Chomsky hierarchy

About: Chomsky hierarchy is a(n) research topic. Over the lifetime, 601 publication(s) have been published within this topic receiving 31067 citation(s). The topic is also known as: Chomsky–Schützenberger hierarchy.

Introduction to Automata Theory, Languages, and Computation

Abstract: This book is a rigorous exposition of formal languages and models of computation, with an introduction to computational complexity. The authors present the theory in a concise and straightforward manner, with an eye out for the practical applications. Exercises at the end of each chapter, including some that have been solved, help readers confirm and enhance their understanding of the material. This book is appropriate for upper-level computer science undergraduates who are comfortable with mathematical arguments.

Three models for the description of language

Abstract: We investigate several conceptions of linguistic structure to determine whether or not they can provide simple and "revealing" grammars that generate all of the sentences of English and only these. We find that no finite-state Markov process that produces symbols with transition from state to state can serve as an English grammar. Furthermore, the particular subclass of such processes that produce n -order statistical approximations to English do not come closer, with increasing n , to matching the output of an English grammar. We formalize-the notions of "phrase structure" and show that this gives us a method for describing language which is essentially more powerful, though still representable as a rather elementary type of finite-state process. Nevertheless, it is successful only when limited to a small subset of simple sentences. We study the formal properties of a set of grammatical transformations that carry sentences with phrase structure into new sentences with derived phrase structure, showing that transformational grammars are processes of the same elementary type as phrase-structure grammars; that the grammar of English is materially simplified if phrase structure description is limited to a kernel of simple sentences from which all other sentences are constructed by repeated transformations; and that this view of linguistic structure gives a certain insight into the use and understanding of language.

Some Concepts and Consequences of the Theory of Government and Binding

Abstract: Noam Chomsky, more than any other researcher, has radically restructured the study of human language over the past several decades. While the study of government and binding is an outgrowth of Chomsky's earlier work in transformational grammar, it represents a significant shift in focus and a new direction of investigation into the fundamentals of linguistic theory.This monograph consolidates and extends this new approach. It serves as a concise introduction to government-binding theory, applies it to several new domains of empirical data, and proposes some revisions to the principles of the theory that lead to greater unification, descriptive scope, and explanatory depth.Earlier work in the theory of grammar was concerned primarily with rule systems. The accent in government-binding theory, however, is on systems of principles of universal grammar. In the course of this book, Chomsky proposes and evaluates various general principles that limit and constrain the types of rules that are possible, and the ways they interact and function. In particular, he proposes that rule systems are in fact highly restricted in variety: only a finite number of grammars are attainable in principle, and these fall into a limited set of types.Another consequence of this shift in focus is the change of emphasis from derivations to representations. The major topic in the study of syntactic representations is the analysis of empty categories, which is a central theme of the book. After his introductory comments and a chapter on the variety of rule system, Chomsky takes up, in turn, the general properties of empty categories, the functional determination of empty categories, parasitic gaps, and binding theory and the typology of empty categories.Noam Chomsky is Institute Professor at MIT. The book is the sixth in the series Linguistic Inquiry Monographs, edited by Samuel Jay Keyser.