Context-free, or phrase-structure, grammars, although apparently not affording completely adequate descriptions of vernacular languages, do have the desirable properties just noted. For this family, the rules g → g′ contain single nonterminals on the left, as in the case of the finite-state grammars, but allow g′ to be any word of (V_T ∪ V_N)*. The example discussed above is a context-free grammar. Grammars of this kind can account for phrase structure and ambiguity (see 9).

Pushdown acceptors, which play a key role in computer-programming theory, are automata corresponding to context-free grammars. A pushdown acceptor is a finite-state acceptor equipped with an added two-way storage tape, the so-called pushdown store. At the beginning of operation this tape is blank. As the automaton computes, the store is used to analyze the syntactical structure of the sentence being read. The store moves left when printed, and only the last symbol printed may be read, then the next to the last, and so forth. The input is accepted if both the (one-way) input and storage tapes are blank when the automaton halts in a final state.

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The representation of Turing machines in quadruple form may be replaced here by a somewhat clearer list of rules that simulate tape action in their application. Rules can be formulated for a pushdown acceptor P for a context-free language L of items xcx^-1, in which x is a word on an abstract alphabet {a, b} and x^-1 is x written in reverse. A first such rule can be formulated to mean that, if P is in state q₀ scanning a on input and any (defined) symbol on the pushdown store, it moves tape left, erases a from the input, prints a on the store, and goes into state q₁. A symbolic expression for the rule might be: q₀a → aq₁. Another rule might be of the form: if P is in state q₁ scanning c on input and anything on store, it moves input left, erases c, and does nothing with respect to the store—briefly, q₁c → q₂. Another requires that, if P is in q₂ scanning a on input and a on store, then it moves input left, erases a, moves store right, and erases a (see 10). An example is easily constructed to show that under certain rules a set, say, abcba is accepted (see 11). If q₀abcba indicates the outset of a computation with P in the initial state q₀ scanning the first a in abcba on input tape and blank on store tape, and if q₂ is a final state, then the computation is determined by the rules given above (see 10). At the end of the computation the automaton is in a final state q₂, both tapes are blank, and there is no rule with q₂ alone on the left; P halts and hence abcba is accepted.

Reflection on the example and on others easily constructed shows that a pushdown acceptor is able, in effect, to parse sentences of context-free languages.

Context-sensitive grammars and linear-bounded acceptors

A fourth type of acceptor, which is mainly of mathematical rather than applied interest, is the two-way acceptor with bounded tape—i.e., tape the length of which never exceeds a linear function of the input length. These are the linear-bounded acceptors. They correspond in the present classificatory scheme to context-sensitive grammars. Unlike the context-free grammars, these latter systems use rules g → g′, in which the nonterminal symbol ν ∊ V_N in g may be rewritten only in a context xwy; thus g → g′ is of the form xvy → xwy, x, y, w ∊ (V_T ∪ V_N)*. An example of a context-sensitive language accepted by a linear-bounded automaton is the copy language xcx.

The family of recursively enumerable languages includes the context-sensitive languages, which in turn includes the context-free, which finally includes the regular, or finite-state, languages. No other hierarchy of corresponding acceptors has been intensively investigated.