This paper introduces a new class of grammars, the partitioned chain grammars, for which efficient parsers can be automatically generated. Besides being efficiently parsable these grammars possess a number of other properties, which make them very attractive for the use in parser-generators. They for instance form a large grammarclass and describe all deterministic context-free languages. Main advantage of the partitioned chain grammars however is, that given a language it is usually easier to describe it by a partitioned chain grammar than to construct a grammar of some other type commonly used in parser-generators for it