Re: Stack-based syntax (was: affixes)
| From: | Mark J. Reed <markjreed@...> |
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| Date: | Wednesday, February 23, 2005, 19:53 |
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On Tue, Feb 22, 2005 at 06:38:22PM +0000, Ray Brown wrote:
> >>I do not see how a lexical category like verb should act as an operator.
> >>Isn't it something more like: singing, John, NOM = John is singing?
> >
> >It is a question of semantics. In Fith, verbs are indeed operators.
> >Intransitive verbs are unary operators, transitive verbs are binary
> >operators.
>
> You're right. Once again the Fith verb is combining both lexical meaning
> and operator.
Which is not as odd as you make it out to be, IMO. If the verb has lexical
semantics, then don't the operators in arithmetic RPN likewise have lexical
semantics? It's not "3, 2, ADDITION, PERFORM", it's just "3 2 +".
And certainly there must be some "lexical" information in the - and ÷
operators, which enforce an ordering on their operands?
> > Perhaps more "part-of-speech" thinking involved here
> >than there should be.
I think rather that y'all are demanding too much syntactic rigor from what
is, after all, intended to be a natlang. An alien natlang, but still a
natlang, not a loglang or engelang.
-Marcos
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