Spinal-Formed Context-Free Tree Grammars

In this paper we introduce a restricted model of context-free tree grammars called spine grammars, and study their formal properties including considerably simple normal forms. Recent research on natural languages has suggested that formalisms for natural languages need to generate a slightly larger class of languages than context-free grammars, and for that reason tree adjoining grammars have been widely studied relating them to natural languages. It is shown that the class of string languages generated by spine grammars coincides with that of tree adjoining grammars. We also introduce acceptors called linear pushdown tree automata, and show that linear pushdown tree automata accept exactly the class of tree languages generated by spine grammars. Linear pushdown tree automata are obtained from pushdown tree automata with a restriction on duplicability for the pushdown stacks. Received May 29, 1998, and in revised form April 27, 1999, and in final form May 10, 1999.