Eliminating the unit constant in the Lambek calculus with brackets

Abstract

We present a translation of the Lambek calculus with brackets and the unit constant, $\mathbf{Lb}^{\boldsymbol{*}}_{\mathbf{1}}$, into the Lambek calculus with brackets allowing empty antecedents, but without the unit constant, $\mathbf{Lb}^{\boldsymbol{*}}$. Using this translation, we extend previously known results for $\mathbf{Lb}^{\boldsymbol{*}}$ to $\mathbf{Lb}^{\boldsymbol{*}}_{\mathbf{1}}$: (1) languages generated by categorial grammars based on the Lambek calculus with brackets are context-free (Kanazawa 2017); (2) the polynomial-time algorithm for deciding derivability of bounded depth sequents (Kanovich et al. 2017).