FORMAL LANGUAGE AND AUTOMATA THEORY L T P C
PREREQUISITE: NIL
COURSE OBJECTIVES:
1. To understand the concepts of regular languages and finite automata.
2. To derive of context free-grammars with CFG and to design pushdown automata.
3. To construct the linear bounded automata and turing machines.
4. To manage undecidable problems.
5. To know the complexity theory of turing machines.
Module I REGULAR LANGUAGES AND FINITE AUTOMATA 9 Hours
Alphabet-languages and grammars- Productions and derivation-Chomsky hierarchy of languages. Regular
expressions and languages- Deterministic finite automata (DFA) and equivalence with regular expressions
Nondeterministic finite automata (NFA) and equivalence with DFA- Regular grammars and equivalence with
finite automata - Properties of regular languages - Kleene’s theorem - Pumping lemma for regular languages
Myhill- Nerode theorem and its uses- Minimization of finite automata.
Module II CONTEXT-FREE LANGUAGES AND PUSHDOWN AUTOMATA 9 Hours
Context-free grammars (CFG) and languages (CFL)- Chomsky and Greibach normal forms - Nondeterministic
pushdown automata (PDA) and equivalence with CFG - Parse trees- Ambiguity in CFG - Pumping lemma for
context-free languages – Deterministic pushdown automata- Closure properties of CFLs.
Module III LINEAR BOUNDED AUTOMATA AND TURING MACHINES 9 Hours
Context-sensitive grammars (CSG) and languages - Linear bounded automata and equivalence with CSG. The
basic model for Turing machines (TM) - Turing recognizable (recursively enumerable) and Turing- decidable
(recursive) languages and their closure properties - Variants of Turing machines - Nondeterministic TMs and
equivalence with deterministic TMs - Unrestricted grammars and equivalence with Turing machines – TMs as
enumerators.
Module IV UNDECIDABILITY 9 Hours
Church-Turing thesis -Universal Turing machine – The universal and diagonalization languages - Reduction
between languages – Rice’s theorem -Undecidable problems about languages
Module V COMPLEXITY THEORY 9 Hours
Introductory ideas on Time complexity of deterministic and nondeterministic Turing machines - P and NP, NP
completeness – Cook ‘s Theorem, other NP - Complete problems.
Total Hours: 45
Mode of Assessment: CAT/Assignment/Quiz/Seminar/Presentation/ESE
Course Outcomes:
CO1: Illustrate the concepts of finite automata, regular expressions and reduce the states in finite automata.
CO2: Design pushdown automata and context free grammars for various languages.
CO3: Construct basic Turing machine for its recursive languages and functions.
CO4: Determine and classify the various undecidability.
CO5: Relate P, NP and NP completeness problems.
REFERENCES:
1. John E. Hopcroft, Rajeev Motwani and Jeffrey D. Ullman, Introduction to Automata Theory, Languages, and
Computation, Pearson Education, Third Edition, 2014.
2. Harry R. Lewis and Christos. H. Papadimitriou, Elements of the theory of Computation, Pearson Education/PHI,
2007.
3. John C. Martin, Introduction to Languages and the Theory of Computation, TMH, 2007.
4. Micheal Sipser, Introduction of the Theory and Computation, Thomson Brokecole, 2005.
5. M. R. Garey and D. S. Johnson, “Computers and Intractability: A Guide to the Theory of NP Completeness”,
1979.
6. https://nptel.ac.in.
