Conjunctive grammar explained

Conjunctive grammars are a class of formal grammarsstudied in formal language theory.They extend the basic type of grammars,the context-free grammars,with a conjunction operation.Besides explicit conjunction,conjunctive grammars allow implicit disjunctionrepresented by multiple rules for a single nonterminal symbol,which is the only logical connective expressible in context-free grammars.Conjunction can be used, in particular,to specify intersection of languages.A further extension of conjunctive grammarsknown as Boolean grammarsadditionally allows explicit negation.

The rules of a conjunctive grammar are of the form

A \to \alpha _{1} \And \ldots \And \alpha _{m}

where

A is a nonterminal and\alpha _{1} , ..., \alpha _{m} are strings formed of symbols in \Sigma and V (finite sets of terminal and nonterminal symbols respectively).Informally, such a rule asserts that every string w over \Sigma that satisfies each of the syntactical conditions representedby \alpha _{1} , ..., \alpha _{m} therefore satisfies the condition defined by A .

Formal definition

A conjunctive grammar

G is defined by the 4-tuple G = (V, \Sigma, R, S) where

1. is a finite set; each element

v\in V is called a nonterminal symbol or a variable. Each variable represents a different type of phrase or clause in the sentence. Variables are also sometimes called syntactic categories.

1. is a finite set of terminals, disjoint from, which make up the actual content of the sentence. The set of terminals is the alphabet of the language defined by the grammar .
2. is a finite set of productions, each of the form

A → \alpha _{1\&\ldots\&\alpha} _{m} for some A in V and \alpha _{i} \in (V\cup\Sigma) ^{*} . The members of are called the rules or productions of the grammar.

1. is the start variable (or start symbol), used to represent the whole sentence (or program). It must be an element of .

It is common to list all right-hand sides for the same left-hand side on the same line, using | (the pipe symbol) to separate them. Rules

A → \alpha _{1\&\ldots\&\alpha} _{m} and A → \beta _{1\&\ldots\&\beta} _{n} can hence be written as A → \alpha _{1\&\ldots\&\alpha} _{m | \beta} _{1\&\ldots\&\beta} _{n} .

Two equivalent formal definitionsof the language specified by a conjunctive grammar exist.One definition is based upon representing the grammaras a system of language equations with union, intersection and concatenationand considering its least solution.The other definition generalizesChomsky's generative definition of the context-free grammarsusing rewriting of terms over conjunction and concatenation.

Definition by derivation

For any strings

u, v \in (V \cup \Sigma \cup \{ “(” , “ \& ” , “)” \}) ^{*} , we say directly yields, written as u ⇒ v , if

• either there is a rule

A → \alpha _{1} \& \ldots \& \alpha _{m} \in R such that u = u _{1} A u _{2} and v = u _{1} (\alpha _{1} \& \ldots \& \alpha _{m)} u _{2} ,

• or there exists a string

w \in (V \cup \Sigma) ^{*} such that u = u _{1} (w \& \ldots \& w) u _{2} and v = u _{1} w u _{2} .

For any string

w \in \Sigma ^{*} , we say generates, written as S \stackrel{*}{ ⇒ } w , if \exists k\geq 1 \exists u _{1} , … , u _{k} \in (V \cup \Sigma \cup \{ “(” , “ \& ” , “)” \}) ^{*} such that S = u _{1} ⇒ u _{2} ⇒ … ⇒ u _{k} = w .

The language of a grammar

G = (V, \Sigma, R, S) is the set of all strings it generates.

Example

The grammar

G = (\{S, A, B, C, D\}, \{a, b, c\}, R, S) , with productions S → AB \& DC ,A → aA | \epsilon ,B → bBc | \epsilon ,C → cC | \epsilon ,D → aDb | \epsilon ,

is conjunctive. A typical derivation is

S ⇒ (AB \& DC) ⇒ (aAB \& DC) ⇒ (aB \& DC) ⇒ (abBc \& DC) ⇒ (abc \& DC) ⇒ (abc \& aDbC) ⇒ (abc \& abC) ⇒ (abc \& abcC) ⇒ (abc \& abc) ⇒ abc It can be shown that L(G) = \{a ^{nb} ^{nc} ^{n:n} \ge 0 \} . The language is not context-free, proved by the pumping lemma for context-free languages.

Parsing algorithms

Though the expressive power of conjunctive grammarsis greater than those of context-free grammars,conjunctive grammars retain some of the latter.Most importantly, there are generalizations of the main context-free parsing algorithms,including the linear-time recursive descent,the cubic-time generalized LR,the cubic-time Cocke-Kasami-Younger,as well as Valiant's algorithm running as fast as matrix multiplication.

Theoretical properties

A property that is undecidable already for context-free languages or finite intersections of them, must be undecidable also for conjunctive grammars; these include: emptiness, finiteness, regularity, context-freeness,^[1]

The family of conjunctive languages is closed under union, intersection, concatenation and Kleene star, but not under string homomorphism, prefix, suffix, and substring.Closure under complement and under ε-free string homomorphism are still open problems (as of 2001).^[3]

The expressive power of grammars over a one-letter alphabet has been researched.

This work provided a basisfor the study of language equations of a more general form.

Synchronized alternating pushdown automata

Aizikowitz and Kaminski^[4] introduced a new class of pushdown automata (PDA) called synchronized alternating pushdown automata (SAPDA). They proved it to be equivalent to conjunctive grammars in the same way as nondeterministic PDAs are equivalent to context-free grammars.

External links

• Web site: Artur Jeż . Conjunctive grammars generate non-regular unary languages . . 2007 . 5 November 2019.
• Web site: Alexander Okhotin's page on conjunctive grammars . 9 October 2011 . 5 November 2019.
• Web site: Alexander Okhotin . Nine open problems for conjunctive and Boolean grammars . Bulletin of the EATCS . 2007. https://web.archive.org/web/20070929110312/http://www.tucs.fi/publications/insight.php?id=tOkhotin06a. 2007-09-29.
• Alexander Okhotin . 10.1016/j.cosrev.2013.06.001 . Conjunctive and Boolean grammars: The true general case of the context-free grammars . . 9 . 2013 . 27–59 . This paper supersedes the earlier surveys, “An overview of conjunctive grammars” (Bulletin of the EATCS, 2004) and “Nine open problems for conjunctive and Boolean grammars” .
• Artur . Jeż . Conjunctive grammars generate non-regular unary languages . International Journal of Foundations of Computer Science . 19 . 3 . 597–615 . 2008 . 10.1142/S012905410800584X . Technical report version (pdf)

Notes and References

1. Given two conjunctive grammars, is the first's generated language a subset of / equal to the second's?
2. Given a conjunctive grammar, is its generated language empty / finite / regular / context-free? inclusion and equivalence.^[1]
3. Conjunctive Grammars . Alexander Okhotin . Journal of Automata, Languages and Combinatorics . 6 . 4 . 519 - 535 . 2001 .
4. Book: Aizikowitz. Tamar. Computer Science – Theory and Applications. Kaminski. Michael. LR(0) Conjunctive Grammars and Deterministic Synchronized Alternating Pushdown Automata. 6651. 2011. 345–358. 0302-9743. 10.1007/978-3-642-20712-9_27. Lecture Notes in Computer Science. 978-3-642-20711-2.