Hi Raul, On 2010-11-22, at 9:52 PM, Raul Miller wrote:
> On Mon, Nov 22, 2010 at 9:14 PM, bob therriault <[email protected]> wrote: >> You'r right, we're really talking about two parts of speech >> (nouns and verbs), the third part of speech would be modifying >> other adverbs and this is really a case of modifying a verb >> (which is in this case an adverb-verb combination). > > Do you mean something like +//. where you use two > adverbs to modify a verb? First one adverb modifies the > verb and you get a derived verb. Then the second adverb > modifies the derived verb? > Yes, precisely. >> I am starting to think of adverbs as a kind of preprocessor for a verb by >> changing the way arguments are parsed/adjusted prior to use. This may be a >> flawed view :) > > This is a viable view, for both adverbs and conjunctions. > > That said, they have the full power of J available to > them (which makes them a bit different from the sort > of preprocessor you might encounter in other languages). Yes, I consider the conversion of J sentences into strings of adverbs as an example of the language's power and flexibility. You may be thinking of other examples with which I am not as familiar. > >>> Of course, the verb itself can be used in a monadic verb >>> context or a dyadic verb context. But that context is largely >>> independent of the adverb. >> >> Hmmm. I think by this you mean the monadic or dyadic versions of the >> verb-adverb complex (which is a verb itself). In that case, whether the >> verb-adverb is monadic or dyadic is certainly independent of the adverb and >> only depends on the number of arguments. If you are referring only to the >> verb being modified by the adverb, in the case of ~ and / the verb is always >> acting with two arguments. There may be cases where the modified verb does >> change from monadic to dyadic depending on the number of arguments of the >> verb-adverb complex, but as I am still muddling through the language I >> haven't seen that behaviour yet. > > They can only be different in different containing sentences. > By this do you mean that the valences of the complex verbs are only affected by their number of arguments? This of course would change the arguments the modified verb would receive, but not its valence. As an example, ',~ y' is equivalent to 'y , y' , and 'x ,~ y' is equivalent to 'y , x'. In both cases the modified verb ',' would be dyadic, while the valence of the complex verb ',~' would depend on the number of arguments. I'm using complex and modified to distinguish between the verb ',' (modified by ~) and the verb ',~' (complex). Other terms may be more appropriate to clarify this distinction. > -- > Raul Cheers, bob > ---------------------------------------------------------------------- > For information about J forums see http://www.jsoftware.com/forums.htm ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For information about J forums see http://www.jsoftware.com/forums.htm
