Syntactic State Diagram

Title

Syntactic State Diagram

Description

Suppose that we have a machine that can be in any one of a finite number of different internal states, and suppose that this machine switches from one state to another by producing a certain symbol (let us say, an English word). One of these states is an initial state; another is a final state. Suppose that the machine begins in the initial state, runs through a sequence of states (producing a word with each transition), and ends in the final state. Then we call the sequence of words that has been produced a "sentence". Each such machine thus defines a certain language; namely, the set of sentences that can be produced in this way. Any language that can be produced by a machine of this sort we call a finite state language; and we can call the machine itself a finite state grammar. A finite state grammar can be represented graphically in the form of a "state diagram". For example, the grammar that produces just the two sentences "the man comes" and "the men come" can be represented by the following state diagram…

In producing a sentence, the speaker begins in the initial state, produces the first word of the sentence, thereby switching into a second state which limits the choice of the second word, etc. Each state through which he passes represents the grammatical restrictions that limit the choice of the next word at this point in the utterance.

Designer

Chomsky, Noam

Date

February 1957

Source

Syntactic Structures

Bibliographic Citation

Chomsky, Noam. 1957. Syntactic Structures, p. 19.

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Conceptual