Representing a P-complete problem by small trellis automata

A restricted case of the Circuit Value Problem known as the Sequential NOR Circuit Value Problem was recently used to obtain very succinct examples of conjunctive grammars, Boolean grammars and language equations representing P-complete languages (Okhotin, http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/978-3-540-74593-8_23 "A simple P-complete problem and its representations by language equations", MCU 2007). In this paper, a new encoding of the same problem is proposed, and a trellis automaton (one-way real-time cellular automaton) with 11 states solving this problem is constructed

Grammars with two-sided contexts

In a recent paper (M. Barash, A. Okhotin, "Defining contexts in context-free grammars", LATA 2012), the authors introduced an extension of the context-free grammars equipped with an operator for referring to the left context of the substring being defined. This paper proposes a more general model, in which context specifications may be two-sided, that is, both the left and the right contexts can be specified by the corresponding operators. The paper gives the definitions and establishes the basic theory of such grammars, leading to a normal form and a parsing algorithm working in time O(n^4), where n is the length of the input string.Comment: In Proceedings AFL 2014, arXiv:1405.527

On the closure properties of linear conjunctive languages

AbstractLinear conjunctive grammars are conjunctive grammars in which the body of each conjunct contains no more than a single nonterminal symbol. They can at the same time be thought of as a special case of conjunctive grammars and as a generalization of linear context-free grammars that provides an explicit intersection operation.Although the set of languages generated by these grammars is known to include many important noncontext-free languages, linear conjunctive languages are still all square-time, and several practical algorithms have been devised to handle them, which makes this class of grammars quite suitable for use in applications.In this paper we investigate the closure properties of the language family generated by linear conjunctive grammars; the main result is its closure under complement, which implies that it is closed under all set-theoretic operations. We also consider several cases in which the concatenation of two linear conjunctive languages is certain to be linear conjunctive. In addition, it is demonstrated that linear conjunctive languages are closed under quotient with finite languages, not closed under quotient with regular languages, and not closed under ε-free homomorphism

Parsing Unary Boolean Grammars Using Online Convolution

In contrast to context-free grammars, the extension of these grammars by explicit conjunction, the so-called conjunctive grammars can generate (quite complicated) non-regular languages over a single-letter alphabet (DLT 2007). Given these expressibility results, we study the parsability of Boolean grammars, an extension of context-free grammars by conjunction and negation, over a unary alphabet and show that they can be parsed in time O(|G| log^2(n) M(n)) where M(n) is the time to multiply two n-bit integers. This multiplication algorithm is transformed into a convolution algorithm which in turn is converted to an online convolution algorithm which is used for the parsing

Sweeping Permutation Automata

This paper introduces sweeping permutation automata, which move over an input string in alternating left-to-right and right-to-left sweeps and have a bijective transition function. It is proved that these automata recognize the same family of languages as the classical one-way permutation automata (Thierrin, "Permutation automata", Mathematical Systems Theory, 1968). An n-state two-way permutation automaton is transformed to a one-way permutation automaton with F(n)=\max_(k+l=n, m <= l) k (l \choose m) (k - 1 \choose l - m) (l - m)! states. This number of states is proved to be necessary in the worst case, and its growth rate is estimated as F(n) = n^(n/2 - (1 + \ln 2)/2 \cdot n/(\ln n) \cdot (1 + o(1))).Comment: In Proceedings NCMA 2023, arXiv:2309.0733

On Language Equations with One-sided Concatenation

Language equations are equations where both the constants occurring in the equations and the solutions are formal languages. They have first been introduced in formal language theory, but are now also considered in other areas of computer science. In the present paper, we restrict the attention to language equations with one-sided concatenation, but in contrast to previous work on these equations, we allow not just union but all Boolean operations to be used when formulating them. In addition, we are not just interested in deciding solvability of such equations, but also in deciding other properties of the set of solutions, like its cardinality (finite, infinite, uncountable) and whether it contains least/greatest solutions. We show that all these decision problems are ExpTime-complete.This report has also appeared as TUCS Technical Report, Turku Centre for Computer Science, University of Turku, Finland

Solving Language Equations and Disequations Using Looping Tree Automata with Colors

We extend previous results on the complexity of solving language equations with one-sided concatenation and all Boolean operations to the case where also disequations (i.e., negated equations) may occur. To show that solvability of systems of equations and disequations is still in ExpTime, we introduce a new type of automata working on infinite trees, which we call looping automata with colors. As applications of these results, we show new complexity results for disunification in the description logic FL₀ and for monadic set constraints with negation. We believe that looping automata with colors may also turn out to be useful in other applications.A short version of this report has also appeared in Proceedings of LPAR-18, Springer LNCS 7180, 2012