Abstract
The question whether English is a context-free language has for some time been regarded as an open one. In this article, I argue that the answer is negative. I exhibit a regular set L (a set that can be generated by a finite-state grammar or accepted by a finite automaton), whose intersection with English is not a context-free language. Since context-free languages are closed under intersection with regular sets, that L ∩ English is not a context-free language proves that English is not a context-free language either.
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References
Aho, A.V. and J.D. Ullman (1972) The Theory of Parsing, Translation, and Compiling, Prentice-Hall, Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey.
Chomsky, N. (1981) Lectures on Government and Binding, Foris, Doredrecht.
Harrison, M. (1978) Introduction to Formal Language Theory, Addison-Wesley, Reading, Massachusetts.
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© 1984 The Massachusetts Institute of Technology
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Higginbotham, J. (1984). English is Not a Context-Free Language. In: Savitch, W.J., Bach, E., Marsh, W., Safran-Naveh, G. (eds) The Formal Complexity of Natural Language. Studies in Linguistics and Philosophy, vol 33. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-009-3401-6_13
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-009-3401-6_13
Publisher Name: Springer, Dordrecht
Print ISBN: 978-1-55608-047-0
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