A concept used in formal language theory. Let Σ be the alphabet
The Dyck language over Σ is the set of all strings that can be reduced to the empty string Λ by ‘cancellations’ of the form
For example,
gives the Dyck language of all balanced parenthesis strings. An important theorem characterizes the context-free languages as those representable as the homomorphic image (
see homomorphism) of the intersection of a Dyck language and a regular language.