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Description of developmental languages using recurrence systems

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Abstract

Recurrence systems have been devised to describe formally certain types of biological developments. A recurrence system specifies a formal language associated with the development of an organism. The family of languages defined by recurrence systems is an extension of some interesting families of languages, including the family of context-free languages. Some normal-form theorems are proved and the equivalence of the family of recurrence languages to a previously studied family of developmental languages (EOL-languages) is shown. Various families of developmental and other formal languages are characterized using recurrence systems. Some closure properties are also discussed.

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Herman, G.T., Lindenmayer, A. & Rozenberg, G. Description of developmental languages using recurrence systems. Math. Systems Theory 8, 316–341 (1974). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF01780579

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF01780579

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