Related papers: Detecting palindromes, patterns, and borders in re…
The state complexity, respectively, nondeterministic state complexity of a regular language $L$ is the number of states of the minimal deterministic, respectively, of a minimal nondeterministic finite automaton for $L$. Some of the most…
Let A be an alphabet and W be a set of words in the free monoid A*. Let S(W) denote the Rees quotient over the ideal of A* consisting of all words that are not subwords of words in W. We call a set of words W finitely based if the monoid…
These lecture notes provide an introduction to combinatorics on words and its interactions with dynamics, algebra, and arithmetic. The central theme is the notion of low factor complexity for infinite words. We investigate the following…
Let Q be the set of primitive words over a finite alphabet with at least two symbols. We characterize a class of primitive words, Q_I, referred to as ins-robust primitive words, which remain primitive on insertion of any letter from the…
Large Language Models (LLMs) have shown remarkable capabilities in manipulating natural language across multiple applications, but their ability to handle simple reasoning tasks is often questioned. In this work, we aim to provide a…
We study regular expressions that use variables, or parameters, which are interpreted as alphabet letters. We consider two classes of languages denoted by such expressions: under the possibility semantics, a word belongs to the language if…
In this paper we consider a number of natural decision problems involving k-regular sequences. Specifically, they arise from - lower and upper bounds on growth rate; in particular boundedness, - images, - regularity (recognizability by a…
Words are fundamental linguistic units that connect thoughts and things through meaning. However, words do not appear independently in a text sequence. The existence of syntactic rules induces correlations among neighboring words. Using an…
The use of monoids in the study of word languages recognized by finite-state automata has been quite fruitful. In this work, we look at the same idea of "recognizability by finite monoids" for other monoids. In particular, we attempt to…
A regular language is $k$-piecewise testable if it is a finite boolean combination of languages of the form $\Sigma^* a_1 \Sigma^* \cdots \Sigma^* a_n \Sigma^*$, where $a_i\in\Sigma$ and $0\le n \le k$. Given a DFA $A$ and $k\ge 0$, it is…
We exhibit a recurrence on the number of discrete line segments joining two integer points in the plane using an encoding of such segments as balanced words of given length and height over the two-letter alphabet $\{0,1\}$. We give…
A \emph{border} of a word $w$ is a word that is both a non-empty proper prefix and suffix of $w$. If $w$ has a border, then it is said to be \emph{bordered}; otherwise, it is said to be \emph{unbordered}. The main results of this paper are…
Let L be an infinite regular language on a totally ordered alphabet (A,<). Feeding a finite deterministic automaton (with output) with the words of L enumerated lexicographically with respect to < leads to an infinite sequence over the…
For a stationary stochastic process $\{X_n\}$ with values in some set $A$, a finite word $w \in A^K$ is called a memory word if the conditional probability of $X_0$ given the past is constant on the cylinder set defined by $X_{-K}^{-1}=w$.…
The first step when forming the polynomial hierarchies of languages is to consider languages of the form KaL where K and L are over a finite alphabet A and from a given variety V of languages, a being a letter from A. All such KaL's…
Everybody has certainly heard about palindromes: words that stay the same when read backwards. For instance kayak, radar, or rotor. Mathematicians are interested in palindromic numbers: positive integers whose expansion in a certain integer…
In this paper we explore a new hierarchy of classes of languages and infinite words and its connection with complexity classes. Namely, we say that a language belongs to the class $L_k$ if it is a subset of the catenation of $k$ languages…
We study the fractal structure of language, aiming to provide a precise formalism for quantifying properties that may have been previously suspected but not formally shown. We establish that language is: (1) self-similar, exhibiting…
This paper studies the complexity of operations on finite automata and the complexity of their decision problems when the alphabet is unary. Let $n$ denote the maximum of the number of states of the input finite automata considered in the…
We define a notion of randomness for individual and collections of formal languages based on automatic martingales acting on sequences of words from some underlying domain. An automatic martingale bets if the incoming word belongs to the…