@techreport{TR-IC-98-02,
  number = {IC-98-02},
  author = {Kowaltowski, Tomasz and Lucchesi, Cláudio L. and Stolfi, Jorge},
  title = {Finite Automata and Efficient Lexicon Implementation},
  month = {January},
  year = {1998}, 
  institution = {Institute of Computing, University of Campinas},
  note = {In English, 12 pages.
    \par\selectlanguage{english}\textbf{Abstract}
      We describe a general technique for the encoding of lexical functions
      --- such as lexical classification, gender and number marking,
      inflections and conjugations --- using minimized acyclic finite-state
      automata.  This technique has been used to store a Portuguese lexicon
      with over 2 million entries in about 1 megabyte.  Unlike general file
      compression schemes, this representation allows random access to the
      stored data.  Moreover it allows the lexical functions and their
      inverses to be computed at negligible cost. The technique can be
      easily adapted to practically any language or lexical classification
      scheme, and this task does not require any knowledge of the programs
      or data structures.
  }
}