Repetitive subwords

Abstract

The central notionof thisthesisis repetitionsin words. We studyproblemsrelated to contiguous repetitions. More specifically we will consider repeating scattered subwords of non-primitive words, i.e. words which are complete repetitions of other words. We will present inequalities concerning these occurrences as well as giving apartial solutionto an openproblemposedby Salomaaet al. We will characterize languages, whichare closed under the operation ofduplication, thatis repeating any factor of a word. We alsogive newbounds onthe number of occurrencesof certain types of repetitions of words. We give a solution to an open problem posed by Calbrix and Nivat concerning regular languages consisting of non-primitive words. We alsopresentsomeresultsregarding theduplication closureoflanguages,among which a new proof to a problem of Bovet and Varricchio.