Re: METAGRAM -- Pt. 2 Some Observations

<okay> getting{by emails{these}, of lenth{too-much}} <!!!>
("Okay, these emails are getting too much length!!!")

Just some comments (and a few minor corrections) about your usage of MG. I
take the quotes in the order that seems most logical to me, so I jump
around quite a bit.

---------------------------------
First of all, your system of notation "role:object" is very interesting. I
have ocasionally thought of it in similar terms, and I might eventually
develop a stricter version of MG to do something like that, but at the
moment I don't want to confuse myself too much. It would have to be done in
a way that is orthogonal, finite, and consistent. In fact, one problem I
have with some of your sentences is that you don't seem to use it very
consistently. Sometimes you use verbs "is:something", sometimes you use
prepositions "of:something", and sometimes you use pronouns
"what:something". I've even seen mixed versions "of-what:something". This
is all considerably more inconsistent than I would like.

Have you ever seen "AllNoun"? The website is apparently gone now, but it
was similar to MG (METAGRAM), and was more like what you're doing. It was
just a bit too abstract for my likes though, and it didn't (IMHO) represent
the underlying sentence structure. If you ask around, you might find
someone who has archived files of it.

---------------------------------
> request{ for:you, that:take{ state{ of:indicated(
> what:plural{ rambling }, how:these }, is:not{
> oraganized }}, with{ what:measure{ of:salt,
> unit:grain, quantity:1 }}}
Good Greif! Nooo! Make it stop... :-)
ERROR: Mismatched parenthesis -- Line 4.

Actually, in order to read that, I had to indent it like a computer
program:

request{
  for:you,
  that:take{
    state{
      of:indicated(
        what:plural{ rambling },
        how:these
      },
      is:not{ oraganized }
    },
    with{
      what:measure{
        of:salt,
        unit:grain,
        quantity:1
      }
    }
  }
<--- Missing Parenthesis!!!

But I think that's just a wee bit complicated (or was that a dileberate
joke?). Seriously, I'd write it:

requesting{
  of taking {
    by you,
    of ramblings{these, disorganised},
    with grain{of salt}
  }
}

Which means:
"There is an act of requesting for you to be taking
these diorganized ramblings with a grain of salt."

By any account, I certainly shall. :-)

> But first an imporatant
> disclaimer. Some of these ideas may lead far astray
> of the vision you have for METAGRAM. Feel free to
> disregard those that are not consistent with your own
> vision...
>
> the underlying intent of my project was to design a way to
> describe a real-world event or situation in an
> unabiguous manner that could be easily handled by a
> computer program running a simulation of that real
> world environment... Since this
> intent appears to be different from your own intent in
> designing METAGRAM, my suggestions may be way off the
> mark.
Sounds like a cool project! Please feel free to adapt METAGRAM as
neccessary to your computer simulations. True, I originally conceived of
METAGRAM as a means of analyzing natlangs, but I wanted to make something
so general that would also be very close to something that a computer could
read. I will admit, though, that computer-readability is not a design goal,
just generality. I also want there to be a "fair amount" of unambiguity.
I'm not even neccessarily striving to remove all of that, though. At least
not yet...


---------------------------------
> > We have seen that each phrase has a head
> > followed by predicates of that
> > head. When translating English sentences,
> > that head will probably be the
> > subject of the sentence. In active voice,
> > this subject will typically be an
> > agent, while in passive voice, it will
> > typically be the patient.
> >
> > I {giving{of book}}
> > "I am giving the book."
> >
> > book {given{by me}}
> > "The book is given by me."
>
> Again, at risk of doing voilence to your underlying
> philosophy:
Not at all! One of my design philosophies is to make METAGRAM as general
and widely applicable as possible!

> giving{ of:book, by:me } is consistent since the giver
> is as much an argument of the action as the thing
> given, or the person to who it is given as in:
>
> giving{ of:book, by:me, to:Mary }
It is indeed, and I do the exact same thing a bit further down in my post
when I talk about killing sharks.

