1,829 research outputs found
Languages ordered by the subword order
We consider a language together with the subword relation, the cover
relation, and regular predicates. For such structures, we consider the
extension of first-order logic by threshold- and modulo-counting quantifiers.
Depending on the language, the used predicates, and the fragment of the logic,
we determine four new combinations that yield decidable theories. These results
extend earlier ones where only the language of all words without the cover
relation and fragments of first-order logic were considered
Inflations of geometric grid classes of permutations
All three authors were partially supported by EPSRC via the grant EP/J006440/1.Geometric grid classes and the substitution decomposition have both been shown to be fundamental in the understanding of the structure of permutation classes. In particular, these are the two main tools in the recent classification of permutation classes of growth rate less than Îș â 2.20557 (a specific algebraic integer at which infinite antichains first appear). Using language- and order-theoretic methods, we prove that the substitution closures of geometric grid classes are well partially ordered, finitely based, and that all their subclasses have algebraic generating functions. We go on to show that the inflation of a geometric grid class by a strongly rational class is well partially ordered, and that all its subclasses have rational generating functions. This latter fact allows us to conclude that every permutation class with growth rate less than Îș has a rational generating function. This bound is tight as there are permutation classes with growth rate Îș which have nonrational generating functions.PostprintPeer reviewe
The omega-inequality problem for concatenation hierarchies of star-free languages
The problem considered in this paper is whether an inequality of omega-terms
is valid in a given level of a concatenation hierarchy of star-free languages.
The main result shows that this problem is decidable for all (integer and half)
levels of the Straubing-Th\'erien hierarchy
On shuffle products, acyclic automata and piecewise-testable languages
We show that the shuffle L \unicode{x29E2} F of a piecewise-testable
language and a finite language is piecewise-testable. The proof relies
on a classic but little-used automata-theoretic characterization of
piecewise-testable languages. We also discuss some mild generalizations of the
main result, and provide bounds on the piecewise complexity of L
\unicode{x29E2} F
Partially-commutative context-free languages
The paper is about a class of languages that extends context-free languages
(CFL) and is stable under shuffle. Specifically, we investigate the class of
partially-commutative context-free languages (PCCFL), where non-terminal
symbols are commutative according to a binary independence relation, very much
like in trace theory. The class has been recently proposed as a robust class
subsuming CFL and commutative CFL. This paper surveys properties of PCCFL. We
identify a natural corresponding automaton model: stateless multi-pushdown
automata. We show stability of the class under natural operations, including
homomorphic images and shuffle. Finally, we relate expressiveness of PCCFL to
two other relevant classes: CFL extended with shuffle and trace-closures of
CFL. Among technical contributions of the paper are pumping lemmas, as an
elegant completion of known pumping properties of regular languages, CFL and
commutative CFL.Comment: In Proceedings EXPRESS/SOS 2012, arXiv:1208.244
On insertion-deletion systems over relational words
We introduce a new notion of a relational word as a finite totally ordered
set of positions endowed with three binary relations that describe which
positions are labeled by equal data, by unequal data and those having an
undefined relation between their labels. We define the operations of insertion
and deletion on relational words generalizing corresponding operations on
strings. We prove that the transitive and reflexive closure of these operations
has a decidable membership problem for the case of short insertion-deletion
rules (of size two/three and three/two). At the same time, we show that in the
general case such systems can produce a coding of any recursively enumerable
language leading to undecidabilty of reachability questions.Comment: 24 pages, 8 figure
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