We solve two open problems concerning syntactic complexity: We prove that the cardinality of the syntactic semigroup of a left ideal or a suffix-closed language with n left quotients (that is, with state complexity n) is at most n n−1 + n − 1, and that of a two-sided ideal or a factor-closed language is at most n n−2 + (n − 2)2 n−2 + 1. Since these bounds are known to be reachable, this settles...

— Some synchronizing properties of"very pure" subsemigroups ofafree semigroup are shown by means of an analysis of the properties of their syntactic semigroups. Résumé. — On démontre certaines propriétés de synchronisation pour les sous-semigroupes « très purs » d'un semigroupe libre, en analysant les propriétés de leurs semigroupes syntactiques.

A right ideal is a language L over an alphabet Σ that satisfies L = LΣ∗. We show that there exists a stream (sequence) (Rn | n > 3) of regular right ideal languages, where Rn has n left quotients and is most complex under the following measures of complexity: the state complexities of the left quotients, the number of atoms (intersections of complemented and uncomplemented left quotients), the ...

We give a new proof of Salvati’s theorem that the group language O2 is 2 multiple context free. Unlike Salvati’s proof, our arguments do not use any idea specific to two-dimensions. This raises the possibility that the argument might generalize to On.

The aim of this paper is to examine the kind of evidence that might be adduced in support of relativist semantics of a kind that have recently been proposed for predicates of personal taste, for epistemic modals, for knowledge attributions and for other cases. I shall concentrate on the case of taste predicates, but what I have to say is easily transposed to the other cases just mentioned. I sh...

During sentence level language comprehension, semantic and syntactic unification are functionally distinct operations. Nevertheless, both recruit roughly the same brain areas (spatially overlapping networks in the left frontotemporal cortex) and happen at the same time (in the first few hundred milliseconds after word onset). We tested the hypothesis that semantic and syntactic unification are ...

the meaning of an idiomatic expression cannot be transparently worked out from the meanings of its constituent words due to its figurative and unpredictable nature. consequently, the syntactic composition and the structural paradigm of an idiomatic expression are supposed to be the same in every context. however, this is not the case in the institutionalized second language varieties of english...

Starting from dProlog, we developed hProlog to become a back end for HAL. We incorporated attributed variables, the data types string and character and support for bigints. We describe how we managed to cater for all these, while not further restricting the heap address space and without efficiency loss. We explain the rationale behind some decisions, the effect on indexing, some new low-level ...

It is a remarkable phenomenon that children can learn to speak without ever being consciously aware of the sophisticated grammar they are using. Indeed, adults too can live a perfectly satisfactory life without ever thinking about ideas such as parts of speech, subjects, predicates or subordinate clauses. Both children and adults can easily recognise ungrammatical sentences, at least if the mis...

Our paper comments on the divergences of the deep syntactic layers of Czech and English. We point out several phenomena potentially problematic for the syntactic alignment. We argue that at least some of the problems are caused by improper inferences from the deep syntactic layer of one language into the deep structures of the other one, and as such, they can be repaired on the theoretical level.