On One Sufficient Condition for the Irregularity of Languages

Abstract

The article deals with a proof of one sufficient condition for the irregularity of languages. This condition is related to the properties of certain relations on the set of natural numbers, namely relations possessing the property, referred to as strong separability. In turn, this property is related to the possibility of decomposition of an arithmetic vector space into a direct sum of subspaces. We specify languages in some finite alphabet through the properties of a vector that shows the number of occurrences of each letter of the alphabet in the language words and is called the word distribution vector in the word. The main result of the paper is the proof of the theorem according to which a language given in such a way that the vector of distribution of letters in each word of the language belongs to a strongly separable relation on the set of natural numbers is not regular. Such an approach to the proof of irregularity is based on the Myhill-Nerode theorem known in the theory of formal languages, according to which the necessary and sufficient condition for the regularity of a language consists in the finiteness of the index of some equivalence relation defined by the language.The article gives a definition of a strongly separable relation on the set of natural numbers and examines examples of such relations. Also describes a construction covering a considerably wide class of strongly separable relations and connected with decomposition of the even-dimensional vector space into a direct sum of subspaces of the same dimension. Gives the proof of the lemma to assert an availability of an infinite sequence of vectors, any two terms of which are pairwise disjoint, i.e. one belongs to some strongly separable relation, and the other does not. Based on this lemma, there is a proof of the main theorem on the irregularity of a language defined by a strongly separable relation.This result sheds additional light on the effectiveness of regularity / irregularity analysis tools based on the Myhill-Neroud theorem. In addition, the proved theorem and analysis of some examples of strongly separable relations allows us to establish non-trivial connections between the theory of formal languages and the theory of linear spaces, which, as analysis of sources shows, is relevant.In terms of development of the obtained results, the problem of the general characteristic of strongly separable relations is of interest, as well as the analysis of other properties of numerical sets that are important from the point of view of regularity / irregularity analysis of languages.