CFG parsing using $o(n^2)$ space
The first half of this answer is nothing more than an efficient ($\log^4(n)$ to $\log^2(n)$) rephrasing of David's answer in complexity theoretic terms.

Context free languages live in the complexity class $LOGCFL.$ This class is equivalently characterized by log depth semi-unbounded circuits. These are polynomial sized circuits wherein OR gates have unbounded fan-in and AND gates have bounded fan-in (say 2). By increasing depth by a log factor, we can replace every unbounded fan-in OR gate with bounded fan-in ORs. This put the problem in $NC^2.$ It is not difficult to see how $NC^2$ can be evaluated by a $DSPACE(\log^2(n))$ by say a depth first search that maintains the left/right sequence of children at the gates explored thus far. The result goes back to the Lewis-Hartmanis paper. And while this improves David's space bound,  this can take $n^{\log n}$ time. We do not know any better.

The traditional way to understand time space tradeoff is to use pebble games. There have been a few papers on CYK; a more recent attempt is in the first part of this presentation. Here it is shown that (a) linear space can be achieved at exponential time and (b) if time is restricted to $O(n^2)$, then CYK would use at least $n^2$ space. 

Certainly a very interesting problem worthy of a look.