The Chomsky Hierarchy comprises four types of languages and their associated grammars and machines. Language Grammar Machine Example

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1 Grammars. Numeric functions (Chapter 4, Sections 4.6, 4.7) CmSc 365 Theory of Computation 1. Grammars Grammars are language generators. They consist of an alphabet of terminal symbols, alphabet of non-terminal symbols, a starting symbol and rules. Each language, generated by some grammar, can be recognized by some automaton. Languages (and the corresponding ) can be classified according to the minimal automaton sufficient to recognize them. Such classification, known as Chomsky Hierarchy, has been defined by Noam Chomsky, a distinguished linguist with major contributions to linguistics. The Chomsky Hierarchy comprises four types of and their associated and machines. Type 3 Language Grammar Machine Example Regular Regular Right-linear Left-linear Deterministic or nondeterministic finitestate automata a* Type 2 Context-free Context-free Nondeterministic pushdown automata a b Type 1 Context-sensitive Context-sensitive Linear-bound automata a b c Type 0 Recursive and recursively enumerable Unrestricted Turing machines Any computable function Regular expressions do not have non-terminal symbols, instead they have rules to describe expressions. Context-free use terminal and non-terminal symbols. Their rules have a restriction - only one non-terminal symbol in their left-hand side Unrestricted - the rules of these do not have the restriction above - their left-hand sides may contain any string of terminal and /or non-terminal symbols, provided there is at least one non-terminal symbol. 1

2 The types of form a strict hierarchy; that is, regular context-free context-sensitive recursive recursively enumerable. The distinction between can be seen by examining the structure of the grammar rules of their grammar, or the nature of the automata which can be used to identify them. Type 3 - Regular Languages As we have discussed, a regular language is one which can be represented by a regular grammar, described using a regular expression, or accepted using an FSA. There are two kinds of regular grammar: Right-linear (right-regular), with rules of the form A B or A, where A and B are single non-terminal symbols, is a terminal symbol Parse trees with these are right-branching. Left-linear (left-regular), with rules of the form A B or A Parse trees with these are left-branching Examples of regular are pattern matching (regular expressions) Type 2 - Context-Free Languages A Context-Free Grammar (CFG) is one whose production rules are of the form: A where A is any single non-terminal, and is any combination of terminals and non-terminals. The minimal automaton that recognizes context-free is a push-down automaton. It uses stack when expanding the non-terminal symbols with the righthand side of the corresponding grammar rule. Examples of CFLs are some simple programming Type 1 - Context-Sensitive Languages Context-Sensitive may have more than one symbol on the left-handside of their grammar rules, provided that at least one of them is a non-terminal and the number of symbols on the left-hand-side does not exceed the number of symbols on the right-hand-side. Their rules have the form: 2

3 A where A is a single non-terminal symbol, and are any combination of terminals and non-terminals. Since we allow more than one symbol on the left-hand-side, we refer to those symbols other than the one we are replacing as the context of the replacement. The automaton which recognizes a context-sensitive language is called a linearbounded automaton: an FSA with a memory to store symbols in a list. Since the number of the symbols on the left-hand side is always smaller or equal to the number of the symbols on the right-hand side, the length of each derivation string is increased when applying a grammar rule. This length is bounded by the length of the input string. Thus a linear-bounded automaton always needs a finite list as its store Examples of context-sensitive are most programming Type 0 - Unrestricted (Free) Languages Unrestricted have no restrictions on their grammar rules, except that there must be at least one non-terminal on the left-hand-side. The rules have the form where and are arbitrary strings of terminal and non-terminal symbols and (the empty string) The type of automata which can recognize such a language is a Turing machine, with an infinitely long memory. Examples of unrestricted are almost all natural. Turing Machines and Grammars A language is recursively enumerable if there exists a Turing machine that accepts every string of the language, and does not accept strings that are not in the language. "Does not accept" is not the same as "reject" -- the Turing machine could go into an infinite loop instead, and never get around to either accepting or rejecting the string. The generated by unrestricted are precisely the recursively enumerable. Theorem. Any language generated by an unrestricted grammar is recursively enumerable. Theorem: A language is generated by an unrestricted grammar if and only if it is recursively enumerable. 3

4 Are all recursively enumerable? The answer is no. Regular and context-free are recursive. This means that a Turing machine can say whether a string belongs to the language or not. The complement of a recursive language is also a recursive language - follows from the fact that we can reverse the "yes" answer to a "no" answer. Recursive are also recursively enumerable - we can change the halting "no" configurations to configurations with non-halting states. However, there are recursively enumerable that are not recursive. They are generated by unrestricted. A Turing machine semidecides such - it can say whether a string belongs to the language. However, if the string does not belong to the language the machine never stops. The complement of recursively enumerable is not recursively enumerable - we cannot change a non-existing answer to a "yes" answer. Non-recursive cannot be generated by a grammar - there is no grammar that can describe them. Each formal grammar has a finite description and therefore can be considered as a string. Thus, the set of all formal is infinitely countable. The set of all over an alphabet is the power set of all strings over that alphabet. We have shown that power sets of infinite sets are not countable. Therefore there is no oneto-one match between and. 2. Numerical functions Recursive language - a language that can be decided by a Turing machine Recursive function - a function that can be computed by a Turing machine Why do we use the word "recursive"? It turns out that functions computable by a Turing machine can be represented by means of very simple, basic functions using composition and recursive definition. Three basic numerical functions, so simple that their computability is obvious: 1. Zero function: matches a tuple to zero z k (n 1,n 2, n k ) = 0 for any k 4

5 2. Identity function: matches a tuple to a number within the tuple: Id j,k (n 1,n 2, n k ) = n j, 0 < j k Example: id 3,5 (1,3,5,7,9) = 5 3. Successor function: defines the natural numbers: s(0) = 1 s(n) = n+1 Using these three functions we can define more complex functions. Examples: Addition: plus(m,0) = m plus(m,n+1) = s(plus(m,n)) Multiplication: mult(m,0) = 0 mult(m,n+1) = plus(m,mult(m,n)) It can be proved that all computable functions can be obtained from these primitive functions and vice versa - all functions that can be obtained are computable. Question: is f(x) = x 2, for x - real number, computable function? The answer is: No. The reason - we cannot represent all real numbers. 5