> Of course this syntax only identifies the underlying
> action that took place and not the voice in which it
> was expressed.
True. It generalizes the concept of 'voice' as merely one manifestation of
the concept of 'head and phrase'! -- As I tried to explain last post,
'active voice' uses the subject as the head, and 'passive voice' places the
agent at the head. What you did effectively places the verb at the head,
which is what I was calling "verb-centric METAGRAM" (I think I'll start
abbr. it as VMG). It's really more of a style of METAGRAM. In fact, its a
style which you seem to prefer. *gasp* My congram is already developing
dialects!

The point is, METAGRAM is so tolerant that it allows basically *any* noun
at the head, including a noun representing the action that took place (as
in VMG), as long as the semantics are unchanged. I personally prefer
subject-head or object-head (since they parallel the English language which
is what I'm describing). But a computer program would surely like VMG much
better! After all, most (if not _all_) of the functions in a programming
language should be named as a verb representing what they do. CreateItem(),
DestroyItem(this), AddToList(this), etc... The good news is that with
METAGRAM, transforming between S-head, O-head, and V-head (VMG) is
extremely easy!


> > pool {killing-there {of shark, by me, with knife}}
> > "The pool is where there is a killing of the
> > shark by me with a knife."
>
> > knife {killing-with-it {of shark, by me, in pool} }
> > "The knife is what is used used in a killing of a
> > shark by me in the pool."
>
> killing{ of:shark, by:me, location:pool,
> instrumentality:knife }
>
> states the event without emphasis on anything,
> however, it could be the convention that the order of
> the argument(s) determines emphasis:
Yes, and I did that form too. Its another case of VMG-style. All forms are
correct!

In fact, one of my biggest problems with your post is probably with your
use of VMG. Yes, it is a _correct_ usage of MG, and yes I realize that your
writing for a computer, so there's not really a problem with it. It just
seems to jar me the wrong way for some reason. I guess it goes against my
use of MG to analyze English sentences.
::Plops a single grain of salt on tongue and swallows::

The real problem I have, though, is with your indicating of implied words,
i.e words that aren't actually in the sentence. For example, you use things
like commanding{...}, asking{...}, and implying{...} for commands,
questions, and implications. Of course, this is probably because I'm
analyzing the structure of the actual sentence, not so much the action
represented by the sentence. Adding these extra "ghost words", changes the
entire structure (and to an extent, the meaning) of the sentence, although
they don't change the underlying action. As a result, you then are
representing a different sentence. _However_ that just might happen to be
the sentence that you would want to tell a computer! So there's nothing
inherently wrong with doing it that way.

As an example:

> Imperative:
>
> commanding( to:Mary, that:coming( whereto:supper,
> who:you ))
(OT note: Since "coming{}" is the D.O. of "commanding{}", I would write
'of', not 'that')
commanding{to Mary, of coming{to supper, by you}}
But this would mean:
"There is a commanding to Mary that you are comming to supper."
Which has a different underlying structure then "Mary, come to supper."

> Or "John, quick throw the ball really hard!"
>
> commanding( to:John, throwing( what:ball,
> when:without_delay, how:extreme_of( hard ))
>
> or maybe "extreme_of( hard ) should really be:
>
> modify( what:hard, how:intesify )
...Forgot the "of" again on the D.O. "throwing." tsk tsk tsk. ;-)
Perhaps that style would work for a computer, but it seems to confusing to
me. But if I were to use the "commanding{...}" technique for imperatives, I
would write:

commanding{ to John, of throwing{of ball, by him, quickly, hard{really}}
i.e.
"There is a commanding to John that he throw the ball quickly and really
hard."

This is perhaps closer to what you meant? Its still not the same structure
as the original sentence, but its consistant if you wanted to use
"commanding{}" for imperitives. "quickly" and "hard" modify "throwing",
while "really" modifies "hard."

Similar comments regarding your use of "asking{...}" for interogatives, and
"implying{...}" for restrictive clauses. In each case, if the sentence
actually said that somebody commanded/asked/implied something, then I would
represent it more like your way. And since the computer can't read between
the lines, you might have to tell it those things explicitly.

