Automaton representation of linear conjunctive languages

Triangular trellis automata, also studied under the name of one-way real-time cellular automata, have been known for several decades as a purely abstract model of parallel computers. This paper establishes their computational equivalence to linear conjunctive grammars, which are linear context-free grammars extended with an explicit intersection operation. This equivalence allows to combine the known results on the generative power and closure properties of triangular trellis automata and linear conjunctive grammars and to obtain new previously unexpected results on this language family - for instance, to determine their exact relationship with other comparable families of languages.