Canonical feature space of a positive-semidefinite kernel ($\varphi (x)=[e_x]$)

On the finite formal span of symbols $e_x$, define $B(e_x,e_y)=k(x,y)$ and extend bilinearly. For a positive-semidefinite kernel, the null vectors of this positive semidefinite bilinear form form its radical of a bilinear form. Quotienting by that linear subspace gives an inner-product space and feature map $x\mapsto [e_x]$ with $⟨[e_x],[e_y]⟩=k(x,y)$. This construction works for degenerate and zero kernels.