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TheoremStatement: Literature-sourcedProof: AI-generatedprecheck passjudge pass (gpt-5.6-terra)audited 2026-09-12
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NFAs can be constructed for union, concatenation, and Kleene star

Statement

Let L,KΣ be languages recognized by NFA's over the same alphabet Σ. Then LK, LK, and L are also recognized by NFA's over Σ.

Facts & Assumptions

Given: NFA's NL and NK over Σ with recognized languages L and K.

[L1]

By Acceptance of a word by an NFA and the recognized language, an NFA accepts a word exactly when some full computation path ends in an accepting state.

[L2]

By Boolean operations on languages over a fixed alphabet, LK is the set-theoretic union of the two languages.

[L3]

By Language concatenation, powers, and Kleene star, LK={uv:uL, vK} and L is the set of finite concatenations of words of L.

Proof

technique · direct
1.1

For union, first replace NL and NK by disjoint isomorphic copies. Add a fresh start state with ε-transitions to the copied start states, keep all copied transitions, and take the union of the two copied accepting sets as the new accepting set. By [L1] and [L2], every accepting run chooses one copy at the start and then stays inside that copy, so a word is accepted exactly when one of the two original machines accepts it. Thus the new language is LK.

L1L2givenconstruct
1.2

For concatenation, take disjoint copies of NL and NK, use the copied start state of NL as the new start state, add an ε-transition from each copied accepting state of NL to the copied start state of NK, and designate only the copied accepting states of NK as accepting. Then [L1] and [L3] show that a successful run is exactly a decomposition of the input as uv with uL and vK, so the new machine recognizes LK.

L1L3construct
1.3

For star, add a fresh start state, make it the only accepting state, add an ε-transition from it to the old start state of NL, and add ε-transitions from each old accepting state back to the fresh start state. By [L1] and [L3], every accepting run chooses finitely many factors from L, and every finite concatenation of words of L is accepted. Therefore the language recognized is L.

L1L3construct
2.1

Hence NFA's can be built for union, concatenation, and Kleene star.

step 1.1step 1.2step 1.3

Depends on

Used by

Nothing in the library uses this result yet.

Dependency tree · two levels

7 results within two dependency steps of this one, each drawn at its shortest distance from it. An arrow runs from a result to what uses it, so the chart reads left to right and ends at this result, which carries a heavier outline. Every node is a link to that result. Click elsewhere on the chart to enlarge it.

Sources