Recently there has been a lot of interest in testing the processing predictions of a specific top-down parser for Minimalist grammars (Stabler, 2013). Most of this work relies on memory-based difficulty metrics that relate the shape of the parse tree to processing behavior. We show that none of the difficulty metrics proposed so far can explain why subject relative clauses are more easily proce...

This thesis is focused on techniques for finite automata and their use in practice, with the main emphasis on nondeterministic tree automata. This concerns namely techniques for size reduction and language inclusion testing, which are two problems that are crucial for many applications of tree automata. For size reduction of tree automata, we adapt the simulation quotient technique that is well...

Previous work reports about SXSI, a fast XPath engine which executes tree automata over compressed XML indexes. Here, reasons are investigated why SXSI is so fast. It is shown that tree automata can be used as a general framework for fine grained XML query optimization. We define the “relevant nodes” of a query as those nodes that a minimal automaton must touch in order to answer the query. Thi...

New advances in large scale distributed systems have amazingly offered complex functionalities through parallelism of simple and rudimentary components. The key issue in cooperative control of multi-agent systems is the synthesis of local control and interaction rules among the agents such that the entire controlled system achieves a desired global behavior. For this purpose, three fundamental ...

The exponential output size problem is to determine whether the size of output trees of a tree transducer grows exponentially in the size of input trees. In this paper the complexity of this problem is studied. It is shown to be NL-complete for total top-down tree transducers , DEXPTIME-complete for general top-down tree transducers, and P-complete for bottom-up tree transducers.

We define a set of deterministic bottom-up left to right parsers which analyze a subset of Tree Adjoining Languages. The LR parsing strategy for Context Free Grammars is extended to Tree Adjoining Grammars (TAGs). We use a machine, called Bottom-up Embedtied Push Down Automaton (BEPDA), that recognizes in a bottom-up fashion the set of Tree Adjoining Languages (and exactly this se0. Each parser...

Tree transducers are finite-state devices computing relations on trees. Their study was initiated by Thatcher (1970) and Rounds (1970), who established the classical top-down tree transducers that process the input tree from the root towards the leaves. Shortly afterwards, Baker (1973) introduced the bottom-up tree transducers that process the input tree from the leaves towards the root in anal...

A tree transducer with origin translates an input tree into a pair of output tree and origin info. The origin info maps each node in the output tree to the unique input node that created it. In this way, the implementation of the transducer becomes part of its semantics. We show that the landscape of decidable properties changes drastically when origin info is added. For instance, equivalence o...

We present an algorithm for the conversion of very weak alternating Büchi automata into nondeterministic Büchi automata (NBA), and we introduce a local optimization criterion for deleting superfluous transitions in these NBA. We show how to use this algorithm in the translation of LTL formulas into NBA, matching the upper bounds of other LTL-to-NBA translations. We compare the NBA resulting fro...

Alternating automata play a key role in the automata-theoretic approach to specification, verification, and synthesis of reactive systems. Many algorithms on alternating automata, and in particular, their nonemptiness test, involve removal of alternation: a translation of the alternating automaton to an equivalent nondeterministic one. For alternating Büchi automata, the best known translation ...