The categorical contours of the Chomsky-Sch\"utzenberger representation theorem

TL;DR

This paper generalizes the Chomsky-Schützenberger theorem using fibrational and operadic frameworks, connecting context-free grammars, automata, and language closure properties through categorical and geometric interpretations.

Contribution

It introduces a fibrational perspective on grammars and automata, and establishes a generalized Chomsky-Schützenberger theorem via operad and category theory.

Findings

Generalized CFGs as functors from operads

Automata over categories and operads

Universal CFGs generating tree contour languages

Abstract

We develop fibrational perspectives on context-free grammars and on nondeterministic finite-state automata over categories and operads. A generalized CFG is a functor from a free colored operad (aka multicategory) generated by a pointed finite species into an arbitrary base operad: this encompasses classical CFGs by taking the base to be a certain operad constructed from a free monoid, as an instance of a more general construction of an \emph{operad of spliced arrows} $\mathcal{W}\,\mathcal{C}$ for any category $\mathcal{C}$. A generalized NFA is a functor from an arbitrary bipointed category or pointed operad satisfying the unique lifting of factorizations and finite fiber properties: this encompasses classical word automata and tree automata without $\epsilon$-transitions, but also automata over non-free categories and operads. We show that generalized context-free and regular languages satisfy suitable generalizations of many of the usual closure properties, and in particular we give a simple conceptual proof that context-free languages are closed under intersection with regular languages. Finally, we observe that the splicing functor $\mathcal{W} : Cat \to Oper$ admits a left adjoint $\mathcal{C}: Oper \to Cat$, which we call the \emph{contour category} construction since the arrows of $\mathcal{C}\,\mathcal{O}$ have a geometric interpretation as oriented contours of operations of $\mathcal{O}$. A direct consequence of the contour / splicing adjunction is that every pointed finite species induces a universal CFG generating a language of \emph{tree contour words.} This leads us to a generalization of the Chomsky-Sch\"utzenberger Representation Theorem, establishing that a subset of a homset $L \subseteq \mathcal{C}(A,B)$ is a CFL of arrows if and only if it is a functorial image of the intersection of a $\mathcal{C}$-chromatic tree contour language with a regular language.