Lecture 8 - Context-Free Grammars and Pushdown Automata

(Skeleton for Fall 2026.)

Context-Free Grammars

TODO: rules, derivations, parse trees, ambiguity; CFGs in the wild (programming language syntax).

Pushdown Automata

TODO: adding a stack to an NFA; formal definition; equivalence with CFGs (statement, proof sketch only).

Limits of Context-Free Languages

TODO: the CFL pumping lemma (statement); 0^n 1^n 2^n is not context-free.

The Chomsky Hierarchy

TODO: regular inside context-free inside decidable inside recognizable; the hierarchy as the map of the whole course, each fence crossed by a machine upgrade.

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