Weighted Operator Precedence Languages

In the last years renewed investigation of operator precedence languages (OPL) led to discover important properties thereof: OPL are closed with respect to all major operations, are characterized, besides the original grammar family, in terms of an automata family (OPA) and an MSO logic; furthermore they significantly generalize the well-known visibly pushdown languages (VPL). In another area of research, quantitative models of systems are also greatly in demand. In this paper, we lay the foundation to marry these two research fields. We introduce weighted operator precedence automata and show how they are both strict extensions of OPA and weighted visibly pushdown automata. We prove a Nivat-like result which shows that quantitative OPL can be described by unweighted OPA and very particular weighted OPA. In a Büchi-like theorem, we show that weighted OPA are expressively equivalent to a weighted MSO-logic for OPL

Characterizations of recognizable picture series

AbstractThe theory of two-dimensional languages as a generalization of formal string languages was motivated by problems arising from image processing and pattern recognition, and also concerns models of parallel computing. Here we investigate power series on pictures. These are functions that map pictures to elements of a semiring and provide an extension of two-dimensional languages to a quantitative setting. We assign weights to different devices, ranging from picture automata to tiling systems. We will prove that, for commutative semirings, the behaviours of weighted picture automata are precisely alphabetic projections of series defined in terms of rational operations, and also coincide with the families of series characterized by weighted tiling or weighted domino systems

The support of a recognizable series over a zero-sum free, commutative semiring is recognizable

We show that the support of a recognizable series over a zero-sum free, commutative semiring is a recognizable language. We also give a sufficient and necessary condition for the existence of an effective transformation of a weighted automaton recognizing a series S over a zero-sum free, commutative semiring into an automaton recognizing the support of S

Pumping Lemmata for Recognizable Weighted Languages over Artinian Semirings

Pumping lemmata are the main tool to prove that a certain language does not belong to a class of languages like the recognizable languages or the context-free languages. Essentially two pumping lemmata exist for the recognizable weighted languages: the classical one for the Boolean semiring (i.e., the unweighted case), which can be generalized to zero-sum free semirings, and the one for fields. A joint generalization of these two pumping lemmata is provided that applies to all Artinian semirings, over which all finitely generated semimodules have a finite bound on the length of chains of strictly increasing subsemimodules. Since Artinian rings are exactly those that satisfy the Descending Chain Condition, the Artinian semirings include all fields and naturally also all finite semirings (like the Boolean semiring). The new pumping lemma thus covers most previously known pumping lemmata for recognizable weighted languages.Comment: In Proceedings AFL 2023, arXiv:2309.0112

Recognizable tree series with discounting

We consider weighted tree automata with discounting over commutative semirings. For their behaviors we establish a Kleene theorem and an MSO-logic characterization. We introduce also weighted Muller tree automata with discounting over the max-plus and the min-plus semirings, and we show their expressive equivalence with two fragments of weighted MSO-sentences

Weighted Tree Automata -- May it be a little more?

This is a book on weighted tree automata. We present the basic definitions and some of the important results in a coherent form with full proofs. The concept of weighted tree automata is part of Automata Theory and it touches the area of Universal Algebra. It originated from two sources: weighted string automata and finite-state tree automata

Weighted Automata and Logics on Hierarchical Structures and Graphs

Formal language theory, originally developed to model and study our natural spoken languages, is nowadays also put to use in many other fields. These include, but are not limited to, the definition and visualization of programming languages and the examination and verification of algorithms and systems. Formal languages are instrumental in proving the correct behavior of automated systems, e.g., to avoid that a flight guidance system navigates two airplanes too close to each other. This vast field of applications is built upon a very well investigated and coherent theoretical basis. It is the goal of this dissertation to add to this theoretical foundation and to explore ways to make formal languages and their models more expressive. More specifically, we are interested in models that are able to model quantitative features of the behavior of systems. To this end, we define and characterize weighted automata over structures with hierarchical information and over graphs. In particular, we study infinite nested words, operator precedence languages, and finite and infinite graphs. We show Büchi-like results connecting weighted automata and weighted monadic second order (MSO) logic for the respective classes of weighted languages over these structures. As special cases, we obtain Büchi-type equivalence results known from the recent literature for weighted automata and weighted logics on words, trees, pictures, and nested words. Establishing such a general result for graphs has been an open problem for weighted logics for some time. We conjecture that our techniques can be applied to derive similar equivalence results in other contexts like traces, texts, and distributed systems