An Infinite Hierarchy Induced by Depth Synchronization
Depth-synchronization measures the number of parallel derivation steps in a synchronized context-free (SCF) grammar. When not bounded by a constant the depth-synchronization measure of an SCF grammar is at least logarithmic and at most linear with respect to the word length. Languages with linear depth-synchronization measure and languages with a depth-synchronization measure in between logarithmic and linear are proven to exist. This gives rise to a strict infinite hierarchy within the family of SCF (and ET0L) languages.