pumping lemma
Word Rarity
Rare
Frequency: Zipf frequency 2.70 in modern English
23
Scrabble Score
12
Letters
3
Syllables
9
Unique Chars
Meaning
noun
A lemma which states that for a language to be a member of a language class any sufficiently long string in the language contains a section that can be removed or repeated any number of times with the resulting string remaining in the language, used to determine if a particular language is in a given language class (e.g. not regular).
Example Sentences
- "There is a pumping lemma for CFLs similar to the one for regular sets. It can be used in the same way to show that certain sets are not context-free."
- "In the literature one finds many pumping lemmas which describe the ability to repeat (pump) certain words repeatedly in some languages, under different circumstances."
- "String-language hierarchies are usually proven using formalism-specific pumping lemmata."