An Efficient Algorithm for the Configuration Problem of Dominance Graphs

Author: Ernst Althaus and Denys Duchier and Alexander Koller and Kurt Mehlhorn and Joachim Niehren and Sven Thiel

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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 \emphnormal 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.