2,052 research outputs found
Graph Interpolation Grammars as Context-Free Automata
A derivation step in a Graph Interpolation Grammar has the effect of scanning
an input token. This feature, which aims at emulating the incrementality of the
natural parser, restricts the formal power of GIGs. This contrasts with the
fact that the derivation mechanism involves a context-sensitive device similar
to tree adjunction in TAGs. The combined effect of input-driven derivation and
restricted context-sensitiveness would be conceivably unfortunate if it turned
out that Graph Interpolation Languages did not subsume Context Free Languages
while being partially context-sensitive. This report sets about examining
relations between CFGs and GIGs, and shows that GILs are a proper superclass of
CFLs. It also brings out a strong equivalence between CFGs and GIGs for the
class of CFLs. Thus, it lays the basis for meaningfully investigating the
amount of context-sensitiveness supported by GIGs, but leaves this
investigation for further research
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Automatic parsing of sports videos with grammars
Motivated by the analogies between languages and sports videos, we introduce a novel
approach for video parsing with grammars. It utilizes compiler techniques for integrating both semantic
annotation and syntactic analysis to generate a semantic index of events and a table of content for a given
sports video. The video sequence is first segmented and annotated by event detection with domain
knowledge. A grammar-based parser is then used to identify the structure of the video content.
Meanwhile, facilities for error handling are introduced which are particularly useful when the results of
automatic parsing need to be adjusted. As a case study, we have developed a system for video parsing in
the particular domain of TV diving programs. Experimental results indicate the proposed approach is
effectiv
TRX: A Formally Verified Parser Interpreter
Parsing is an important problem in computer science and yet surprisingly
little attention has been devoted to its formal verification. In this paper, we
present TRX: a parser interpreter formally developed in the proof assistant
Coq, capable of producing formally correct parsers. We are using parsing
expression grammars (PEGs), a formalism essentially representing recursive
descent parsing, which we consider an attractive alternative to context-free
grammars (CFGs). From this formalization we can extract a parser for an
arbitrary PEG grammar with the warranty of total correctness, i.e., the
resulting parser is terminating and correct with respect to its grammar and the
semantics of PEGs; both properties formally proven in Coq.Comment: 26 pages, LMC
Generalizing input-driven languages: theoretical and practical benefits
Regular languages (RL) are the simplest family in Chomsky's hierarchy. Thanks
to their simplicity they enjoy various nice algebraic and logic properties that
have been successfully exploited in many application fields. Practically all of
their related problems are decidable, so that they support automatic
verification algorithms. Also, they can be recognized in real-time.
Context-free languages (CFL) are another major family well-suited to
formalize programming, natural, and many other classes of languages; their
increased generative power w.r.t. RL, however, causes the loss of several
closure properties and of the decidability of important problems; furthermore
they need complex parsing algorithms. Thus, various subclasses thereof have
been defined with different goals, spanning from efficient, deterministic
parsing to closure properties, logic characterization and automatic
verification techniques.
Among CFL subclasses, so-called structured ones, i.e., those where the
typical tree-structure is visible in the sentences, exhibit many of the
algebraic and logic properties of RL, whereas deterministic CFL have been
thoroughly exploited in compiler construction and other application fields.
After surveying and comparing the main properties of those various language
families, we go back to operator precedence languages (OPL), an old family
through which R. Floyd pioneered deterministic parsing, and we show that they
offer unexpected properties in two fields so far investigated in totally
independent ways: they enable parsing parallelization in a more effective way
than traditional sequential parsers, and exhibit the same algebraic and logic
properties so far obtained only for less expressive language families
Recovering Grammar Relationships for the Java Language Specification
Grammar convergence is a method that helps discovering relationships between
different grammars of the same language or different language versions. The key
element of the method is the operational, transformation-based representation
of those relationships. Given input grammars for convergence, they are
transformed until they are structurally equal. The transformations are composed
from primitive operators; properties of these operators and the composed chains
provide quantitative and qualitative insight into the relationships between the
grammars at hand. We describe a refined method for grammar convergence, and we
use it in a major study, where we recover the relationships between all the
grammars that occur in the different versions of the Java Language
Specification (JLS). The relationships are represented as grammar
transformation chains that capture all accidental or intended differences
between the JLS grammars. This method is mechanized and driven by nominal and
structural differences between pairs of grammars that are subject to
asymmetric, binary convergence steps. We present the underlying operator suite
for grammar transformation in detail, and we illustrate the suite with many
examples of transformations on the JLS grammars. We also describe the
extraction effort, which was needed to make the JLS grammars amenable to
automated processing. We include substantial metadata about the convergence
process for the JLS so that the effort becomes reproducible and transparent
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