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A context-free grammar is in Chomsky normal form when every production is of one of the formswhere $A,B,C$ are nonterminal symbols and $a$ is a terminal symbol. Under this strict convention there is no epsilon production, so such a grammar cannot generate the empty word. Conversion of an arbitrary grammar therefore givesIf $ϵ\notin \mathcal{L}(G)$, the two languages are equal. An alternative extended convention permits the exceptional start production $S_0\to ϵ$; under that convention conversion preserves the whole language.

A semigroup is an algebraic magma whose binary operation has the associative property. Its products can be regrouped while preserving the order of their elements. An identity element and inverse elements are not required.

For example, the positive integers with addition form a semigroup, since $(a+b)+c=a+(b+c)$ and a sum of positive integers is positive. They have no identity element: it would have to be zero, which is outside that set. Nonempty words over an alphabet with concatenation give a noncommutative example without an identity element. Including the empty word instead gives a free monoid.

The usefulness of a semigroup is that an ordered list has one product regardless of its parentheses. This permits replacing a consecutive block by its already computed value. Here the empty set is also allowed as a semigroup; a monoid is necessarily nonempty because it contains an identity element.