A language L ⊆A* is literally idempotent in case that ua2v ∈ L if and only if uav ∈ L, for each u,v ∈ A*, a ∈ A. Varieties of literally idempotent languages result naturally by taking all literally idempotent languages in a classical (positive) variety or by considering a certain closure operator on classes of languages. We initiate the systematic study of such varieties. Various classes of literally idempotent languages can be characterized using syntactic methods. A starting example is the class of all finite unions of $B^*_1 B^*_2\dots B^*_k$ where B1,...,Bk are subsets of a given alphabet A.

We define the class of discrete classical categorial grammars, similar in the spirit to the notion of reversible class of languages introduced by Angluin and Sakakibara. We show that the class of discrete classical categorial grammars is identifiable from positive structured examples. For this, we provide an original algorithm, which runs in quadratic time in the size of the examples. This work extends the previous results of Kanazawa. Indeed, in our work, several types can be associated to a word and the class is still identifiable in polynomial time. We illustrate the relevance of the class of discrete classical categorial grammars with linguistic examples.

In this article, we study the complexity of drunken man infinite words. We show that these infinite words, generated by a deterministic and complete countable automaton, or equivalently generated by a substitution over a countable alphabet of constant length, have complexity functions equivalent to n(log2n)2 when n goes to infinity.


We revisit the problem of deciding whether a finitely generated subgroup H is a free factor of a given free group F. Known algorithms solve this problem in time polynomial in the sum of the lengths of the generators of H and exponential in the rank of F. We show that the latter dependency can be made exponential in the rank difference rank(F) - rank(H), which often makes a significant change.

In formal language theory, many families of languages are defined using either grammars or finite acceptors. For instance, context-sensitive languages are the languages generated by growing grammars, or equivalently those accepted by Turing machines whose work tape's size is proportional to that of their input. A few years ago, a new characterisation of context-sensitive languages as the sets of traces, or path labels, of rational graphs (infinite graphs defined by sets of finite-state transducers) was established. We investigate a similar characterisation in the more general framework of graphs defined by term transducers. In particular, we show that the languages of term-automatic graphs between regular sets of vertices coincide with the languages accepted by alternating linearly bounded Turing machines.
As a technical tool, we also introduce an arborescent variant of tiling systems, which provides yet another characterisation of these languages.

In this paper, we study the continuity of rational functions realized by Büchi finite state transducers. It has been shown by Prieur that it can be decided whether such a function is continuous. We prove here that surprisingly, it cannot be decided whether such a function f has at least one point of continuity and that its continuity set C(f) cannot be computed. In the case of a synchronous rational function, we show that its continuity set is rational and that it can be computed. Furthermore we prove that any rational ${\bf \Pi}^0_2$-subset of Σω for some alphabet Σ is the continuity set C(f) of an ω-rational synchronous function f defined on Σω.

We introduce natural generalizations of two well-known dynamical systems, the Sand Piles Model and the Brylawski's model. We describe their order structure, their reachable configuration's characterization, their fixed points and their maximal and minimal length's chains. Finally, we present an induced model generating the set of unimodal sequences which amongst other corollaries, implies that this set is equipped with a lattice structure.

Right (left, two-sided) extendable part of a language consists of all words having infinitely many right (resp. left, two-sided) extensions within the language. We prove that for an arbitrary factorial language each of these parts has the same growth rate of complexity as the language itself. On the other hand, we exhibit a factorial language which grows superpolynomially, while its two-sided extendable part grows only linearly.