19 research outputs found
Order-Invariant First-Order Logic over Hollow Trees
We show that the expressive power of order-invariant first-order logic collapses to first-order logic over hollow trees. A hollow tree is an unranked ordered tree where every non leaf node has at most four adjacent nodes: two siblings (left and right) and its first and last children. In particular there is no predicate for the linear order among siblings nor for the descendant relation. Moreover only the first and last nodes of a siblinghood are linked to their parent node, and the parent-child relation cannot be completely reconstructed in first-order
Piecewise testable tree languages
This paper presents a decidable characterization of tree languages that can
be defined by a boolean combination of Sigma_1 sentences. This is a tree
extension of the Simon theorem, which says that a string language can be
defined by a boolean combination of Sigma_1 sentences if and only if its
syntactic monoid is J-trivial
Deciding definability in FO2(<h,<v) on trees
We provide a decidable characterization of regular forest languages definable
in FO2(<h,<v). By FO2(<h,<v) we refer to the two variable fragment of first
order logic built from the descendant relation and the following sibling
relation. In terms of expressive power it corresponds to a fragment of the
navigational core of XPath that contains modalities for going up to some
ancestor, down to some descendant, left to some preceding sibling, and right to
some following sibling. We also show that our techniques can be applied to
other two variable first-order logics having exactly the same vertical
modalities as FO2(<h,<v) but having different horizontal modalities
EF+EX Forest Algebras
We examine languages of unranked forests definable using the temporal
operators EF and EX. We characterize the languages definable in this logic, and
various fragments thereof, using the syntactic forest algebras introduced by
Bojanczyk and Walukiewicz. Our algebraic characterizations yield efficient
algorithms for deciding when a given language of forests is definable in this
logic. The proofs are based on understanding the wreath product closures of a
few small algebras, for which we introduce a general ideal theory for forest
algebras. This combines ideas from the work of Bojanczyk and Walukiewicz for
the analogous logics on binary trees and from early work of Stiffler on wreath
product of finite semigroups
Modulo Counting on Words and Trees
We consider the satisfiability problem for the two-variable fragment of the first-order logic extended with modulo counting quantifiers and interpreted over finite words or trees. We prove a small-model property of this logic, which gives a technique for deciding the satisfiability problem. In the case of words this gives a new proof of EXPSPACE upper bound, and in the case of trees it gives a 2EXPTIME algorithm. This algorithm is optimal: we prove a matching lower bound by a generic reduction from alternating Turing machines working in exponential space; the reduction involves a development of a new version of tiling games
A Characterization for Decidable Separability by Piecewise Testable Languages
The separability problem for word languages of a class by
languages of a class asks, for two given languages and
from , whether there exists a language from that
includes and excludes , that is, and . In this work, we assume some mild closure properties for
and study for which such classes separability by a piecewise
testable language (PTL) is decidable. We characterize these classes in terms of
decidability of (two variants of) an unboundedness problem. From this, we
deduce that separability by PTL is decidable for a number of language classes,
such as the context-free languages and languages of labeled vector addition
systems. Furthermore, it follows that separability by PTL is decidable if and
only if one can compute for any language of the class its downward closure wrt.
the scattered substring ordering (i.e., if the set of scattered substrings of
any language of the class is effectively regular).
The obtained decidability results contrast some undecidability results. In
fact, for all (non-regular) language classes that we present as examples with
decidable separability, it is undecidable whether a given language is a PTL
itself.
Our characterization involves a result of independent interest, which states
that for any kind of languages and , non-separability by PTL is
equivalent to the existence of common patterns in and
A decidable characterization of locally testable tree languages
A regular tree language L is locally testable if membership of a tree in L
depends only on the presence or absence of some fix set of neighborhoods in the
tree. In this paper we show that it is decidable whether a regular tree
language is locally testable. The decidability is shown for ranked trees and
for unranked unordered trees
Proving that a Tree Language is not First-Order Definable
We explore from an algebraic viewpoint the properties of the tree languages
definable with a first-order formula involving the ancestor predicate, using
the description of these languages as those recognized by iterated block
products of forest algebras defined from finite counter monoids. Proofs of
nondefinability are infinite sequences of sets of forests, one for each level
of the hierarchy of quantification levels that defines the corresponding
variety of languages. The forests at a given level are built recursively by
inserting forests from previous level at the ports of a suitable set of
multicontexts. We show that a recursive proof exists for the syntactic algebra
of every non-definable language. We also investigate certain types of uniform
recursive proofs. For this purpose, we define from a forest algebra an algebra
of mappings and an extended algebra, which we also use to redefine the notion
of aperiodicity in a way that generalizes the existing ones