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Formal Language
UNIT II (10T)

 Formal languages: Definitions and examples,

Chomsky classification of languages, Languages and their relation,
Recursive and Recursively enumerable sets, Languages and
automata.
Formal Language
 A formal language consists of words whose letters are taken from an
alphabet and are well-formed according to a specific set of rules.
 Formal Language is a set of strings or symbols together with a set of
rules that are specific to it
 The alphabet of a formal language is the set of symbols , letters or
tokens from which the string of languages may be formed.
 The strings formed from this alphabets is called words and the words
that belong to particular formal language are called well-formed words
Definition
 A formal language L over an alphabet Σ is a subset of Σ*, that is, a
set of words over that alphabet Σ .
 Set of words are grouped into expressions where as rules and
constraints may be formulated for the creation of well formed
expression
 Natural and Formal Languages

Natural Language Formal Language

Ex. English, Malayalam C,C++,Pascal..

+ High Expressiveness + Well Defined syntax

+ No extra learning + Unambiguous semantics

-Ambiguity + Can be processed by a computer

-Vagueness +Large problems can be solved

- Consistency hard to check - High learning effort

-Limited expressiveness

-Low acceptance
Thank you!!