Transforming lattices into non-deterministic automata with optional null arcs

Abstract

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 lares 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.