# Incremental Monoidal Grammars

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2001.02296 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2001.02296/

## Key facts

- Cited by 2 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- First posted on arXiv 2 Jan 2020.

## Built on by (most cited first, 2 of 2)

- [Grover's Algorithm for Question Answering](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2106.05299/) (2021)
- [Functorial Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2103.14411/) (2021)

## Abstract (arXiv)

In this work we define formal grammars in terms of free monoidal categories, along with a functor from the category of formal grammars to the category of automata. Generalising from the Booleans to arbitrary semirings, we extend our construction to weighted formal grammars and weighted automata. This allows us to link the categorical viewpoint on natural language to the standard machine learning notion of probabilistic language model.