Partially-commutative context-free languages

Wojciech Czerwiński
(Institute of Informatics, University of Warsaw)
Sławomir Lasota
(Institute of Informatics, University of Warsaw)

The paper is about a class of languages that extends context-free languages (CFL) and is stable under shuffle. Specifically, we investigate the class of partially-commutative context-free languages (PCCFL), where non-terminal symbols are commutative according to a binary independence relation, very much like in trace theory. The class has been recently proposed as a robust class subsuming CFL and commutative CFL. This paper surveys properties of PCCFL. We identify a natural corresponding automaton model: stateless multi-pushdown automata. We show stability of the class under natural operations, including homomorphic images and shuffle. Finally, we relate expressiveness of PCCFL to two other relevant classes: CFL extended with shuffle and trace-closures of CFL. Among technical contributions of the paper are pumping lemmas, as an elegant completion of known pumping properties of regular languages, CFL and commutative CFL.

In Bas Luttik and Michel A. Reniers: Proceedings Combined 19th International Workshop on Expressiveness in Concurrency and 9th Workshop on Structured Operational Semantics (EXPRESS/SOS 2012), Newcastle upon Tyne, UK, September 3, 2012, Electronic Proceedings in Theoretical Computer Science 89, pp. 35–48.
Published: 12th August 2012.

ArXived at: https://dx.doi.org/10.4204/EPTCS.89.4 bibtex PDF
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