Permutation closure for multiple context-free languages

Abstract: We prove that the \emph{permutation closure} of a multiple context-free language is multiple context-free, which extends work of Okhotin and Sorokin [LATA 2020] who showed closure under \emph{cyclic shift}, and complements work of Brandst\"adt 1981, RAIRO Inform. Th\'{e}or. who showed the same result for regular, context-sensitive, recursively enumerable (resp. EDT0L and ET0L) languages. In contrast to Okhotin and Sorokin who work with grammars, our proof uses restricted tree stack automata due to Denkinger [DLT 2016].