[YG Conlang Archives] > [engelang group] > messages [Date Index] [Thread Index] >


[Date Prev] [Date Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next]

Re: [engelang] reformulating the core grammar



Am 08.10.2012 23:53, schrieb Mike S.:


On Mon, Oct 8, 2012 at 9:00 AM, selpa'i <seladwa@hidden.email
<mailto:seladwa@hidden.email>> wrote:

    Yesterday I tried writing a parser for Xorban using the
    documentation on
    wordpress. I noticed some things that confused me a little bit.

Nice, what are you writing it in?

Prolog. It's working fine, but so far I can only run it on my own computer. It would require some effort to get it to run online or to make an executable file out of it because those are areas I'm not very experienced in.


    Thirdly, if I'm reading the grammar correctly, then "qaeiouq" is a
    legal
    stem and so is "qq". Is that true?

The rules for names are probably too loose.  I am hereby suggesting:

stem := C C C* | q V? ( ( C | y | w ) V? )* q

This would force each V (i.e. vowels separated by apostrophes) to be
separated by one or more consonants.  Schwas would be mandatory in
certain places and optional in others, just as in stems.  Certain
diphthongs like <ay> could be licit in names, but it'd always be allowed
to say <ay@> in front of a following consonant. qq [?@?] is still
allowed though I am not sure what purpose it serves.

I agree that they are too loose. I like your suggestion, I'd probably have done it similarly.



    Despite all that, the parser is working, albeit it's not yet the way
    I'd
    want it to be. I personally prefer strictly binary syntax trees, and
    the
    current BNF is not at all binary. So I'd have to rewrite some of it.

I'd be happy to help rewrite the grammar if you wanted me to do so.

Well, I'm not sure. It's not necessarily difficult to rewrite it sloppily :). I already had to rewrite some small bits to make it fit the prolog syntax. And I added a "discourse" unit to allow for parsing texts. Eventually, what I want to see is an actual syntax tree of xorban a utterance that is purely binary, just like in standard linguistics, using X'-theory. In some cases, this won't be so easy I think because you have to decide what binds with what and what has presedence. I uploaded an image of a simple parse tree that I just improvised at http://www.selpahi.de/xorban_tree1.png As you can see, I had to invent a new type of phrase that the binary operator could then take as its complement. Such things need to be done for each and every rule. And finding good names for these phrases is also not so easy :P

mu'o mi'e la selpa'i

--
pilno zo le xu .i lo dei bangu cu se cmene zo lojbo .e nai zo lejbo

doị mèlbi mlenì'u
   .i do càtlu ki'u
ma fe la xàmpre ŭu
   .i do tìnsa càrmi
gi'e sìrji se tàrmi
   .i taị bo pu cìtka lo gràna ku


.