Compiling Rewrite Rules to Finite-State Transducers with the Worsening Trick
Finite-state transducers (FSTs) are essential for modeling string rewriting in computational linguistics and natural language processing (NLP), particularly for phonological and morphological rewrite rules. Compiling general rewrite rules of the form $A \to B / L \, \_ \, R$, where $A$, $B$, $L$, and $R$ are arbitrary regular languages, is complex due to overlapping matches and context constraints. Traditional methods, such as those by Kaplan and Kay or Karttunen, rely on intricate transducer compositions with auxiliary markers. This paper presents a compact compilation scheme based on the "worsening trick'': generate all legal rewrite candidates, then filter candidates that are worse tha...
| Authors | Mans Hulden, Michael Ginn |
|---|---|
| Primary category | cs.FL |
| Published | 8 June 2026 |
| Last updated at source | 8 June 2026 |
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