Just had an idea for a simple, unambiguous, but still (hopefully) easily
human-comprehensible grammar.
Three main grammatical categories-
Arguments (corresponding to nouns and phrases), Connectives (corresponding
to conjunctions), and Predicates (corresponding to everything else).
Predicates would come in different arity classes depending on how many
arguments they take- unary predicates would correspond to adjectives,
adverbs, and intransitive verbs, binary predicates would correspond to
transitive verbs and prepositions, and trinary predicates would correspond
to bitransitive verbs.
Phrases/clauses are formed by listing arguments followed by a predicate of
the appropriate arity; the group of a predicate and its prefixed arguments
in turn forms a new argument.
Now, it could be made really simple and unambiguous if conjunctions were
made into predicates and postfixed after the clauses they connect, perfect
for machine parsing, but that I expect would present serious difficulties
with human understanding- you'd have to keep too much stuff in your
working
memory before you got around to the resolution. So, connectives get their
own category and are placed in between clauses as usual.
Examples using English vocabulary-
This sentence is written in postfix grammar => Sentence this written is
grammar postfix in.
I like postfix grammar and I think it is cool => I grammar postfix like
and
I it cool is think.
One could, of course, do exactly the same thing with prefixing. Are there
any particular advantages or disadvantages to using prefix vs. postfix?
Any other thoughts?
-l.
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