This paper discusses the fundamental combinatorial question of whether or not, for a given string α, there exists a morphism σ such that σ is unambiguous with respect to α, i.e. there exists no other morphism τ satisfying τ(α) = σ(α). While Freydenberger et al. [Int. J. Found. Comput. Sci. 17 (2006) 601–628] characterise those strings for which there exists an unambiguous nonerasing morphism σ, little is known about the unambiguity of erasing morphisms, i.e. morphisms that map symbols onto the empty string. The present paper demonstrates that, in contrast to the main result by Freydenberger et al., the existence of an unambiguous erasing morphism for a given string can essentially depend on the size of the target alphabet of the morphism. In addition to this, those strings for which there exists an erasing morphism over an infinite target alphabet are characterised, complexity issues are discussed and some sufficient conditions for the (non-)existence of unambiguous erasing morphisms are given.

Parikh matrices have become a useful tool for investigation of subword structure of words. Several generalizations of this concept have been considered. Based on the concept of formal power series, we describe a general framework covering most of these generalizations. In addition, we provide a new characterization of binary amiable words – words having a common Parikh matrix.

We define H- and EH-expressions as extensions of regular expressions by adding homomorphic and iterated homomorphic replacement as new operations, resp. The definition is analogous to the extension given by Gruska in order to characterize context-free languages. We compare the families of languages obtained by these extensions with the families of regular, linear context-free, context-free, and EDT0L languages. Moreover, relations to language families based on patterns, multi-patterns, pattern expressions, H-systems and uniform substitutions are also investigated. Furthermore, we present their closure properties with respect to TRIO operations and discuss the decidability status and complexity of fixed and general membership, emptiness, and the equivalence problem.

We display a complexity notion based on the syntax of a tree series which yields two distinct hierarchies, one within the class of recognizable tree series and another one in the class of non-recognizable tree series.