In 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
In 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 generalized LR 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.
Phrase structure rules are a type of rewrite rule used to describe a given language's syntax and are closely associated with the early stages of transformational grammar, proposed by Noam Chomsky in 1957. They are used to break down a natural language sentence into its constituent parts, also known as syntactic categories, including both lexical categories and phrasal categories. A grammar that uses phrase structure rules is a type of phrase structure grammar. Phrase structure rules as they are commonly employed operate according to the constituency relation, and a grammar that employs phrase structure rules is therefore a constituency grammar; as such, it stands in contrast to dependency grammars, which are based on the dependency relation.
In computer science, the Cocke–Younger–Kasami algorithm 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.
In computer science, an LL parser is a top-down parser for a restricted context-free language. It parses the input from Left to right, performing Leftmost derivation of the sentence.
In computer science, a recursive descent parser is a kind of top-down parser built from a set of mutually recursive procedures where each such procedure implements one of the nonterminals of the grammar. Thus the structure of the resulting program closely mirrors that of the grammar it recognizes.
In computer science, a Simple LR or SLR parser is a type of LR parser with small parse tables and a relatively simple parser generator algorithm. As with other types of LR(1) parser, an SLR parser is quite efficient at finding the single correct bottom-up parse in a single left-to-right scan over the input stream, without guesswork or backtracking. The parser is mechanically generated from a formal grammar for the language.
A parse tree or parsing 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.
Parsing, 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.
Top-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.
An attribute grammar is a formal way to supplement a formal grammar with semantic information processing. Semantic information is stored in attributes associated with terminal and nonterminal symbols of the grammar. The values of attributes are the result of attribute evaluation rules associated with productions of the grammar. Attributes allow the transfer of information from anywhere in the abstract syntax tree to anywhere else, in a controlled and formal way.
In computer science, parsing reveals the grammatical structure of linear input text, as a first step in working out its meaning. Bottom-up parsing recognizes the text's lowest-level small details first, before its mid-level structures, and leaving the highest-level overall structure to last.
Montague grammar is an approach to natural language semantics, named after American logician Richard Montague. The Montague grammar is based on mathematical logic, especially higher-order predicate logic and lambda calculus, and makes use of the notions of intensional logic, via Kripke models. Montague pioneered this approach in the 1960s and early 1970s.
In 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. This is closer to how string recognition tends to be done in practice, e.g. by a recursive descent parser.
In computer science, a simple precedence parser is a type of bottom-up parser for context-free grammars that can be used only by simple precedence grammars.
ID/LP Grammars are a subset of Phrase Structure Grammars, differentiated from other formal grammars by distinguishing between immediate dominance (ID) and linear precedence (LP) constraints. Whereas traditional phrase structure rules incorporate dominance and precedence into a single rule, ID/LP Grammars maintains separate rule sets which need not be processed simultaneously. ID/LP Grammars are used in Computational Linguistics.
A definite clause grammar (DCG) is a way of expressing grammar, either for natural or formal languages, in a logic programming language such as Prolog. It is closely related to the concept of attribute grammars / affix grammars. DCGs are usually associated with Prolog, but similar languages such as Mercury also include DCGs. They are called definite clause grammars because they represent a grammar as a set of definite clauses in first-order logic.
Grammatical Framework (GF) is a programming language for writing grammars of natural languages. GF is capable of parsing and generating texts in several languages simultaneously while working from a language-independent representation of meaning. Grammars written in GF can be compiled into a platform independent format and then used from different programming languages including C and Java, C#, Python and Haskell. A companion to GF is the GF Resource Grammar Library, a reusable library for dealing with the morphology and syntax of a growing number of natural languages.
A formal grammar describes which strings from an alphabet of a formal language are valid according to the language's syntax. A grammar does not describe the meaning of the strings or what can be done with them in whatever context—only their form. A formal grammar is defined as a set of production rules for such strings in a formal language.
A 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.
