Earley parserIn computer science, the Earley parser is an algorithm for parsing strings that belong to a given context-free language, though (depending on the variant) it may suffer problems with certain nullable grammars. The algorithm, named after its inventor, Jay Earley, is a chart parser that uses dynamic programming; it is mainly used for parsing in computational linguistics. It was first introduced in his dissertation in 1968 (and later appeared in an abbreviated, more legible, form in a journal).
ParsingParsing, syntax analysis, or syntactic analysis is the process of analyzing a string of symbols, either in natural language, computer languages or data structures, conforming to the rules of a formal grammar. The term parsing comes from Latin pars (orationis), meaning part (of speech). The term has slightly different meanings in different branches of linguistics and computer science. Traditional sentence parsing is often performed as a method of understanding the exact meaning of a sentence or word, sometimes with the aid of devices such as sentence diagrams.
Context-free grammarIn formal language theory, a context-free grammar (CFG) is a formal grammar whose production rules can be applied to a nonterminal symbol regardless of its context. In particular, in a context-free grammar, each production rule is of the form with a single nonterminal symbol, and a string of terminals and/or nonterminals ( can be empty). Regardless of which symbols surround it, the single nonterminal on the left hand side can always be replaced by on the right hand side.
CYK algorithmIn computer science, the Cocke–Younger–Kasami algorithm (alternatively called CYK, or CKY) is a parsing algorithm for context-free grammars published by Itiroo Sakai in 1961. The algorithm is named after some of its rediscoverers: John Cocke, Daniel Younger, Tadao Kasami, and Jacob T. Schwartz. It employs bottom-up parsing and dynamic programming. The standard version of CYK operates only on context-free grammars given in Chomsky normal form (CNF). However any context-free grammar may be algorithmically transformed into a CNF grammar expressing the same language .
Parse treeA parse tree or parsing tree or derivation tree or concrete syntax tree is an ordered, rooted tree that represents the syntactic structure of a string according to some context-free grammar. The term parse tree itself is used primarily in computational linguistics; in theoretical syntax, the term syntax tree is more common. Concrete syntax trees reflect the syntax of the input language, making them distinct from the abstract syntax trees used in computer programming.
LR parserIn computer science, LR parsers are a type of bottom-up parser that analyse deterministic context-free languages in linear time. There are several variants of LR parsers: SLR parsers, LALR parsers, Canonical LR(1) parsers, Minimal LR(1) parsers, and GLR parsers. LR parsers can be generated by a parser generator from a formal grammar defining the syntax of the language to be parsed. They are widely used for the processing of computer languages.
Parsing expression grammarIn computer science, a parsing expression grammar (PEG) is a type of analytic formal grammar, i.e. it describes a formal language in terms of a set of rules for recognizing strings in the language. The formalism was introduced by Bryan Ford in 2004 and is closely related to the family of top-down parsing languages introduced in the early 1970s. Syntactically, PEGs also look similar to context-free grammars (CFGs), but they have a different interpretation: the choice operator selects the first match in PEG, while it is ambiguous in CFG.
Top-down parsingTop-down parsing in computer science is a parsing strategy where one first looks at the highest level of the parse tree and works down the parse tree by using the rewriting rules of a formal grammar. LL parsers are a type of parser that uses a top-down parsing strategy. Top-down parsing is a strategy of analyzing unknown data relationships by hypothesizing general parse tree structures and then considering whether the known fundamental structures are compatible with the hypothesis.
Parser combinatorIn computer programming, a parser combinator is a higher-order function that accepts several parsers as input and returns a new parser as its output. In this context, a parser is a function accepting strings as input and returning some structure as output, typically a parse tree or a set of indices representing locations in the string where parsing stopped successfully. Parser combinators enable a recursive descent parsing strategy that facilitates modular piecewise construction and testing.
Ambiguous grammarIn computer science, an ambiguous grammar is a context-free grammar for which there exists a string that can have more than one leftmost derivation or parse tree. Every non-empty context-free language admits an ambiguous grammar by introducing e.g. a duplicate rule. A language that only admits ambiguous grammars is called an inherently ambiguous language. Deterministic context-free grammars are always unambiguous, and are an important subclass of unambiguous grammars; there are non-deterministic unambiguous grammars, however.
