Adjoining universal inverses to families of elements of free monoids

Abstract

Let $<X>$ be the free monoid on a generating set $X$, and suppose one adjoins to $<X>$ universal 2-sided inverses to a finite set $S$ of its elements. We note an elementary algorithm which yields a normal form for elements of the resulting monoid $M$. We then show that if $S$ is allowed to be infinite, a similar normal form exists, though it cannot necessarily be computed algorithmically. We raise a couple of questions. We note work by others on the related topic of monoids presented by finite families of relations of the form $w = 1$.