On the number of nonterminal symbols in unambiguous conjunctive grammars

Abstract

It is demonstrated that the family of languages generated by unambiguous conjunctive grammars with 1 nonterminal symbol is strictly included in the languages generated by 2-nonterminal grammars, which is in turn a proper subset of the family generated using 3 or more nonterminal symbols. This hierarchy is established by considering grammars over a one-letter alphabet, for which it is shown that 1-nonterminal grammars generate only regular languages, 2-nonterminal grammars generate some non-regular languages, but all of them have upper density zero, while 3-nonterminal grammars may generate some non-regular languages of non-zero density. It is also shown that the equivalence problem for 2-nonterminal grammars is undecidable. © 2012 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg.