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Formal language
About: Formal language is a research topic. Over the lifetime, 5763 publications have been published within this topic receiving 154114 citations.
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01 Jun 1988
TL;DR: Strong grammatical abstraction tightens the correspondence so that top-down construction of incrementally-parsable internal representations is possible in any program that transforms a linguistic object from a representations in its concrete syntax to a representation in its abstract syntax or vice versa.
Abstract: Processors for programming languages and other formal languages typically use a concrete syntax to describe the user's view of a program and an abstract syntax to represent language structures internally. Grammatical abstraction is defined as a relationship between two context-free grammars. It formalizes the notion of one syntax being “more abstract” than another. Two variants of abstraction are presented. Weak grammatical abstraction supports (i) the construction during LR parsing of an internal representation that is closely related to the abstract syntax and (ii) incremental LR parsing using that internal representation as its base. Strong grammatical abstraction tightens the correspondence so that top-down construction of incrementally-parsable internal representations is possible. These results arise from an investigation into language-based editing systems, but apply to any program that transforms a linguistic object from a representation in its concrete syntax to a representation in its abstract syntax or vice versa.
31 citations
01 Apr 1990
TL;DR: A series of representational techniques for expressing promises in first-order logic have properties that cohere well with the pre-theoretic concept of promising, including creation of intensional contexts.
Abstract: This paper proposes and discusses a series of representational techniques for expressing promises in first-order logic. It is argued that the proposed representations have properties that cohere well with our pre-theoretic concept of promising, including creation of intensional contexts. Also, representations of promises in other formal languages, and inferences with them, may be validated by translating the expressions into the first-order formalism proposed here. Finally, a brief discussion is given to indicate that the proposed representational techniques may be applied generally to other illocutionary forces (or propositional attitudes).
31 citations
TL;DR: Using this resuit, a number of decidability results and characterizations of closure properties for the three above mentioned families of trace languages are derived.
Abstract: A concurrent alphabet is a pair <£= <£, C>, where I is an alphabet and C is a relation over £, called the concurrency relation. Two words over Z are called C-equivalent, if they can be obtained from each other by successively interchanging adjacent symbols which are related by C. A trace (over <$) is now simply an équivalence class with respect to C-equivalence. This paper considers trace languages (i. e., sets of traces) as they are deflned by regular string languages in the following ways: (i) existentially regular trace languages (the trace language defined existentially by a regular string language L consists of ail traces which have a représentative in L), (ii) universally regular trace languages (the trace language defined universally by a regular string language L consists of ail traces which have all représentatives in L), and (iii) consistently regular trace languages (a regular string language L defines a consistently regular trace language T if and only if L is the union of all the traces in T). In particular, the main resuit of this paper characterizes those concurrent alphabets for which the family of existentially regular trace languages equals the family of universally regular trace languages. Furthermore, using this resuit, a number of decidability results and characterizations of closure properties for the three above mentioned families of trace languages are derived. Résumé. Un alphabet concurrent est un couple ̂ —<£, *C>, où £ est un alphabet et C est une relation sur E, appelée relation de concurrence. Deux mots sur Valphabet S sont dits C-équivalents, s'ils peuvent se déduire Vun de Vautre par interversions successives de symboles adjacents en relation par C. Une trace (sur #) est une classe d'équivalence par rapport à la C-équivalence. Dans cet article, on considère des langages de trace comme étant des langages réguliers définis de diverses façons : (i) langages de trace réguliers existentiels (le langage de trace défini « existentiellement » par un langage régulier L est constitué de toutes les traces ayant un représentant dans L), (ii) langages de trace réguliers universels (le langage de trace défini « universellement » par un langage régulier est constitué de toutes les traces qui ont tous leurs représentants dans L)t (iii) langages de trace réguliers consistent (un langage régulier L définit un langage de trace régulier et consistent T si et seulement si L est l'union de toutes les traces dans T). En particulier, le résultat principal de cet article caractérise les alphabets concurrents pour lesquels la famille des langages de trace réguliers existentiels est égal à la famille des langages de trace réguliers universels. De plus, en utilisant ce résultat, on obtient divers résultats de décidabilité et des caractérisations des propriétés de clôtures relatives aux trois familles mentionnées ci-dessus. (*) Received in October 1984, revised in June 1985. () Institute of .Applied Mathematics and Computer Science, University of Leiden, Wassenaarseweg 80, Leiden, The Netherlands. () Institute of Applied Mathematics and Computer Science, University of Leiden, Wassenaarseweg 80, Leiden, The Netherlands. On leave from: Institutes for Information Processing, IIG, Technical University of Graz and Austrian Computer Society, Schiessstattgasse 4a, A-8010 Graz, Austria. informatique théorique et Applications/Theoretical Informaties and Applications 0296-1598/86/02103 17/S3.70/© Gauthier-Villars 104 IJ. J. AALBERSBERG, E. WELZL
31 citations
25 Jan 2012
TL;DR: This work formalizes the first probabilistic language that exhibits continuous probability distributions, the ability to naturally express custom probabilism models, and probability density functions (PDFs), and serves as a foundational framework for extending the ideas to more general languages.
Abstract: There has been great interest in creating probabilistic programming languages to simplify the coding of statistical tasks; however, there still does not exist a formal language that simultaneously provides (1) continuous probability distributions, (2) the ability to naturally express custom probabilistic models, and (3) probability density functions (PDFs). This collection of features is necessary for mechanizing fundamental statistical techniques. We formalize the first probabilistic language that exhibits these features, and it serves as a foundational framework for extending the ideas to more general languages. Particularly novel are our type system for absolutely continuous (AC) distributions (those which permit PDFs) and our PDF calculation procedure, which calculates PDF s for a large class of AC distributions. Our formalization paves the way toward the rigorous encoding of powerful statistical reformulations.
31 citations
Posted Content•
TL;DR: This paper shows how DATR, a widely used formal language for lexical knowledge representation, can be used to define an LTAG lexicon as an inheritance hierarchy with internal lexical rules.
Abstract: This paper shows how DATR, a widely used formal language for lexical knowledge representation, can be used to define an LTAG lexicon as an inheritance hierarchy with internal lexical rules. A bottom-up featural encoding is used for LTAG trees and this allows lexical rules to be implemented as covariation constraints within feature structures. Such an approach eliminates the considerable redundancy otherwise associated with an LTAG lexicon.
31 citations