ALCOMFT-TR-01-75

Ernst Althaus, Denys Duchier, Alexander Koller, Kurt Mehlhorn, Joachim Niehren and Sven Thiel
An Efficient Algorithm for the Configuration Problem of Dominance Graphs
MPI. Work package 2. May 2001.

Abstract: Dominance constraints are logical tree descriptions originating from automata theory that have multiple applications in computational linguistics. The satisfiability problem of dominance constraints is NP-complete. In most applications, however, only normal dominance constraints are used. The satisfiability problem of normal dominance constraints can be reduced in linear time to the configuration problem of dominance graphs, as shown recently. In this paper, we give a polynomial time algorithm testing configurability of dominance graphs (and thus satisfiability of normal dominance constraints). Previous to our work no polynomial time algorithms were known.

Postscript file: ALCOMFT-TR-01-75.ps.gz (125 kb).