CS 719 Tutorial-1

1. Give FO formulae for the languages over Σ = {a, b} that are defined
by the following regular expressions.
a + b.b∗ , aab∗ aa, ab(ab)∗ .

2. Write a MSO-formula pM ODq(X) with one free set variable X which

asserts that the cardinality of the set X is p modulo q. Here p and q
are fixed constants.

3. The following MSO0 -formula over Σ = {a, b} defines a language over

Σ × {0, 1}3 . Give an equivalent NFA with as few states as possible by
a direct construction.

(X1 ⊆ X2 ) ∧ (S(X1 , X3 ) ⇒ a(X1 ))

4. Consider the following NFA A with 1 as the only final state:

/ 0O
b / 1

b a


3o b
2Q
a

Write down a MSO-formula with only two set variables which captures
the language L(A).
Show that L(A) can also be described using a FO-formula.

5. Show that the logical systems MSO and MSO0 have the same expressive
power.

6. Let π : (Σ1 × Σ2 )∗ → Σ∗1 be the natural projection map. Given a

language L over Σ1 × Σ2 , we define the language L0 over Σ1 as follows:

L0 = w ∈ Σ∗1 | π −1 (w) ⊆ L


Prove or disprove: if L is regular, then so is L0 .

7. Formulas in Presburger Arithmetic (PA) use first-order variables x, y, . . .

that range over natural numbers N = {0, 1, 2, . . .} and the ternary ad-
dition predicate x + y = z. Here is a valid sentence in this logic:

∀x.∀y.∃z.(x + z = y) ∨ (y + z = x)

1
 Show that the relations x < y, S(x, y) can be defined in PA.
Let φ be a PA formula. We would like to associate to φ an automaton
Aφ such that the language accepted by Aφ is precisely the models of
the formula φ. Towards this, we encode a natural number by its binary
expansion in reverse (that is, starting with the least significant bit). So,
for example, the number ‘13’ corresponds to the binary word ‘1011’.
Note that the binary words ‘10110, 101100, 1011000’ also represent
‘13’.
Now, given a PA formula φ(x1 , . . . , xn ) with free variables x1 , . . . , xn ,
we can represent an interpretation x1 = m1 , . . . , xn = mn by a word
over the alphabet {0, 1}n such that the i-th component of this word
corresponds to a reversed binary expansion of mi .
Show how to construct a finite automaton Aφ working over {0, 1}n such
that L(Aφ ) is the set of all words which represent interpretations for
x1 , . . . , xn which make φ true. Using this, show that, the satisfiability
problem for PA is decidable.
Show that the multiplication predicate x ∗ y = z can not be defined in
PA.

8. Show that WS1S is decidable. WS1S is the monadic second-order the-

ory of the structure (N, S) (that is, the set N of natural numbers
equipped with the successor relation S) in which the second-order quan-
tifiers range only over finite sets.

9. A star-free regular expression is a (generalized) regular expression built

up from the atoms ∅, a ∈ Σ using only the operations · for concatena-
tion, + for union, ∩ for intersection and ∼ for complementation. The
language L(r) defined by such an expression r is also called star-free.
For example, with Σ = {a, b, c},

• Σ∗ is star-free, defined by ∼ ∅
• a∗ is star-free, defined by ∼ (Σ∗ · (b + c) · Σ∗ ).

Show that (ab)∗ is star-free. Also, show that, every star-free language
is FO-definable.

10. Show that LTL-definable languages are also FO-definable.