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Left corner

Part of a production rule in a context-free grammar

In formal language theory, the left corner of a production rule in a context-free grammar is the left-most symbol on the right side of the rule.

For example, in the rule A→Xα, X is the left corner.

The left corner table associates to a symbol all possible left corners for that symbol, and the left corners of those symbols, etc.

Given the grammar

S → VP
S → NP VP
VP → V NP
NP → DET N

the left corner table is as follows.

Symbol Left corner(s)
S VP, NP, V, DET
NP DET
VP V

Left corners are used to add bottom-up filtering to a top-down parser, or top-down filtering to a bottom-up parser.

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Sources and credits

This article is adapted from the Wikipedia article Left corner, written by its contributors and licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0. Fathomly has changed the layout, removed citation markers, navigation and maintenance notices, and adjusted punctuation. This adapted version is shared under the same license. For references, see the original article.

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