Besides, for restrictive clauses I like the double-predicate method I
mentioned last time:

object {this-particular-one} {is-like-this}


---------------------------------
 Regarding Questions:

> But then what about the difference between: "Is Mary
> coming to supper?" and "Is it Mary that is coming to
> supper?"
Depends on where you place the stress in Enlgish:
"Is _Mary_ coming to supper?" (Or is Bob coming instead?)
"Is Mary coming to _supper_?" (Or to lunch?)
"Is Mary _coming_ to supper?" (Or is she going?)

What we probably need is a way to indicate that a given state or object
(remember, everything is essentially either a state or an object) is in
question. Something, perhaps, like this:

Mary {?coming{to supper}} == (is she coming?)
?Mary {coming{to supper}} == (is it Mary whose coming?)
Mary {coming{to ?supper}} == (is it supper she's coming too?)

Also, notice that this isn't the same trick as my earlier "interrogative
quantifier" (which is only used with objects, not states, anyway):

Mary {which} {coming {to supper}}
"Which Mary is coming to supper?" (Mary Jones or Mary Smith?)


<snip>
> OR
> coming{ whereto:dinner, who:? }
> answered by:
> coming{ whereto:dinner, who:John }
So now there are two ways to write questions like "_Who_ is coming to
dinner?":

1) My earlier and straightforward "who {coming{to dinner}}" which could be
made verb-centric like this:
coming {to dinner, by who(m)}

2) And your version (which I write like this):
coming {to dinner, by ?}

I like them both. By royal decree, both are now correct!

The advantage of using "who" is that it has a more natlang feel. Also, It
provides the context that the thing coming to dinner is a person, whereas
"by ?" would leave open the possibility that a giant green 8-legged monster
were coming to dinner. I realize that your original text read "who:?" and
that this would provide the same context as "by whom," but your
"role:object" style is a whole other dialect of METAGRAM which I'll deal
with elsewhere.

On the other hand, using your '?' allows generality. (What if I don't know
whether a giant green 8-legged monster is coming to supper?). Furthermore,
it allows a nice balanced similarity to the method of asking questions
illustrated above. "?Mary {coming{...}}"


> OR
>
> asking{ what:if-true, that:coming{ whereto:dinner,
> who:John }}
<Noooo!> It{complicated{too-much}} :-)
Simplicity is a feature, not a bug!


---------------------------------
 Regarding Negations:
<snip>

I wrote:
> > In the case of negations, they might be put onto
> > prepositions...
You replied:
> OR applied to a whole term: not{on shelf{that}}
Hmmm... Just a slight notational change. From "not-state" to "not{state}".
I'll keep it in mind, but I'm inclined to be against it for the reason that
the thing in {}'s should _always_ modify the thing directly before it.
Hence: "object{modifiers-of-object}" or "state{modifiers-of-state}". In
your example, I don't see the 'state' (on shelf) as modifying the word
'not.' In fact, it would almost make more sense to say "book{on{not}
shelf{that}}." Infact, that's not a bad idea...

In general, though, I think questions, commands and negations should be
part of the conjugation system. My preliminary idea on these is that
conjugations should be able to modify _any_ state (not just verbs) by
representing crucial information about that state... is it a fact, a
non-fact(negation), a question, a command, a fact in the past (past tense),
expected to be a fact in the future (future tense), or a desired, but
untrue, state (subjunctive). This isn't neccessarily a complete list, just
a place to start.


---------------------------------
> When two words are used to express one single conecpt
> I would vote for making them effectively one word:
>
> shut_down( of_what:machine )
>
> > *locking {of house, upward}
>
> what's wrong with:
>
> locking_up( of_what:house )
That's what I did (except with a dash instead of the computerese
underscore). The asterisk indicates that the sentence was incorrect. I
later wrote the correct version:

locking-up {of house}

---------------------------------

Thanks,
~Caleb

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