I agree with you about this. (But this doesn't change anything that I wrote in my previous message.)
Thanks, -- Raul On Tue, Sep 4, 2018 at 1:01 PM Henry Rich <[email protected]> wrote: > > Gerunds may be produced by boxing, but it doesn't follow that anything > produced by boxing is a gerund. > > Look at the definition of `: where it is clear that the result of > evoking a gerund must be a verb. > > Henry Rich > > On 9/4/2018 11:54 AM, Raul Miller wrote: > > Ok... (deep breath)... > > > > Here is something that the dictionary says: > > > > "In English, a gerund is a noun that carries the force of a verb, as > > does the noun cooking in the art of cooking. The tie applies to two > > verbs to produce a gerund. Gerunds are commonly used with Insert (/) > > and with Agenda (@.): > > > > "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 isau,n . See Bernecky > > and Hui [12]. Gerunds may also be produced directly by boxing. ..." > > > > -- http://www.jsoftware.com/help/dictionary/d610.htm > > > > And then it goes on with some examples. > > > > This suggests that any value that has an atomic representation could > > be a valid part of a gerund. > > > > The syntax of the tie conjunction only accepts nouns and verbs, but > > gerunds are an array and we use gerunds to represent the components of > > gerunds (where they have structure). For example, the gerund for +&3 > > includes the atomic representation of & > > > > You could introduce rules which eliminate some atomic representations, > > but that would create problems in the code which implements gerunds > > (because now you need to introduce some other mechanism to handle > > those cases). > > > > That said, the actual implementation is instead: > > > > "... 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 where u > > and v are verbs. Tie does not use the atomic representation of u where > > u is a noun, as u would often be a gerund." > > > > (The current implementation also doesn't use the atomic representation > > of v, when v is a noun. But this could be considered an implementation > > flaw. So I left that detail out of my representation of the current > > implementation.) > > > > That said, it would be simple to change the implementation so that it > > is consistent with the current dictionary writeup: Have the parser > > track what the previous operation was. If the previous operation was > > tie, tie would not use the ar of u. If the previous operation was > > anything else, tie would use the ar of u. (Note that this works > > specifically because of J's syntax rules for conjunctions.) > > > > This would be a breaking change. For example, the result of 1`2`3 > > would be different. > > > > This would also mean that (a`b)`c would produce a different result from > > a`b`c > > > > (This would also mean that if you want to build up a long gerund > > across multiple sentences, you'll need to to use append (,) instead of > > tie to join the component gerunds together.) > > > > This kind of change would also warrant a writeup describing the issue > > (perhaps in the release notes). > > > > Thanks, > > > > > --- > This email has been checked for viruses by AVG. > https://www.avg.com > > ---------------------------------------------------------------------- > For information about J forums see http://www.jsoftware.com/forums.htm ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For information about J forums see http://www.jsoftware.com/forums.htm
