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On Fri, Aug 17, 2012 at 12:10 AM, Mike S. <maikxlx@gmail.com> wrote:
> By the way, do you have any
> more information on the design you are working on?
"Working on" is a bit of an overstatement, all I have is what I've
posted here. The grammar I have in mind is something like this:
sentence := predicate | operator sentence
operator := unary-operator | binary-operator
binary-operator:= SV('V)* sentence
unary-operator := NV('V)*
predicate := CCC*V('V)*(KV('V)*)*
V := a | e | i | o | u
C:= b | c | d | f | g | j | k | l | m | n | p | r | s | t | v | w | x | y | z
S:= (some subset of C)
N:= (some subset of C)
K:= (some subset of C)
V('V)* are used mostly as variables, except in some operators. I
didn't mention any unary operator so far, but negation (say "na")
would belong here. ("na tvla'ake'e", "I'm not talking to you").
And's event-argument provides a good way to handle subordinate
clauses. I have "k" as the core arguments separator, I would add "f"
as a way of adding an event argument to any predicate. So we can have
for example:
la le nnle li nxli tvlekifa vska'aka
The x which the y which is a boy the z which is a girl, y talks to z
in x, I see x
I see the boy talking to the girl.
Alternatively, and perhaps easier to parse:
la nnla le nxle li tvlakefi vska'aki
The boy, the girl, the event in which he talks to her, I see it.
Also perhaps things like:
la nnla le nxle ri tvlekafi xnrafi
The boy, the girl, every time she talks to him, he blushes.
One other thing I thought about is numbers. I would not make them
quantifiers as in Lojban, but just ordinary predicates: "x1 is one",
"x1 are two", "x1 are three", etc, basically Lojban's "PA mei". They
could be constructed by assigning a letter to each digit and then
reserving a prefix (say nm-) to form each predicate: nmpa "a is one",
nmra "a are two", nmxxxa "a are 666".
That's about all I have so far.
mu'o mi'e xorxes