A monoid S is right coherent if every finitely generated subact of every finitely presented right S-act is finitely presented. This is the non-additive notion corresponding to that for a ring R stating that every finitely generated submodule of every finitely presented right R-module is finitely presented. For monoids (and rings) right coherency is an important finitary property which determines, amongst other things, the existence of a model companion of the class of right S-acts (right R-modules) and hence that the class of existentially closed right S-acts (right R-modules) is axiomatisable.Choo, Lam and Luft have shown that free rings are right (and left) coherent; the authors, together with Ruškuc, have shown that (free) groups, free commutative monoids and free monoids, have the same properties. It is then natural to ask whether other free algebras in varieties of monoids, possibly with an augmented signature, are right coherent. We demonstrate that free inverse monoids are not.Munn described the free inverse monoid FIM(Ω) on Ω as consisting of birooted finite connected subgraphs of the Cayley graph of the free group on Ω. Sitting within FIM(Ω) we have free algebras in other varieties and quasi-varieties, in particular the free left ample monoid FLA(Ω) and the free ample monoid FAM(Ω). The former is the free algebra in the variety of unary monoids corresponding to partial maps with distinguished domain; the latter is the two-sided dual. For example, FLA(Ω) is obtained from FIM(Ω) by considering only subgraphs with vertices labelled by elements of the free monoid on Ω.The main objective of the paper is to show that FLA(Ω) is right coherent. Furthermore, by making use of the same techniques we show that FIM(Ω), FLA(Ω) and FAM(Ω) satisfy (R), (r), (L) and (l), related conditions arising from the axiomatisability of certain classes of right S-acts and of left S-acts.

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A monoid S is said to be right coherent if every finitely generated subact of every finitely presented right S-act is finitely presented. Left coherency is defined dually and S is coherent if it is both right and left coherent. These notions are analogous to those for a ring R (where, of course, S-acts are replaced by R-modules). Choo, Lam and Luft have shown that free rings are coherent. In this note we prove that, correspondingly, any free monoid is coherent, thus answering a question posed by the first author in 1992.

A monoid S satisfies Condition (A) if every locally cyclic left S-act is cyclic. This condition first arose in Isbell's work on left perfect monoids, that is, monoids such that every left S-act has a projective cover. Isbell showed that S is left perfect if and only if every cyclic left S-act has a projective cover and Condition (A) holds. Fountain built on Isbell's work to show that S is left perfect if and only if it satisfies Condition (A) together with the descending chain condition on principal right ideals, MR. We note that a ring is left perfect (with an analogous definition) if and only if it satisfies MR. The appearance of Condition (A) in this context is, therefore, monoid specific. Condition (A) has a number of alternative characterisations, in particular, it is equivalent to the ascending chain condition on cyclic subacts of any left S-act. In spite of this, it remains somewhat esoteric. The first aim of this paper is to investigate the preservation of Condition (A) under basic semigroup-theoretic constructions. Recently, Khosravi, Ershad and Sedaghatjoo have shown that every left S-act has a strongly flat or Condition (P) cover if and only if every cyclic left S-act has such a cover and Condition (A) holds. Here we find a range of classes of S-acts $\mathcal{C}$ such that every left S-act has a cover from $\mathcal{C}$ if and only if every cyclic left S-act does and Condition (A) holds. In doing so we find a further characterisation of Condition (A) purely in terms of the existence of covers of a certain kind. Finally, we make some observations concerning left perfect monoids and investigate a class of monoids close to being left perfect, which we name left$\mathcal{IP}$a-perfect.

Each restriction semigroup is proved to be embeddable in a factorisable restriction monoid, or, equivalently, in an almost factorisable restriction semigroup. It is also established that each restriction semigroup has a proper cover which is embeddable in a semidirect product of a semilattice by a group.