Context-Free Grammars with Storage

Abstract

Context-free S grammars are introduced, for arbitrary (storage) type S, as a uniform framework for recursion-based grammars, automata, and transducers, viewed as programs. To each occurrence of a nonterminal of a context-free S grammar an object of type S is associated, that can be acted upon by tests and operations, as indicated in the rules of the grammar. Taking particular storage types gives particular formalisms, such as indexed grammars, top-down tree transducers, attribute grammars, etc. Context-free S grammars are equivalent to pushdown S automata. The context-free S languages can be obtained from the deterministic one-way S automaton languages by way of the delta operations on languages, introduced in this paper.

58 pages, 8 figures, slightly revised version of a report from 1986