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From: lee@uhccux.UUCP (Greg Lee)
Newsgroups: sci.lang,comp.ai
Subject: Re: Infinte alphabets - (Turing via Berke)
Message-ID: <959@uhccux.UUCP>
Date: Thu, 15-Oct-87 14:39:09 EDT
Article-I.D.: uhccux.959
Posted: Thu Oct 15 14:39:09 1987
Date-Received: Sat, 17-Oct-87 09:29:28 EDT
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Organization: U. of Hawaii, Manoa (Honolulu)
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Xref: mnetor sci.lang:1566 comp.ai:901


The number of phonetic characters must be finite if language is context-free.
There are apparent context sensitivities in pronunciation, such as for
some English speakers, pronouncing "band" as "bam" before a word beginning
with "p", as in "The bam played on".  Yet such context sensitivities may
be represented in a context-free grammar, provided that the sensitive item
and its context are not separated by an unbounded number of constituent
boundaries.  And as a matter of fact, "bam" and "p" in the example cannot
be so separated.  Thus, apparently, language is context-free.

Perhaps, though, language is only almost context free, failing to be
so through having an infinite number of terminal symbols.

Greg Lee, Lee@uhccux.uhcc.hawaii.edu