Chomsky normal formIn formal language theory, a context-free grammar, G, is said to be in Chomsky normal form (first described by Noam Chomsky) if all of its production rules are of the form: A → BC, or A → a, or S → ε, where A, B, and C are nonterminal symbols, the letter a is a terminal symbol (a symbol that represents a constant value), S is the start symbol, and ε denotes the empty string. Also, neither B nor C may be the start symbol, and the third production rule can only appear if ε is in L(G), the language produced by the context-free grammar G.
Context-sensitive grammarA context-sensitive grammar (CSG) is a formal grammar in which the left-hand sides and right-hand sides of any production rules may be surrounded by a context of terminal and nonterminal symbols. Context-sensitive grammars are more general than context-free grammars, in the sense that there are languages that can be described by a CSG but not by a context-free grammar. Context-sensitive grammars are less general (in the same sense) than unrestricted grammars.
Shift-reduce parserA shift-reduce parser is a class of efficient, table-driven bottom-up parsing methods for computer languages and other notations formally defined by a grammar. The parsing methods most commonly used for parsing programming languages, LR parsing and its variations, are shift-reduce methods. The precedence parsers used before the invention of LR parsing are also shift-reduce methods. All shift-reduce parsers have similar outward effects, in the incremental order in which they build a parse tree or call specific output actions.
Context-free languageIn formal language theory, a context-free language (CFL) is a language generated by a context-free grammar (CFG). Context-free languages have many applications in programming languages, in particular, most arithmetic expressions are generated by context-free grammars. Different context-free grammars can generate the same context-free language. Intrinsic properties of the language can be distinguished from extrinsic properties of a particular grammar by comparing multiple grammars that describe the language.
Probabilistic context-free grammarGrammar theory to model symbol strings originated from work in computational linguistics aiming to understand the structure of natural languages. Probabilistic context free grammars (PCFGs) have been applied in probabilistic modeling of RNA structures almost 40 years after they were introduced in computational linguistics. PCFGs extend context-free grammars similar to how hidden Markov models extend regular grammars. Each production is assigned a probability.
Noam ChomskyAvram Noam Chomsky (born December 7, 1928) is an American professor and public intellectual known for his work in linguistics, political activism, and social criticism. Sometimes called "the father of modern linguistics", Chomsky is also a major figure in analytic philosophy and one of the founders of the field of cognitive science. He is a laureate professor of linguistics at the University of Arizona and an institute professor emeritus at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).
Chomsky hierarchyThe Chomsky hierarchy (infrequently referred to as the Chomsky–Schützenberger hierarchy) in the fields of formal language theory, computer science, and linguistics, is a containment hierarchy of classes of formal grammars. A formal grammar describes how to form strings from a language's vocabulary (or alphabet) that are valid according to the language's syntax. Linguist Noam Chomsky theorized that four different classes of formal grammars existed that could generate increasingly complex languages.
Backus–Naur formIn computer science, Backus–Naur form (ˌbækəs_ˈnaʊər) or Backus normal form (BNF) is a metasyntax notation for context-free grammars, often used to describe the syntax of languages used in computing, such as computer programming languages, document formats, instruction sets and communication protocols. It is applied wherever exact descriptions of languages are needed: for instance, in official language specifications, in manuals, and in textbooks on programming language theory.
Chart parserIn computer science, a chart parser is a type of parser suitable for ambiguous grammars (including grammars of natural languages). It uses the dynamic programming approach—partial hypothesized results are stored in a structure called a chart and can be re-used. This eliminates backtracking and prevents a combinatorial explosion. Chart parsing is generally credited to Martin Kay. A common approach is to use a variant of the Viterbi algorithm. The Earley parser is a type of chart parser mainly used for parsing in computational linguistics, named for its inventor.
Context-sensitive languageIn formal language theory, a context-sensitive language is a language that can be defined by a context-sensitive grammar (and equivalently by a noncontracting grammar). Context-sensitive is one of the four types of grammars in the Chomsky hierarchy. Computationally, a context-sensitive language is equivalent to a linear bounded nondeterministic Turing machine, also called a linear bounded automaton. That is a non-deterministic Turing machine with a tape of only cells, where is the size of the input and is a constant associated with the machine.
