Block structure
Encyclopedia
- In mathematics, block structure is a possible property of matrices - see block matrixBlock matrixIn the mathematical discipline of matrix theory, a block matrix or a partitioned matrix is a matrix broken into sections called blocks. Looking at it another way, the matrix is written in terms of smaller matrices. We group the rows and columns into adjacent 'bunches'. A partition is the rectangle...
. - In computer science, a programming language has block structure if it features blocks which can be nested to any depth.
- In linguistics, block structure is a representation of sentence grammarGrammarIn linguistics, grammar is the set of structural rules that govern the composition of clauses, phrases, and words in any given natural language. The term refers also to the study of such rules, and this field includes morphology, syntax, and phonology, often complemented by phonetics, semantics,...
now most commonly associated with the Backus–Naur FormBackus–Naur formIn computer science, BNF is a notation technique for context-free grammars, often used to describe the syntax of languages used in computing, such as computer programming languages, document formats, instruction sets and communication protocols.It is applied wherever exact descriptions of...
. The alternate context-free grammarContext-free grammarIn formal language theory, a context-free grammar is a formal grammar in which every production rule is of the formwhere V is a single nonterminal symbol, and w is a string of terminals and/or nonterminals ....
approach instead is a mathematical notation for operating on sentence grammars.