A Canonical Semi-Deterministic Transducer

TL;DR

This paper establishes a canonical form for semi-deterministic transducers, introduces a learning algorithm using translation queries, and proves limitations of learning with only domain knowledge.

Contribution

It provides the first canonical form for semi-deterministic transducers and an algorithm for their learning via translation queries.

Findings

Existence of a canonical form for semi-deterministic transducers.

Development of a learning algorithm using translation queries.

Proof that no learning algorithm exists using only domain knowledge.

Abstract

We prove the existence of a canonical form for semi-deterministic transducers with incomparable sets of output strings. Based on this, we develop an algorithm which learns semi-deterministic transducers given access to translation queries. We also prove that there is no learning algorithm for semi-deterministic transducers that uses only domain knowledge.