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Jorge Llamb�as, On 04/09/2012 02:56:
On Sun, Sep 2, 2012 at 8:27 PM, And Rosta<and.rosta@hidden.email> wrote:The rules are: Every word tries first to bond syntactically with words preceding it; if it fails, then it bonds syntactically with words following it.That would make it very difficult to ever end a sentence, since every sentence would always remain available for some future word to grab it. Doesn't that impose an even more unbearable burden on the listener than having to remember the restriction on some variables? Or maybe you could have a full stop.
Rather, let every word try to be final in a macrosyntagm, and only if that is not possible should it set forth links to following words. I'm assuming that binding is syntactic.
It would be nightmarish to write a formal grammar with that rule, I would think.Not if you choose the right formalism. Take the kind of rules you have so far, and strip away the element of linear precedence, leaving purely hierarchical structure. Then add the rule I've outlined above. Bob's your uncle.The simple formal grammar we have can't tell one variable from another, so it can't tell whether a formula has free variables or not. That's left to a subsequent semantic stage of parsing. Your rules require the identification of each variable at the syntactic stage, right, so that an appearance of "li" knows whether the utterance so far has a free "i" for it to bind or not?
Yes, that's right. Until the output is the logical form, I don't think it's reasonable to call the process parsing -- or rather, it's one stage of the parsing process.
Unless you allow sentences like "for every x, if snow is white then it is now raining", which I don't really see a reason to disallow.
I don't see a need to introduce a rule specifically to disallow them, but in the syntactic system I outlined, I think it would make sense to say that in "bcda fgha li", li's dependents must follow it rather than being "bcda fgha". And likewise in "li bcda fgha", at least "fgha", and prob "bcda fgha" wd have to be dependents of a following quantifier.
So it seems that getting an operator to look to the right for its dependants would tend to be quite difficult.
How so? The job of the parser is to establish predicate--argument and quantifier--variable relations, so at any given word, the parser knows whether or not it contains an unbound variable.
But I'd be fine with *a specific series of variables*, e.g. V'u, preserving the same restriction when subsequently unbound.But then the speaker has to plan ahead.And the hearer is forewarned to make the necessary effort to remember.I suspect the language we have so far is more taxing on the speaker than on the listener. My only evidence is that I have to put more effort into constructing a well formed sentence than into deconstructing one.
Human language in general is more taxing on the speaker than on the listener. From the pov of loglang design, I think it's fine for the lg to make greater demands on the speaker than the hearer, but as far as possible the lg mustn't make greater demands on the interlocutors than a nonloglang would.
The idea here is that this is for afterthought use.First of all, I think that a loglang demand of its speaker a fair bit of forward planning.
That should have said "I think that it's reasonable that a loglang demand of its speaker a fair bit of forward planning". That said, if you could come up with a scheme needing less forethought without any increase in ambiguity or memoery-load, that'd always be preferable.
My vV solution is an economical way of expressing exactly the desried meaning, but it's probably a bit too baroque for Xorban. (Or is it? Actually, no, I think it's pretty neat. I don't think I'll withdraw the proposal yet.)Would you use vV for something like "when John visits his grandmother, he usually brings her chocolates" too?
You could, yes, though in this instance you could have "John -A, John's grandma -I, occasions when A visit's I -U, occasions when A brings I chocolates -E, majority of U are E". But if the sentence were "When John makes a cup of tea, he usually forgets to drink it", the vV system wd be best I think. --And.