Orderings of higher exponent on a class of semirings (Q1971718)

By a semiring we mean a structure \((S,+,\cdot,0,1)\) such that \((S,+,0)\) is a commutative monoid, \((S,\cdot,1,0)\) is a monoid with zero and the left and right distributivity laws hold. We write \(V(S)\) for the set of all elements from \(S\) having an additive inverse. A semiring \(S\) is zerosumfree if \(V(S)=\{0\}\). For any elements \(s_1,\dots,s_r\in S\) and any positive integer \(n\) write \(\Pi'(s_1^n\cdots s^n_r)\) for the set of all possible products of \(n\) copies of \(s_1\), \dots, \(n\) copies of \(s_r\). For every positive integer \(n\) write \(S^n\) for the union of all sets of the form \(\Pi'(s^n_1\cdots s^n_r)\), where \(r\) is a positive integer and \(s_1,\dots,s_r\in S\). A subsemiring \(P\) of \(S\) is a preordering of exponent \(n\) if \(S^n\subseteq P\) and \(1\not\in V(P)\). We say that a semiring is entire if it has no zero divisors. In this paper, the author proves that maximal proper preorderings of 2-power exponent on entire semirings which are not zerosumfree correspond to signatures.