I am not sure if I understand your question. If you asked something undefined
is a gerund or not. I checked by executing v@.0 '' and the J interpreter said
value error. Sounds like an empty array joke to me.
Sent from my iPhone
On 7 Aug, 2017, at 5:23 AM, Jose Mario Quintana <jose.mario.quint...@gmail.com>
wrote:
> I am not hoping to change people's minds; nevertheless, I would like to
> explain, to some degree, my rationale regarding my current notion of what a
> gerund is.
>
> The Dictionary is famous (or infamous according to some?) for its
> terseness. It is not really surprising to me that different people have
> different understandings even regarding the very important concept of
> gerund. Personally, I use Dictionary as the primary source but
> complemented by other official documents, forum information (particularly
> opinions and statements from certain people), third party sources, and
> first and foremost the "real thing", the interpreter(s) which it is, after
> all, where programs and utilities for writing programs, some of which are
> very important to me, run.
>
> Let me start with the (current version of the) Dictionary, this is how I
> perceive it, given its terseness, the statement "Verbs act upon nouns to
> produce noun results..." is generally interpreted as "Verbs act upon nouns
> [and only nouns] to produce noun [and only noun] results..." and other
> supporting evidence clearly confirm that is the intention.
>
> Therefore, assuming that the Dictionary is consistent, then the statement
> related to the to the entry Tie (Gerund),
> "
> More generally, tie produces gerunds as follows: u`v is au,av , where au
> and av are the (boxed noun) atomic representations (5!:1) of u and v .
> Moreover, m`n is m,n and m`v is m,av and u`n is au,n . See Bernecky and Hui
> [12]. Gerunds may also be produced directly by boxing.
> "
> could be intrepreted as "... tie produces gerunds [and only gerunds]..."
> (I know that, actually , tie can produce also nouns which are not gerunds;
> just as a verbs can produce words which are not a nouns.)
>
> Incidentally, I do not regard foreings as part of the core language either
> but they are in the Dictionary, and they are used to illustrate points,
> even when discussing a primitive (see (5!:1) above).
>
> Furthermore, "Moreover, m`n is m,n and m`v is m,av and u`n is au,n"
> suggests that both, the left and right arguments do not have to be verbs.
> Indeed, the gerund (produced by) +`-`* is equivalent to (+`-)`* and (+`-)
> is not a verb it is a gerund (i.e, a noun).
>
> The last sentence "Gerunds may also be produced directly by boxing" is
> quite important in the context of last part of that page,
> "
> The atomic representation of a noun (used so as to distinguish a noun such
> as '+' from the verb +) is given by the following function:
> (ar=: [: < (,'0')"_ ; ]) '+'
> +-----+
> |+-+-+|
> ||0|+||
> |+-+-+|
> +-----+
>
> *`(ar '+')
> +-+-----+
> |*|+-+-+|
> | ||0|+||
> | |+-+-+|
> +-+-----+
> "
>
> There, clearly, the right argument (ar '+') of ` is the atomic
> representation of a noun ('+') not a verb. That is, *`(ar '+') is a gerund
> and, for example, G=. (*:`ar 0 1 2) is a gerund well.
>
> Let me jump to the Dictionary's entry for Evoke Gerund (`:),
> "
> m `: 6 Train Result is the train of individual verbs.
> "
>
> Right, it is referring to a train of verbs but the entry is Evoke Gerund
> and G (defined above) is a gerund which makes sense (to me) as a train; so
> I expect G`:6 to work, and it does,
>
> G`:6
> 0 1 4
>
> Let me jump to the Dictionary's entry for Agenda (@.),
>
> "
> m@.n is a verb defined by the gerund m with an agenda specified by n ; that
> is, the verb represented by the train selected from m by the indices n . If
> n is boxed, the train is parenthesized accordingly. The case m@.v uses the
> result of the verb v to perform the selection.
> "
>
> Again, verbs are mentioned; yet again, I expect G@.0 1 to work, and it does,
>
> G@.0 1
> 0 1 4
>
> Incidentally, if is not for producing code (and executing code), what is
> the purpose of "If n is boxed, the train is parenthesized accordingly. The
> case m@.v uses the result of the verb v to perform the selection" (see
> above)?
>
> What did the original co-designer and implementor of the language write, in
> the post I mentioned before, responding to the question, how to test for a
> gerund?
