Re: Stack-based syntax (was: affixes)

Hallo!

On Sun, 20 Feb 2005 19:09:57 +0000,
Ray Brown <ray.brown@...> wrote:

> On Saturday, February 19, 2005, at 11:01 , # 1 wrote:
>
> > [adjectives in a stack-based language]
>
> Three points here:
> - the category 'adjective' is by no means universal. As Trask says of
> adjectives "A lexical category, or a lexical item belonging to this
> category, found in many, though not all, languages...."
> - you are lumping together into one category groups of words which are
> trated differently in some languages.
> - in any case, I would consider many of these items (certainly descriptive
> adjectives) to be bound to their noun by a binary operator, say: beauty,
> city, REL = a city [which is] beautiful/ a beautiful city.
>
> I am strongly of the opinion that if one is going to construct a truly
> stack-based syntax one simply has to think in terms quite different from
> traditional western 'parts of speech'.
Maybe.  Fith still has nouns and verbs, though.  But at least,
adjectives and adverbs are one and the same in Fith.  The difference
is merely what is on top the stack, an NP or a clause.

> > Articles would also work that way to tell the definiteness of the noun
>
> _Many_ languages do not have articles. I believe in fact the majority do
> not. So I think one needs to ask whether they would figure at all.
Yep.  I think Fith has articles, though, which are indeed unary
operators.

> > Case marks would act that way with a single noun
>
> Surely not! Is not the whole point of case markings that they show how the
> noun/pronoun _relates_ to some other part of the sentence (usually the
> verb). As I see it, the the case markings are binary operators.
Yes.  Case markers in Fith are binary operators: they take the NP
on top of the stack and the item (phrase or clause) below it, and
knit them together.

> > And the intransitive verbs also because they only affect one noun
>
> 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.  Perhaps more "part-of-speech" thinking involved here
than there should be.

> > Other operators will simply link two arguments in different ways like
> > conjonctions and other in more sophisticated ways like transitive verbs.
>
> I would see a transitive verb more like: (John NOM (loving ACC Jennifer))
> which in postifix (stack-based) form would be: John, loving, Jennifer, ACC,
>   NOM.
Yes, that's more elegant.  Keeping content words and operators nicely
apart.

> [...]
>
> > On Sunday, February 20, 2005, at 03:56 , # 1 wrote:
> [snip]
>
> > Isn't exactly as an SOV, postpositionnal, noun-adj language?
>
> IMO no - not exactly. Certainly such a language might be a good place to
> start.
A stack-based language is not only "not exactly" an "SOV,
postpositional,
noun-adj language", it is *not at all*.  It lies wholly outside the
range of human language structures.  A simple clause in a stack-based
language may perhaps look like one in an SOV, postpositional, noun-adj
language (as a simple clause in Fith indeed looks like), but that
resemblance is merely superficial, because the clause is parsed in an
utterly different way from *any* human language.

> [snip]
> > As I see it, a LIFO grammar is only a complicated way to explain a grammar
> > that is explainable in traditional way?
>
> No. A language with a truly stack-based syntax would not IMO be easily
> explained in terms of traditional western grammar.
Certainly not.  Because it works in a way no human language works.

> >
> > A sentence like:
> >
> > dog the big cat your small love = the big dog loves your small cat
>
> But this doesn't clearly separate lexical items and operators. This would
> imply, for example, that 'love' is a combination of lexical item and
> operator. IMO in a truly stack-based system, lexical items and operators
> should be kept distincr.
That would at least be more elegant.  However, in Fith, verbs are
operators as well as lexical items, as in the example sentence above.

> [...]
>
> > But it could also be a LIFO sentence with "the", "your", "big", and
> > "small"
> > being simple operators
>
> IMO neither 'big' nor 'small' can be _simple_ operators. They are surely
> lexical items and need an operator to link them to some other lexical item.
As with verbs, Fith's "modifiers" (which perform as adjectives or
adverbs, depending what's beneath them on the stack) are both lexemes
and operators.

> [...]
>
> I too know very little about Fith, except that the name was inspired by
> the programming language called FORTH which uses 'Reversed Polish' or
> post-fix notation.
Yes.

> If I was challenged to produce a language stack-based syntax, I would
> certainly use a model that confined itsel to binary operators with, maybe,
>   a few unary operators. It occurs to me that Lin's "cements" are indeed
> binary operators. It even has order of precedence in that 'internal
> cements' bind more closely than 'external cements'. Indeed Lin could
> easily be transformed into a stack-based system, e.g. u_f+h --> ufh+_
> (You see the bird).
>
> IIRC the operators in Tom Breton's AllNoun are binary. Um - I had better
> look out my notes.
>
> IMO with a stack-based syntax, lexical items are literals and operators
> make explicit how the literals relate to one another.
Yes, that would be indeed much more elegant than Jeffrey's Fith.

Greetings,

Jörg.

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