An automata characterisation for multiple context-free languages

We introduce tree stack automata as a new class of automata with storage and identify a restricted form of tree stack automata that recognises exactly the multiple context-free languages.Comment: This is an extended version of a paper with the same title accepted at the 20th International Conference on Developments in Language Theory (DLT 2016

Automata with Nested Pebbles Capture First-Order Logic with Transitive Closure

String languages recognizable in (deterministic) log-space are characterized either by two-way (deterministic) multi-head automata, or following Immerman, by first-order logic with (deterministic) transitive closure. Here we elaborate this result, and match the number of heads to the arity of the transitive closure. More precisely, first-order logic with k-ary deterministic transitive closure has the same power as deterministic automata walking on their input with k heads, additionally using a finite set of nested pebbles. This result is valid for strings, ordered trees, and in general for families of graphs having a fixed automaton that can be used to traverse the nodes of each of the graphs in the family. Other examples of such families are grids, toruses, and rectangular mazes. For nondeterministic automata, the logic is restricted to positive occurrences of transitive closure. The special case of k=1 for trees, shows that single-head deterministic tree-walking automata with nested pebbles are characterized by first-order logic with unary deterministic transitive closure. This refines our earlier result that placed these automata between first-order and monadic second-order logic on trees.Comment: Paper for Logical Methods in Computer Science, 27 pages, 1 figur

Regular Separability and Intersection Emptiness Are Independent Problems

The problem of regular separability asks, given two languages K and L, whether there exists a regular language S that includes K and is disjoint from L. This problem becomes interesting when the input languages K and L are drawn from language classes beyond the regular languages. For such classes, a mild and useful assumption is that they are full trios, i.e. closed under rational transductions. All the results on regular separability for full trios obtained so far exhibited a noteworthy correspondence with the intersection emptiness problem: In each case, regular separability is decidable if and only if intersection emptiness is decidable. This raises the question whether for full trios, regular separability can be reduced to intersection emptiness or vice-versa. We present counterexamples showing that neither of the two problems can be reduced to the other. More specifically, we describe full trios C_1, D_1, C_2, D_2 such that (i) intersection emptiness is decidable for C_1 and D_1, but regular separability is undecidable for C_1 and D_1 and (ii) regular separability is decidable for C_2 and D_2, but intersection emptiness is undecidable for C_2 and D_2

A B\"uchi-Elgot-Trakhtenbrot theorem for automata with MSO graph storage

We introduce MSO graph storage types, and call a storage type MSO-expressible if it is isomorphic to some MSO graph storage type. An MSO graph storage type has MSO-definable sets of graphs as storage configurations and as storage transformations. We consider sequential automata with MSO graph storage and associate with each such automaton a string language (in the usual way) and a graph language; a graph is accepted by the automaton if it represents a correct sequence of storage configurations for a given input string. For each MSO graph storage type, we define an MSO logic which is a subset of the usual MSO logic on graphs. We prove a B\"uchi-Elgot-Trakhtenbrot theorem, both for the string case and the graph case. Moreover, we prove that (i) each MSO graph transduction can be used as storage transformation in an MSO graph storage type, (ii) every automatic storage type is MSO-expressible, and (iii) the pushdown operator on storage types preserves the property of MSO-expressibility. Thus, the iterated pushdown storage types are MSO-expressible

Top-down tree transducers with two-way tree walking look-ahead

AbstractWe consider top-down tree transducers with deterministic, nondeterministic and universal two-way tree walking look-ahead and compare the transformational powers of their deterministic and strongly deterministic versions by giving the inclusion diagram of the induced tree transformation classes. We also study the closure properties of these transformation classes with respect to composition

Deciding Linear Height and Linear Size-to-Height Increase for Macro Tree Transducers

In this paper we study Macro Tree Transducers (MTT), specifically the Linear Height Increase ("LHI") and Linear input Size to output Height ("LSHI") constraints. In order to decide whether a Macro tree transducer (MTT) is of LHI or LSHI, we define a notion of depth-properness: a MTT is depth-proper if, for each state, there is no bound to the depth at which it places its argument trees. We show how to effectively put a MTT in depth-proper form. For MTTs in Depth-proper form, we characterize the LSH property as equivalent to the finite-nesting property, and we characterize the LHI property as equivalent to the finiteness of a new type of nesting which we call Multi-Leaf-nesting (or ML-nesting). As opposed to regular nesting where we look at the nesting of states applied to a single input node, we count the nesting of states applied to nodes that are not ancestors of each other. We use this characterization to give a decision procedure for the LSHI and LHI properties. Finally we consider the decision problem of the LSOI (Linear input Size to number of distinct Output subtrees Increase) property. A long standing open problem is whether MTT of LSOI are as expressive as Attribute Tree Transducers (ATT), in this paper we show that deciding whether a MTT is of LSOI is as hard as deciding the equivalence of ATTs