Scope-bounded pushdown languages

We study the formal language theory of multistack push-down automata (Mpa) restricted to computations where a symbol can be popped from a stack S only if it was pushed within a bounded number of contexts of S (scoped Mpa). We contribute to show that scoped Mpa are indeed a robust model of computation, by focusing on the corresponding theory of visibly Mpa (Mvpa). We prove the equivalence of the deterministic and nondeterministic versions and show that scope-bounded computations of an n-stack Mvpa can be simulated, rearranging the input word, by using only one stack. These results have several interesting consequences, such as, the closure under complement, the decidability of universality, inclusion and equality, and a Parikh theorem. We also give a logical characterization and compare the expressiveness of the scope-bounded restriction with Mvpa classes from the literature