>
> Here it is,
> "
> [Jprogramming] how to test for a gerund Roger Hui
> gerundYN=: 0 -. at e. 3 : ('y (5!:0)';'1')"0 :: 0:
>
> gerundYN +`*
> 1
> gerundYN <'0';i.5
> 1
> gerundYN <i.5
> 0
> gerundYN 5!:1 <'gerundYN'
> 1
>
> See also http://www.jsoftware.com/help/dictionary/dx005.htm#1
> "
>
> He used a foreign (5!:0) to write his testing verb, he "produced directly
> by boxing" a gerund and tested it ( gerundYN <'0';i.5 ), and he used a
> foreign to produce a gerund and tested it ( gerundYN 5!:1 <'gerundYN' ).
>
> I could keep going but all the above is enough for me to justify my opinion
> that a gerund is not merely a list of atomic representations of verbs.
> Ultimately, it does not matter what name (gerund, gerundive, etc.), if any,
> is given to these entities; different people at different times have used
> these
> AND related entities in the context of `:6 , and @. . I, for one, would
> not be a happy camper if the official interpreter is changed in such a way
> that my programs and utilities for writing programs break down, even if I
> have an alternative.
>
> Finally, I would like to pose a simple yet subtle question to those who do
> not regard a gerund as merely a list of of atomic representations of verbs,
>
> erase'v'
> 1
>
> gerundYN 'v' NB. Roger's test...
> 1
>
> isgerund =: 0:`(0 -. @ e. 3 : ('y (5!:0)';'1')"0)@.(0 < L.) :: 0:
>
> isgerund 'v' NB. Pascal's test
> 0
>
> Is 'v' a gerund or not?
>
>
> On Thu, Aug 3, 2017 at 7:31 PM, Bill <bbill....@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> From my understanding, the reference shows the atomic representation of
>> gerund. It does not advocate this a way to construct a gerund. moreover it
>> is "foreign" conjunction.
>>
>> numbers can be converted from strings using foreign conjunction but it
>> doesn't mean J encourages writing numbers using this method.
>>
>> IMO foreign conjunction is not a part of J core.
>>
>>
>> Sent from my iPhone
>>
>> On 4 Aug, 2017, at 5:33 AM, Jose Mario Quintana <
>> jose.mario.quint...@gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>> "
>>> In J dictionary, only tie conjunction
>>> on verbs was mentioned to produce a gerund.
>>> "
>>>
>>> I am afraid you might not be the only one who has reached such
>> conclusion.
>>> Nevertheless, in my opinion, it is a misconception that a gerund can only
>>> be a list (of atomic representations) of verbs. Why? See [0] in the
>>> context of [1].
>>>
>>> [0] Atomic
>>> http://www.jsoftware.com/help/dictionary/dx005.htm#1
>>>
>>> [1] [Jprogramming] how to test for a gerund Roger Hui
>>> http://www.jsoftware.com/pipermail/programming/2010-April/019178.html
>>>
>>> Mind you gerundYN is not bulletproof.
>>>
>>>
>>> On Thu, Aug 3, 2017 at 5:46 AM, bill lam <bbill....@gmail.com> wrote:
>>>
>>>> I am thinking of the opposite. In J dictionary, only tie conjunction
>>>> on verbs was mentioned to produce a gerund. Boxed verbs had not been
>>>> mentioned. Atomic representation of boxed verbs looks like that of
>>>> gerund and therefore can work as gerund. IMO this is a backdoor
>>>> provided by J implementation.
>>>>
>>>> Metadata could be attached to "real" gerunds that have ancestors which
>>>> were results of verb`verb. All other nouns without this DNA would be
>>>> regarded as non-gerund.
>>>>
>>>> Just my 2 cents.
>>>>
>>>> On Thu, Aug 3, 2017 at 3:57 PM, Marshall Lochbaum <mwlochb...@gmail.com
>>>
>>>> wrote:
>>>>> Can I just point out that it's not too late to add some (documented)
>> way
>>>>> to box verbs/adverbs/conjunctions? These could be treated as gerunds by
>>>>> everything that currently uses gerunds, and the interpreter can just
>>>>> throw an error if anything attempts to actually unbox them. They are
>>>>> much harder to confuse than the current gerunds, and will have far
>>>>> better performance.
>>>>>
>>>>> This sounds like a radical divergence from the way J works now, but I
>>>>> don't think it is in practice. Programmers would use some new
>>>>> conjunction to replace (`), and provided they don't inspect the
>>>>> structure of gerunds nothing else changes. I suppose there would need
>> to
>>>>> be a way to check what class of object a box contains, because unboxing
>>>>> to check the type is not allowed. Gerunds would remain useful for
>>>>> programmers who want to inspect functions or build them from scratch,
>>>>> but would otherwise become obselete.
>>>>>
>>>>> Marshall
>>> ----------------------------------------------------------------------
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>> ----------------------------------------------------------------------
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> ----------------------------------------------------------------------
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