On Consensus Strings in Text Analysis

Abstract

The present paper is a pilot study introducing a concept of computational biology -the closest string problem (CSP) -into linguistics. In quantitative studies, texts can be represented as sequences, and for any given set of sequences one can solve a CSP. The solution is called a consensus string (CS), which is a sequence that is "as close as possible to all the given strings". In this article we solve some CSP's resulting from the study of a Hungarian poem and illustrate possible interpretations.