DTA). However, the computational complexity of this problem has not been studied. We show that…
We consider first-order logic over the subword ordering on finite words, where each word is available as a constant. Our first result is that the $\Sigma_1$ theory is undecidable (already over two letters). We investigate the decidability…
One of the major open problems in automata and logic is the following: is there an algorithm which inputs a regular tree language and decides if the language can be defined in first-order logic? The goal of this paper is to present this…
Characterisations theorems serve as important tools in model theory and can be used to assess and compare the expressive power of temporal languages used for the specification and verification of properties in formal methods. While complete…