Compilation Methods of Minimal Acyclic Finite-State Automata for Large Dictionaries

Abstract. We present a reflection on the evolution of the different methods for constructing minimal deterministic acyclic finite-state automata from a finite set of words. We outline the most important methods, including the traditional ones (which consist of the combination of two phases: insertion of words and minimization of the partial automaton) and the incremental algorithms (which add new words one by one and minimize the resulting automaton on-the-fly, being much faster and having significantly lower memory requirements). We analyze their main features in order to provide some improvements for incremental constructions, and a general architecture that is needed to implement large dictionaries in natural language processing (NLP) applications.

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2001
• Where: WIA
• Authors: Jorge Graña, Francisco-Mario Barcala, Miguel A. Alonso
• Keywords: Acyclic finite-state Automata, Artificial Intelligence, Lower Memory Requirements, Partial Automaton, WIA 2001