Ceng 124

Discrete Structures
2018-2019 Spring Semester

by Sibel T. Özyer, Spring 2019

Topics

 13.1 Languages and Grammars

by Sibel T. Özyer, Spring 2019

Introduction
 The grammar of English tells us whether a combination of words is a valid
sentence.
 For instance, the frog writes neatly is
 a valid sentence, because it is formed from a noun phrase, the frog, made up
of the article the and the noun frog, followed by a verb phrase, writes
neatly, made up of the verb writes and the adverb neatly.
 We are concerned only with the syntax, or form, of the sentence, and not its
semantics, or meaning.
 swims quickly mathematics is not a valid sentence because it does not follow
the rules of English grammar.

by Sibel T. Özyer, Spring 2019

Introduction (cont.)
 The syntax of a natural language, that is, a spoken language, such as English,
French, German, or Spanish, is extremely complicated.
 Research in the automatic translation of one language to another has led to
the concept of a formal language, which, unlike a natural language, is
specified by a well-defined set of r
 Rules of syntax are important not only in linguistics, the study of natural
languages, but also in the study of programming languages.
 We will describe the sentences of a formal language using a grammar.

by Sibel T. Özyer, Spring 2019

Introduction (cont.)
 1. a sentence is made up of a noun phrase followed by a verb phrase;
 2. a noun phrase is made up of an article followed by an adjective followed by a noun,
 or
 3. a noun phrase is made up of an article followed by a noun;
 4. a verb phrase is made up of a verb followed by an adverb, or
 5. a verb phrase is made up of a verb;
 6. an article is a, or
 7. an article is the;
 8. an adjective is large, or
 9. an adjective is hungry;
 10. a noun is rabbit, or
 11. a noun is mathematician;
 12. a verb is eats, or
 13. a verb is hops;
 14. an adverb is quickly, or
 15. an adverb is wildly.

by Sibel T. Özyer, Spring 2019

Introduction (cont.)
 From these rules we can form valid sentences using a series of replacements until
no more rules can be used. For instance, we can follow the sequence of
replacements:
 sentence
 noun phrase verb phrase
 article adjective noun verb phrase
 article adjective noun verb adverb
 the adjective noun verb adverb
 the large noun verb adverb
 the large rabbit verb adverb
 the large rabbit hops adverb
 the large rabbit hops quickly

by Sibel T. Özyer, Spring 2019

Phrase-Structure Grammars

by Sibel T. Özyer, Spring 2019

Phrase-Structure Grammars (cont.)

 A grammar has a vocabulary V , which is a set of symbols used to derive

members of the language.
 Some of the elements of the vocabulary cannot be replaced by other symbols.
These are called terminals, and the other members of the vocabulary, which
can be replaced by other symbols, are called nonterminals.
 The sets of terminals and nonterminals are usually denoted by T and N,
respectively.
 There is a special member of the vocabulary called the start symbol, denoted
by S, which is the element of the vocabulary that we always begin with.

by Sibel T. Özyer, Spring 2019

Phrase-Structure Grammars (cont.)

by Sibel T. Özyer, Spring 2019

Example 1

 Let G = (V, T, S, P), where V = {a, b, A, B, S}, T = {a, b}, S is the start symbol,
and P = {S → ABa, A → BB, B → ab, AB → b}.
 G is an example of a phrase-structure grammar.

by Sibel T. Özyer, Spring 2019

Example 2

 P = {S → ABa, A → BB, B → ab, AB → b}.

 The string Aaba is directly derivable from ABa in the grammar in Example 1
because B → ab is a production in the grammar.
 The string abababa is derivable from ABa because ABa
⇒Aaba ⇒BBaba ⇒Bababa ⇒abababa, using the productions B →ab,A → BB,
B →ab, and B →ab in succession.

by Sibel T. Özyer, Spring 2019

Language Generated by G

by Sibel T. Özyer, Spring 2019

Example 3
 Let G be the grammar with vocabulary V = {S,A, a, b}, set of terminals T = {a,
b}, starting symbol S, and productions P = {S → aA, S → b, A → aa}. What is
L(G), the language of this grammar?
 Solution: From the start state S we can derive aA using the production
S → aA. We can also use the production S → b to derive b. From aA the
production A → aa can be used to derive aaa. No additional words can be
derived. Hence, L(G) = {b, aaa}.

by Sibel T. Özyer, Spring 2019

Example 4
 Let G be the grammar with vocabulary V = {S, 0, 1}, set of terminals T = {0,
1}, starting symbol S, and productions P = {S → 11S, S → 0}. What is L(G), the
language of this grammar?
 Solution: From S we can derive 0 using S → 0, or 11S using S → 11S. From 11S
we can derive either 110 or 1111S. From 1111S we can derive 11110 and
111111S.
 At any stage of a derivation we can either add two 1s at the end of the string
or terminate the derivation by adding a 0 at the end of the string. We surmise
that L(G) = {0, 110, 11110, 1111110, . . . }, the set of all strings that begin
with an even number of 1s and end with a 0.

by Sibel T. Özyer, Spring 2019

Derivation Trees

 Aderivation in the language generated by a context-free grammar can be

represented graphically using an ordered rooted tree, called a derivation, or
parse tree.
 The root of this tree represents the starting symbol. The internal vertices of
the tree represent the nonterminal symbols that arise in the derivation. The
leaves of the tree represent the terminal symbols that arise.
 If the production A → w arises in the derivation, where w is a word, the
vertex that represents A has as children vertices that represent each symbol
in w, in order from left to right.

by Sibel T. Özyer, Spring 2019

A Derivation Tree
Construct a derivation tree for the derivation of the hungry rabbit eats quickly.

by Sibel T. Özyer, Spring 2019

A Derivation Tree (cont.)

 The problem of determining whether a string is in the language generated by

a context-free grammar arises in many applications, such as in the
construction of compilers. Two approaches to this problem are indicated in
example 5.

by Sibel T. Özyer, Spring 2019

Example 5
 Determine whether the word cbab belongs to the language generated by the
grammar G = (V, T, S, P), where V = {a, b, c, A, B, C, S}, T = {a, b, c}, S is the
starting symbol, and the productions are
 S → AB
 A → Ca
 B → Ba
 B → Cb
 B→b
 C → cb
 C → b.

by Sibel T. Özyer, Spring 2019

Solution
 Because there is only one production with S on its left-hand side, we must
start with S ⇒AB. Next we use the only production that has A on its left-hand
side, namely,
 A → Ca, to obtain S ⇒AB ⇒CaB. Because cbab begins with the symbols cb, we
use the production C → cb. This gives us S ⇒AB ⇒CaB ⇒cbaB. We finish by
using the production B → b, to obtain S ⇒AB ⇒CaB ⇒cbaB ⇒cbab.
 The approach that we have used is called top-down parsing, because it
begins with the starting symbol and proceeds by successively applying
productions.
 There is another approach to this problem, called bottom-up parsing. In this
approach, we work backward. Because cbab is the string to be derived, we
can use the production C → cb, so that Cab⇒cbab. Then, we can use the
production A → Ca, so that Ab⇒Cab⇒cbab. Using the production B → b gives
AB ⇒Ab⇒Cab⇒cbab. Finally, using S → AB shows that a complete derivation
for cbab is S ⇒AB ⇒Ab⇒ Cab⇒cbab.
by Sibel T. Özyer, Spring 2019