Abstract

A new investigation of the complexity of language identification is undertaken using the notion of reduction from recursion theory and complexity theory. The approach, referred to as the intrinsic complexity of language identification, employs notions of ‘weak ’ and ‘strong ’ reduction between learnable classes of languages. The intrinsic complexity of several classes is considered and the results agree with the intuitive difficulty of learning these classes. Several complete classes are shown for both the reductions and it is also established that the weak and strong reductions are distinct. An interesting result is that the self referential class of Wiehagen in which the minimal element of every language is a grammar for the language and the class of pattern languages introduced by Angluin are equivalent in the strong sense. This study has been influenced by a similar treatment of function identification by Freivalds, Kinber, and Smith. 1

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