By virtue of the close relationship between logic and relational databases, it turns out that complexity has important applications to databases such as analyzing the parallel time needed to compute a query, and the analysis of nondeterministic classes. This book is a relatively self-contained introduction to the subject, which includes the necessary background material, as well as numerous examples and exercises.
This collection brings together the authors' previous research with new work on the Register-Functional (RF) approach to grammatical complexity, offering a unified theoretical account for its further study. The book traces the development of the RF approach from its foundations in two major research strands of linguistics: the study of sociolinguistic variation and the text-linguistic study of register variation. Building on this foundation, the authors demonstrate the RF framework at work across a series of corpus-based research studies focused specifically on grammatical complexity in English. The volume highlights early work exploring patterns of grammatical complexity in present-day spoken and written registers as well as subsequent studies which extend this research to historical patterns of register variation and the application of RF research to the study of writing development for L1 and L2 English university students. Taken together, along with the addition of introductory chapters connecting the different studies, the volume offers readers with a comprehensive resource to better understand the RF approach to grammatical complexity and its implications for future research. The volume will appeal to students and scholars with research interests in either descriptive linguistics or applied linguistics, especially those interested in grammatical complexity and empirical, corpus-based approaches.
The book is based on the PhD thesis “Descriptive Set Theoretic Methods in Automata Theory,” awarded the E.W. Beth Prize in 2015 for outstanding dissertations in the fields of logic, language, and information. The thesis reveals unexpected connections between advanced concepts in logic, descriptive set theory, topology, and automata theory and provides many deep insights into the interplay between these fields. It opens new perspectives on central problems in the theory of automata on infinite words and trees and offers very impressive advances in this theory from the point of view of topology. "...the thesis of Michał Skrzypczak offers certainly what we expect from excellent mathematics: new unexpected connections between a priori distinct concepts, and proofs involving enlightening ideas.” Thomas Colcombet.
This book explores the contributions, actual and potential, of complexity thinking to educational research and practice. While its focus is on the theoretical premises and the methodology, not specific applications, the aim is pragmatic--to present complexity thinking as an important and appropriate attitude for educators and educational researchers. Part I is concerned with global issues around complexity thinking, as read through an educational lens. Part II cites a diversity of practices and studies that are either explicitly informed by or that might be aligned with complexity research, and offers focused and practiced advice for structuring projects in ways that are consistent with complexity thinking. Complexity thinking offers a powerful alternative to the linear, reductionist approaches to inquiry that have dominated the sciences for hundreds of years and educational research for more than a century. It has captured the attention of many researchers whose studies reach across traditional disciplinary boundaries to investigate phenomena such as: How does the brain work? What is consciousness? What is intelligence? What is the role of emergent technologies in shaping personalities and possibilities? How do social collectives work? What is knowledge? Complexity research posits that a deep similarity among these phenomena is that each points toward some sort of system that learns. The authors’ intent is not to offer a complete account of the relevance of complexity thinking to education, not to prescribe and delimit, but to challenge readers to examine their own assumptions and theoretical commitments--whether anchored by commonsense, classical thought or any of the posts (such as postmodernism, poststructuralism, postcolonialism, postpositivism, postformalism, postepistemology) that mark the edges of current discursive possibility. Complexity and Education is THE introduction to the emerging field of complexity thinking for the education community. It is specifically relevant for educational researchers, graduate students, and inquiry-oriented teacher practitioners.
This Festschrift has been put together on the occasion of Franz Baader's 60th birthday to celebrate his fundamental and highly influential scientific contributions. The 30 papers in this volume cover several scientific areas that Franz Baader has been working on during the last three decades, including description logics, term rewriting, and the combination of decision procedures. We hope that readers will enjoy the articles gathered in Franz's honour and appreciate the breadth and depth of his favourite areas of computer science.
The interplay between computability and randomness has been an active area of research in recent years, reflected by ample funding in the USA, numerous workshops, and publications on the subject. The complexity and the randomness aspect of a set of natural numbers are closely related. Traditionally, computability theory is concerned with the complexity aspect. However, computability theoretic tools can also be used to introduce mathematical counterparts for the intuitive notion of randomness of a set. Recent research shows that, conversely, concepts and methods originating from randomness enrich computability theory. The book covers topics such as lowness and highness properties, Kolmogorov complexity, betting strategies and higher computability. Both the basics and recent research results are desribed, providing a very readable introduction to the exciting interface of computability and randomness for graduates and researchers in computability theory, theoretical computer science, and measure theory.
This Festschrift volume, published in honor of Yuri Gurevich on the occasion of his 70th birthday, contains contributions, written by his colleagues. The collection of articles herein begins with an academic biography, an annotated list of Yuri's publications and reports, and a personal tribute by Jan Van den Bussche. These are followed by 28 technical contributions. These articles - though they cover a broad range of topics - represent only a fraction of Yuri Gurevich’s multiple areas of interest.
Finite model theory has its origin in classical model theory, but owes its systematic development to research from complexity theory. The book presents the main results of descriptive complexity theory, that is, the connections between axiomatizability of classes of finite structures and their complexity with respect to time and space bounds. The logics that are important in this context include fixed- point logics, transitive closure logics, and also certain infinitary languages; their model theory is studied in full detail. Other topics include DATALOG languages, quantifiers and oracles, 0-1 laws, and optimization and approximation problems. The book is written in such a way that the resp. parts on model theory and descriptive complexity theory may be read independently.
This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 17th and 18th International Conference on Formal Grammar 2012 and 2013, collocated with the European Summer School in Logic, Language and Information in August 2012/2013. The 18 revised full papers were carefully reviewed and selected from a total of 27 submissions. The focus of papers are as follows: formal and computational phonology, morphology, syntax, semantics and pragmatics; model-theoretic and proof-theoretic methods in linguistics; logical aspects of linguistic structure; constraint-based and resource-sensitive approaches to grammar; learnability of formal grammar; integration of stochastic and symbolic models of grammar; foundational, methodological and architectural issues in grammar and linguistics, and mathematical foundations of statistical approaches to linguistic analysis.
This book constitutes the strictly refereed post-workshop proceedings of the 12th International Workshop on Computer Science Logic, CSL '98, held as the Annual Conference of the European Association on Computer Science Logic in Brno, Czech Republic in August 1998. The 25 revised full papers presented were carefully reviewed and selected during two rounds of reviewing and revision. Also included are three reviewed invited papers. The papers span the whole scope of computer science logic and mathematical foundations and represent the state of the art in the area.
