Acceptors for the derivation languages of phrase-structure grammars

Johnson M. Hart
1974 Information and Control  
This paper studies the representation of the derivations in phrase-structure grammars by the use of "derivation languages." The words in the derivation language of a grammar correspond exactly to the "syntactical graphs" of Loeckx (1970). Furthermore, the derivation languages generalize the representation of context-free derivation trees in prefix form. "Graph automata" are developed as acceptors of the derivation languages. The graph automata generalize the theory of tree automata as studied in connection with contextfree grammars.
doi:10.1016/s0019-9958(74)90810-9 fatcat:pffbexrmkzgh3lc6yrj3wfmcai