Learning Erasing Equal-Length Relational Pattern Languages in the Limit from Positive Data over Binary Alphabets

S. Mahmoud Mousawi, Sandra Zilles

Relational pattern languages generalize Angluin's pattern languages by requiring the strings substituted for repeated occurrences of a variable to stand in a given relation, rather than to be identical. We study erasing pattern languages under the equal-length relation, where all occurrences of a variable must be replaced by strings of the same length. Over alphabets with at least three letters, this class is known to be learnable in the limit from positive data. We show that over a binary alphabet it is not, which resolves an open question from earlier work. Our proof reveals that non-learnability already holds for the restricted subclass of languages generated by patterns that have exactly three maximal substrings of variables. We then show that patterns with at most two maximal substrings of variables are learnable in the limit from positive data for every alphabet of size at least two. If the target pattern is known to have at most one maximal substring of variables, this can even be achieved by an iterative learner, which updates its hypothesis using only the current example and its previous hypothesis.