Related papers: Normal, Abby Normal, Prefix Normal
A word~$w$ has a border $u$ if $u$ is a non-empty proper prefix and suffix of $u$. A word~$w$ is said to be \emph{closed} if $w$ is of length at most $1$ or if $w$ has a border that occurs exactly twice in $w$. A word~$w$ is said to be…
We show that the number of length-n words over a k-letter alphabet having no even palindromic prefix is the same as the number of length-n unbordered words, by constructing an explicit bijection between the two sets. A slightly different…
Prefix parsing asks whether an input prefix can be extended to a complete string generated by a given grammar. In the weighted setting, it also provides prefix probabilities, which are central to context-free language modeling,…
Overlap-free words are words over the binary alphabet $A=\{a, b\}$ that do not contain factors of the form $xvxvx$, where $x \in A$ and $v \in A^*$. We analyze the asymptotic growth of the number $u_n$ of overlap-free words of length $n$ as…
When flipping a fair coin, let $W = L_1L_2...L_N$ with $L_i\in\{H,T\}$ be a binary word of length $N=2$ or $N=3$. In this paper, we establish second- and third-order linear recurrence relations and their generating functions to discuss the…
An overlap-free (or $\beta$-free) word $w$ over a fixed alphabet $\Sigma$ is extremal if every word obtained from $w$ by inserting a single letter from $\Sigma$ at any position contains an overlap (or a factor of exponent at least $\beta$,…
A generalized word in two letters $A$ and $B$ is an expression of the form $W=A^{\alpha_1}B^{\beta_1}A^{\alpha_2}B^{\beta_2}... A^{\alpha_N}B^{\beta_N}$ in which the exponents $\alpha_i$, $\beta_i$ are nonzero real numbers. When independent…
Let $A_q$ be a $q$-letter alphabet and $w$ be a right infinite word on this alphabet. A subword of $w$ is a block of consecutive letters of $w$. The subword complexity function of $w$ assigns to each positive integer $n$ the number $f_w(n)$…
We study here the so called subsequence pattern matching also known as hidden pattern matching in which one searches for a given pattern $w$ of length $m$ as a subsequence in a random text of length $n$. The quantity of interest is the…
The relationship between the length of a word and the maximum length of its unbordered factors is investigated in this paper. Consider a finite word w of length n. We call a word bordered, if it has a proper prefix which is also a suffix of…
Multiple algorithms are known for efficiently calculating the prefix probability of a string under a probabilistic context-free grammar (PCFG). Good algorithms for the problem have a runtime cubic in the length of the input string. However,…
The binomial notation (w u) represents the number of occurrences of the word u as a (scattered) subword in w. We first introduce and study possible uses of a geometrical interpretation of (w ab) and (w ba) when a and b are distinct letters.…
Enumerating the number of times one word occurs in another is a much-studied combinatorial subject. By utilizing a method that we call ``lexicographic extreme referencing'', we provide a formula for computing occurrences of one binary word…
A word $w=w_1w_2\cdots w_n$ is alternating if either $w_1<w_2>w_3<w_4>\cdots$ (when the word is up-down) or $w_1>w_2<w_3>w_4<\cdots$ (when the word is down-up). In this paper, we initiate the study of (pattern-avoiding) alternating words.…
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…
Words in some natural languages can have a composite structure. Elements of this structure include the root (that could also be composite), prefixes and suffixes with which various nuances and relations to other words can be expressed.…
Language models for speech recognition typically use a probability model of the form Pr(a_n | a_1, a_2, ..., a_{n-1}). Stochastic grammars, on the other hand, are typically used to assign structure to utterances. A language model of the…
In 1909 Borel defined normality as a notion of randomness of the digits of the representation of a real number over certain base (fractional expansion). If we think the representation of a number over a base as an infinite sequence of…
We say that a word $w$ on a totally ordered alphabet avoids the word $v$ if there are no subsequences in $w$ order-equivalent to $v$. In this paper we suggest a new approach to the enumeration of words on at most $k$ letters avoiding a…
We consider words over a binary alphabet. A word $w$ is overlap-free if it does not have factors (blocks of consecutive letters) of the form $uvuvu$ for nonempty $u$. Let $M(w)$ denote the number of positions that are middle positions of…