English

Distributional Learning of Context-Free Languages under Fixed Finite-Monoid Typing

Formal Languages and Automata Theory 2026-05-11 v4

Abstract

We study distributional learning of context-free languages under a fixed recognizable congruence h\sim_h given as the kernel of an explicit finite monoid homomorphism h:ΣMh:\Sigma^*\to M. For this fixed-hh setting, we develop a finite typed reconstruction theory for context-free h\sim_h-substitutable languages. Starting from a reduced context-free grammar, we introduce a typed refinement that records both yield types and outer context types, show that the relevant structure is concentrated in a finite typed reconstruction basis, and prove that this basis is exposed by a finite observation set. Occurrences of the same nonterminal symbol may therefore have to be separated when their outer hh-contexts differ. We then prove exact reconstruction from positive data. From any finite sample KΣK\subseteq\Sigma^*, we construct a canonical hypothesis grammar G^(K)\hat G(K), and we show that once KK contains the finite observation set associated with the target typed grammar, G^(K)\hat G(K) generates the target language exactly. Consequently, for every explicit finite monoid homomorphism hh, the class Chcf\mathcal C_h^{\mathrm{cf}} of context-free h\sim_h-substitutable languages is identifiable in the limit from positive data, with polynomial-time hypothesis construction and update. For the linear subclass Chlin\mathcal C_h^{\mathrm{lin}}, we further prove polynomial upper bounds on characteristic-sample size and word length. Thus the same learner gives a full polynomial time-and-data result for the linear subclass.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1409.6247,
  title  = {Distributional Learning of Context-Free Languages under Fixed Finite-Monoid Typing},
  author = {Takayuki Kuriyama},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1409.6247},
  year   = {2026}
}