Related papers: Factorization in Formal Languages
A language L is prefix-free if, whenever words u and v are in L and u is a prefix of v, then u=v. Suffix-, factor-, and subword-free languages are defined similarly, where "subword" means "subsequence". A language is bifix-free if it is…
In this paper, we extend the notion of Lyndon word to transfinite words. We prove two main results. We first show that, given a transfinite word, there exists a unique factorization in Lyndon words that are densely non-increasing, a…
Following Inoue et al., we define a word to be a repetition if it is a (fractional) power of exponent at least 2. A word has a repetition factorization if it is the product of repetitions. We study repetition factorizations in several…
A closed word (a.k.a. periodic-like word or complete first return) is a word whose longest border does not have internal occurrences, or, equivalently, whose longest repeated prefix is not right special. We investigate the structure of…
In this paper we consider the normalized lengths of the factors of some factorizations of random words. First, for the \emph{Lyndon factorization} of finite random words with $n$ independent letters drawn from a finite or infinite totally…
We introduce the finite-horizon first-order rank profile of a language $L \subseteq \Sigma^*$: the least quantifier rank needed by an $\mathrm{FO}[<]$ sentence to classify membership in $L$ correctly on all words of length at most $n$. The…
For a positive real $\alpha$, we can consider the additive submonoid $M$ of the real line that is generated by the nonnegative powers of $\alpha$. When $\alpha$ is transcendental, $M$ is a unique factorization monoid. However, when $\alpha$…
We consider factorizations of a finite group $G$ into conjugate subgroups, $G=A^{x_{1}}\cdots A^{x_{k}}$ for $A\leq G$ and $x_{1},\ldots ,x_{k}\in G$, where $A$ is nilpotent or solvable. First we exploit the split $BN$-pair structure of…
Let S be a finite set of words over an alphabet Sigma. The set S is said to be complete if every word w over the alphabet Sigma is a factor of some element of S*, i.e. w belongs to Fact(S*). Otherwise if S is not complete, we are interested…
We consider the set of finite random words $\mathcal A^\star$, with independent letters drawn from a finite or infinite totally ordered alphabet according to a general probability distribution. On a specific subset of $\mathcal A^\star$,…
In 2011, Fici and Lipt\'ak introduced prefix normal words. A binary word is prefix normal if it has no factor (substring) that contains more occurrences of the letter 1 than the prefix of the same length. Among the open problems regarding…
We present a new class of binary words: the prefix normal words. They are defined by the property that for any given length $k$, no factor of length $k$ has more $a$'s than the prefix of the same length. These words arise in the context of…
For a given language $L$, we study the languages $X$ such that for all distinct words $u, v \in L$, there exists a word $x \in X$ that appears a different number of times as a factor in $u$ and in $v$. In particular, we are interested in…
Simon's factorization theorem is a celebrated tool in algebraic automata theory, providing bounded-depth decompositions of words with respect to morphisms into finite semigroups. We develop an analogue of Simon's theorem for \emph{forests}…
A filtration of a formal language L by a sequence s maps L to the set of words formed by taking the letters of words of L indexed only by s. We consider the languages resulting from filtering by all arithmetic progressions. If L is regular,…
The mapping of lexical meanings to wordforms is a major feature of natural languages. While usage pressures might assign short words to frequent meanings (Zipf's law of abbreviation), the need for a productive and open-ended vocabulary,…
Given a formal language L specified in various ways, we consider the problem of determining if L is nonempty. If L is indeed nonempty, we find upper and lower bounds on the length of the shortest string in L.
Although in general there is no meaningful concept of factorization in fields, that in free associative algebras (over a commutative field) can be extended to their respective free field (universal field of fractions) on the level of…
In 1991 H\'ebrard introduced a factorization of words that turned out to be a powerful tool for the investigation of a word's scattered factors (also known as (scattered) subwords or subsequences). Based on this, first Karandikar and…
Most factorization invariants in the literature extract extremal factorization behavior, such as the maximum and minimum factorization lengths. Invariants of intermediate size, such as the mean, median, and mode factorization lengths are…