From the text: Grammatical Inference (GI) is concerned with learning automata, grammars, and other objects that make it possible to generate, derive, represent, or recognize formal languages when given some information about the languages. The algorithms, techniques, and theoretical results which have been obtained in the field are used in a variety of very different applications, including natural language, bioinformatics, psychology, software engineering, and many others.
The special issue includes papers on a variety of topics, showing some of the key theoretical questions under scrutiny in the community.