context-free grammar en · NOUN
Meanings
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A formal grammar in which every production rule is such that the left-hand side is exactly one non-terminal symbol and the right-hand side is zero or more terminal symbols and/or nonterminal symbols.
It remains to explain one final concept, namely what a context free language is. (Don’t get confused: we’ve told you what a context free grammar is, but not what a context free language is.) Quite simply, a context free language is a language that can be generated by a context free grammar. Some languages are context free, and some are not. For example, it seems plausible that English is a context free language. That is, it is probably possible to write a context free grammar that generates all (and only) the sentences that native speakers find acceptable. On the other hand, some dialects of Swiss-German are not context free. It can be proved mathematically that no context free grammar can generate all (and only) the sentences that native speakers of Swiss-German find acceptable.¹ So if you wanted to write a grammar for such dialects, you would have to employ additional grammatical mechanisms, not merely context free rules.
2006, Patrick Blackburn, Johan Bos, Kristina Striegnitz, Learn Prolog Now!, §7.1
Forms
| Spelling | Features | Labels | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| context-free grammars | Number=Plur | lexicographic |
Deriveds
stochastic context-free grammar · probabilistic context-free grammar
Relateds
context-sensitive grammar · pushdown automaton · context-free language
Synonyms
Translations (8)
fi yhteydetön kielioppi (formal grammar) · is samhengisfrjáls mállýsing (formal grammar) · cs bezkontextová gramatika (formal grammar) · de kontextfreie Grammatik (formal grammar) · sh kontekstno neovisna gramatika (formal grammar) · cmn 上下文無關文法 /上下文无关文法 (formal grammar) · eo senkunteksta gramatiko (formal grammar) · pl gramatyka bezkontekstowa (formal grammar)