Mike S., On 24/09/2012 20:40:
> On Mon, Sep 24, 2012 at 11:22 AM, And Rosta <and.rosta@hidden.email <mailto:and.rosta@hidden.email>> wrote:
>
> I understand BNF notation; I just can't translate it at a glance into something more linguistic (like, say, X' syntax). I can translate it only laboriously. And because my thinking is based in linguistics rather than computer science, I can only understand the syntax once it is translated into linguistic terms. Human language syntax is based on combinatorial properties of words, and exocentric phrases, if they exist at all, do not occur willynilly.
>
> In practice, this just means that to comprehend your proposals, I'd have to sit down and translate them into a formalism that makes sense to me, and that takes more time than I have at the moment, what with me no longer being on holiday. It doesn't mean you've been too brief or cryptic. If you did want to translate into a formalism easy for me to grock, then I'd say: assume, as far as possible, that (i) there is no syntagmatic relation other than an asymmetric complement-of relation, and (ii) all nodes are terminal (or, all phrases are endocentric).
>
> Unfortunately, while I do want to translate into a formalism that
> everyone can grock, due to my own background, I am not sure I would
> be able to do that based on the description that you have provided
> (and forgive me if I seem obtuse). It may help if you could take the
> current official grammar or a part of it and as an illustration
> render it in the formalism that you prefer. From there, I should be
> able to ask questions and figure out what you mean, and from there
> on, I will make a point of rewriting my ideas for productions and
> transformations in both forms (if I am able to). Often it is
> insightful to write the same thing more than one way, so I really
> don't mind doing it twice.
OK. Working from these:
sentence := illocutionary-operator? formula | interjection
formula := simple-formula | modifier formula
modifier := unary-operator | binary-operator formula
simple-formula := (C C C* | q ( C? V? )* q) VkV
unary-operator := ( b | f | d | v | m | n ) VkV
binary-operator := ( l | r | s | x | g | j ) VkV
illocutionary-operator := c VkV
interjection := w VkV
VkV := V (k V)* (illocutionary-operator formula | interjection)?
I would have these as the following. Not just a different notation. I'm doing this without phrases, but a translation into headed-phrases would be simple.
1. word-classes: Interjection, Unary-op, Binary-op, Formula (= Simple Formula), Formula-root
2. A formula-root is a formula or a word whose complement is a formula-root
3. Interjections and Formula-roots have no complements.
4. Unary-ops have one complement.
5. Binary-ops have two complements.
6. Complements are formula-roots.
I include Illoc-op in Unary-op, because it is undesirable that Illoc-ops are restricted to sentence-initial position. However, if it were as in Jorge's rules, then Illoc-ops would have one complement and rule 2 would add "and is not an illoc-op".
--And.