Inherently Reversible Grammars

This paper attempts to clarify two distinct notions of "reversibility": (i)Uniformity of implementationof parsing and generation, and (ii) reversibility as aninherent (or intrinsic) property ofgrammars. On the one hand, we explain why grammars specified as definite programs (or the various related "unification grammars") lead to uniformity of implementation. On the other hand, we define different intrinsic reversibility properties for such grammars—the most important being finitereversibilitywhich says that both parsing and generation arefinitelyenumerable (see text)— and give examples and counter-examples of grammars which possess or do not possess these intrinsic properties. We also show that, under a certain "moderation" condition on linguistic description, finite enumerability of parsing is equivalent to finite enumerability of generation.

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