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New Analytic Techniques for Proving the Inherent Ambiguity of Context-Free Languages

Author Florent Koechlin

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Florent Koechlin
  • Université de Lorraine, CNRS, Inria, LORIA, F-54000 Nancy, France

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Florent Koechlin. New Analytic Techniques for Proving the Inherent Ambiguity of Context-Free Languages. In 42nd IARCS Annual Conference on Foundations of Software Technology and Theoretical Computer Science (FSTTCS 2022). Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs), Volume 250, pp. 41:1-41:22, Schloss Dagstuhl – Leibniz-Zentrum für Informatik (2022)
https://doi.org/10.4230/LIPIcs.FSTTCS.2022.41

Abstract

This article extends the work of Flajolet [Philippe Flajolet, 1987] on the relation between generating series and inherent ambiguity. We first propose an analytic criterion to prove the infinite inherent ambiguity of some context-free languages, and apply it to give a purely combinatorial proof of the infinite ambiguity of Shamir’s language. Then we show how Ginsburg and Ullian’s criterion on unambiguous bounded languages translates into a useful criterion on generating series, which generalises and simplifies the proof of the recent criterion of Makarov [Vladislav Makarov, 2021]. We then propose a new criterion based on generating series to prove the inherent ambiguity of languages with interlacing patterns, like {a^nb^ma^pb^q | n≠p or m≠q, with n,m,p,q ∈ ℕ^*}. We illustrate the applicability of these two criteria on many examples.

Subject Classification

ACM Subject Classification
  • Theory of computation → Grammars and context-free languages
Keywords
  • Inherent ambiguity
  • Infinite ambiguity
  • Ambiguity
  • Generating series
  • Context-free languages
  • Bounded languages

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