Parsing as a lifting problem and the Chomsky-Sch\"utzenberger representation theorem

TL;DR

This paper generalizes context-free grammars and the Chomsky-Schützenberger theorem using operads and category theory, providing a new framework for understanding formal languages and automata.

Contribution

It introduces a novel operadic framework for CFGs over categories and extends the Chomsky-Schützenberger theorem to this setting, unifying language theory with category theory.

Findings

CFGs can be represented as functors of operads into operads of spliced words.

CF languages are closed under intersection with regular languages.

The generalized Chomsky-Schützenberger theorem applies to languages of arrows over categories.

Abstract

We begin by explaining how any context-free grammar encodes a functor of operads from a freely generated operad into a certain "operad of spliced words". This motivates a more general notion of CFG over any category $C$, defined as a finite species $S$ equipped with a color denoting the start symbol and a functor of operads $p : Free[S] \to W[C]$ into the operad of spliced arrows in $C$. We show that many standard properties of CFGs can be formulated within this framework, and that usual closure properties of CF languages generalize to CF languages of arrows. We also discuss a dual fibrational perspective on the functor $p$ via the notion of "displayed" operad, corresponding to a lax functor of operads $W[C] \to Span(Set)$. We then turn to the Chomsky-Sch\"utzenberger Representation Theorem. We describe how a non-deterministic finite state automaton can be seen as a category $Q$ equipped with a pair of objects denoting initial and accepting states and a functor of categories $Q \to C$ satisfying the unique lifting of factorizations property and the finite fiber property. Then, we explain how to extend this notion of automaton to functors of operads, which generalize tree automata, allowing us to lift an automaton over a category to an automaton over its operad of spliced arrows. We show that every CFG over a category can be pulled back along a ND finite state automaton over the same category, and hence that CF languages are closed under intersection with regular languages. The last important ingredient is the identification of a left adjoint $C[-] : Operad \to Cat$ to the operad of spliced arrows functor, building the "contour category" of an operad. Using this, we generalize the C-S representation theorem, proving that any context-free language of arrows over a category $C$ is the functorial image of the intersection of a $C$-chromatic tree contour language and a regular language.