Re: [engelang] Re: [jboske] LoCCan3 development ideas.

 

On Thu, Aug 16, 2012 at 8:04 AM, Mike S. <maikxlx@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
> In Brett's system, it might be nice to have a shortcut though. Perhaps
> allowing batabatabababababababati to be replaced with bi or something
> when there is no ambiguity, which should never arise, because it seems
> like everything is explicitly terminated.

The shortcut I'm using is on the next level of the grammar. After
that simple, always parenthesized, always terminated grammar, the next
level is very free: Each structure determines the grammar of what's
inside it, as in lisp. So you can replace "batabatabababababababati
babo batabatabababababababatu" with "di batabatabababababababato babo
du", because that's the grammar of di/du (and there's a variety of
short words that do that so you can mix and match different
terminators to make it less confusing).

But that's just one example of how a Babebabo macro grammar can spare
you the trouble of putting things together by hand, you could also
have a macro let's say um "batabat" that takes "batabati A-o B-o C-o
D-o batabatu" and then it's as if you had said "A-i B-i C-i D-o C-u
B-u A-u". So in order to say "babi bati tabi tato tabu batu babu" you
could just say "di batabato babo bato tabo tato du", see, way fewer
terminators! :P Or um if "tadabi A-o B-o C-o D-o tadabu" means "A-i
B-o A-u A-i C-o A-u A-i D-o A-u" then you can say "bebabebi babebabo
bebabebu bebabebi tatetato bebabebu bebabebi babo bebabebu" just by
saying "di tadabo bebabebo babebabo tatetato babo du"! That doesn't
make any sense at all, sorry, maybe I'll be able to write explanations
that make sense once I have more vocabulary. ;)