Published online by Cambridge University Press: 15 August 2002
We prove that for each positive integer n, the finite commutative languageEn = c(a 1 a 2...an ) possesses a test set of size at most 5n. Moreover, it is shown that each test set for E n has at least n-1 elements. The result is then generalized to commutative languages L containing a word w such that (i) alph(w) = alph}(L); and (ii) each symbol a ∈ alph}(L) occurs at least twice in w if it occurs at least twice in some word of L: each such L possesses a test set of size 11n, where n = Card(alph(L)). The considerations rest on the analysis of some basic types of word equations.