18 research outputs found
Minimization via duality
We show how to use duality theory to construct minimized versions of a wide class of automata. We work out three cases in detail: (a variant of) ordinary automata, weighted automata and probabilistic automata. The basic idea is that instead of constructing a maximal quotient we go to the dual and look for a minimal subalgebra and then return to the original category. Duality ensures that the minimal subobject becomes the maximally quotiented object
Automata Minimization: a Functorial Approach
In this paper we regard languages and their acceptors - such as deterministic
or weighted automata, transducers, or monoids - as functors from input
categories that specify the type of the languages and of the machines to
categories that specify the type of outputs. Our results are as follows:
A) We provide sufficient conditions on the output category so that
minimization of the corresponding automata is guaranteed.
B) We show how to lift adjunctions between the categories for output values
to adjunctions between categories of automata.
C) We show how this framework can be instantiated to unify several phenomena
in automata theory, starting with determinization, minimization and syntactic
algebras. We provide explanations of Choffrut's minimization algorithm for
subsequential transducers and of Brzozowski's minimization algorithm in this
setting.Comment: journal version of the CALCO 2017 paper arXiv:1711.0306
Syntactic Monoids in a Category
The syntactic monoid of a language is generalized to the level of a symmetric
monoidal closed category D. This allows for a uniform treatment of several
notions of syntactic algebras known in the literature, including the syntactic
monoids of Rabin and Scott (D = sets), the syntactic semirings of Polak (D =
semilattices), and the syntactic associative algebras of Reutenauer (D = vector
spaces). Assuming that D is an entropic variety of algebras, we prove that the
syntactic D-monoid of a language L can be constructed as a quotient of a free
D-monoid modulo the syntactic congruence of L, and that it is isomorphic to the
transition D-monoid of the minimal automaton for L in D. Furthermore, in case
the variety D is locally finite, we characterize the regular languages as
precisely the languages with finite syntactic D-monoids
Brzozowski's algorithm (co)algebraically
We give a new presentation of Brzozowski's algorithm to
minimize nite automata, using elementary facts from universal algebra
and coalgebra, and building on earlier work by Arbib and Manes on the
duality between reachability and observability. This leads to a simple
proof of its correctness and opens the door to further generalizations
Optimal Approximate Minimization of One-Letter Weighted Finite Automata
In this paper, we study the approximate minimization problem of weighted
finite automata (WFAs): to compute the best possible approximation of a WFA
given a bound on the number of states. By reformulating the problem in terms of
Hankel matrices, we leverage classical results on the approximation of Hankel
operators, namely the celebrated Adamyan-Arov-Krein (AAK) theory.
We solve the optimal spectral-norm approximate minimization problem for
irredundant WFAs with real weights, defined over a one-letter alphabet. We
present a theoretical analysis based on AAK theory, and bounds on the quality
of the approximation in the spectral norm and norm. Moreover, we
provide a closed-form solution, and an algorithm, to compute the optimal
approximation of a given size in polynomial time.Comment: 32 pages. arXiv admin note: substantial text overlap with
arXiv:2102.0686