Transforming lattices into non-deterministic automata with optional null arcs
Mark Seligman, Christian Boitet, Boubaker Meddeb-Hamrouni · 1998
The problem of transforming a lattice into a non-deterministic finite state automaton is non-trivial. We present a transformation algorithm which tracks, for each node of an automaton under construction, the larcs which it reflects and the lattice nodes at their origins and extremities. An extension of the algorithm permits the inclusion of null, or epsilon, arcs in the output automaton. The algorithm has been successfully applied to lattices derived from dictionaries, i.e. very large corpora of strings.