Related papers: On long words avoiding Zimin patterns
Any finite word $w$ of length $n$ contains at most $n+1$ distinct palindromic factors. If the bound $n+1$ is reached, the word $w$ is called rich. The number of rich words of length $n$ over an alphabet of cardinality $q$ is denoted…
In this paper, we study the relation between periodicity of two-dimensional words and their abelian pattern complexity. A pattern $\cal{P}$ in $\mathbb{Z}^n$ is the set of all translations of some finite subset $F$ of $\mathbb{Z}^n$. An…
With Zipf's law being originally and most famously observed for word frequency, it is surprisingly limited in its applicability to human language, holding over no more than three to four orders of magnitude before hitting a clear break in…
Two words are $k$-binomially equivalent if each subword of length at most $k$ occurs the same number of times in both words. The $k$-binomial complexity of an infinite word is a counting function that maps $n$ to the number of $k$-binomial…
Fraenkel and Simpson showed that the number of distinct squares in a word of length n is bounded from above by 2n, since at most two distinct squares have their rightmost, or last, occurrence begin at each position. Improvements by Ilie to…
The method we have applied in "A. Bernini, L. Ferrari, R. Pinzani, Enumerating permutations avoiding three Babson-Steingrimsson patterns, Ann. Comb. 9 (2005), 137--162" to count pattern avoiding permutations is adapted to words. As an…
The set of all avoidable patterns in n or fewer letters can be avoided on an alphabet with 2(n+2) letters.
Zipf's law is a fundamental paradigm in the statistics of written and spoken natural language as well as in other communication systems. We raise the question of the elementary units for which Zipf's law should hold in the most natural way,…
Babson and Steingr\'{\i}msson introduced generalized permutation patterns that allow the requirement that two adjacent letters in a pattern must be adjacent in the permutation. We consider n-permutations that avoid the generalized pattern…
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 large family of words must contain two words that are similar. We investigate several problems where the measure of similarity is the length of a common subsequence. We construct a family of n^{1/3} permutations on n letters, such that…
In this paper we consider the following problems: how many different subsets of Sigma^n can occur as set of all length-n factors of a finite word? If a subset is representable, how long a word do we need to represent it? How many such…
Enumeration problems related to words avoiding patterns as well as permutations that contain the pattern $123$ exactly once have been studied in great detail. However, the problem of enumerating words that contain the pattern $123$ exactly…
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…
We introduce new avoidability problems for words by considering equivalence relations, k-abelian equivalences, which lie properly in between equality and commutative equality, i.e. abelian equality. For two k-abelian equivalent words the…
Let $f_W(n)$ be the number of different factors of length $n$ appearing in $W$. A classical result of Morse and Hedlund, stated in 1938, asserts that an infinite word $W$ is ultimately periodic if and only if $f_W(n)\leq n$ for some $n\in…
If $x$ is a non-empty string then the repetition $xx$ is called a tandem repeat. Similarly, a tandem in a two dimensional array $X$ is a configuration consisting of a same primitive block $W$ that touch each other with one side or corner.…
Free words are elements of a free monoid, generated over an alphabet via the binary operation of concatenation. Casually speaking, a free word is a finite string of letters. Henceforth, we simply refer to them as words. Motivated by recent…
A word is "crucial" with respect to a given set of "prohibited words" (or simply "prohibitions") if it avoids the prohibitions but it cannot be extended to the right by any letter of its alphabet without creating a prohibition. A "minimal…
A square is the concatenation of a nonempty word with itself. A word has period p if its letters at distance p match. The exponent of a nonempty word is the quotient of its length over its smallest period. In this article we give a proof of…