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defined in that research area. If we do so, linguis-
tics could become bio-inspired science, by means of
theoretical computer science, that provides the theo-
retical tools and formalizations which are necessary
for approaching such exchange of methodology. It is
clear that interdisciplinarity must be an essential trait
of the research on language. Linguistics, biology and
computer science collaborate through the framework
of formal language theory to give rise to the emer-
gence of new scientific models that providenew ideas,
tools and formalisms that can improve the descrip-
tion, analysis and processing of natural or artificial
languages.
Now, Lindenmayer systems are the first bio-
inspired model proposed in the field of formal lan-
guages and it is also the first one that replaces the
sequential rewriting by the parallel one. Moreover,
as we have shown, by using a L system you can eas-
ily generate the so-called non-context free structures
in natural language. Therefore, it seems that Linden-
mayer systems offer a great deal of the properties that
seem to be necesssary in order to approach linguistic
structures. Many parallel bio-inspired methods from
the field of theoretical computer science have been
successfully applied to several NLP issues, from syn-
tax to pragmatics (DNA computing, membrane com-
puting and networks of evolutionary processors). The
main advantage of all those bio-models is to account
for natural language in a more natural way than clas-
sical models. L systems is another example of bio-
model, with many of the same properties as the ones
that have been already applied to linguistics, so we
consider that it could be interesting to apply L sys-
tems to the description/processing of natural language
in order to see if this first parallel bio-inspired model
may improve current linguistic approaches.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
The research of Leonor Becerra-Bonache was sup-
ported by a Marie Curie International Fellowship
within the 6
th
European Community Framework Pro-
gramme.
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