I did a decnt job of explaining this in J for C Programmers, in the chapters towards the end on Parsing.
It turns out to be pretty hard to say what a verb phrase is. The only way I could come up with makes reference to the parsing rules. Henry Rich > -----Original Message----- > From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of p j > Sent: Friday, March 24, 2006 9:43 PM > To: Programming forum > Subject: [Jprogramming] Parsing conjunctions > > (-: *:)@+: 2 > 0 > -: *:@+: 2 > 8 > -: (*:)@+: 2 > 8 > +:@-: (*:)@+: 2 > 16 > +:@-: *:@+: 2 > 16 > +:@(-: *:@+:) 2 > 0 > +:@-: (*:@+: 2) > 16 > > >From the dictionary, conjunctions have as left > argument "the entire verb phrase that precedes it." > p=: 2 : 'u' > +:@-: *:@+: p 1 > +:@-: *:@+: > That doesn't mean very much, because the relationship > of the entire verb phrase is dependent upon the single > word (or paren'd entity) that is to the left of the > conjunction. > > +:@-: 2 + *:@+: 2 > 18 > +:@-: 2 + (*:@+:) 2 > 18 > > >From the above examples, it looks a lot like you could > think of conjunctions as binding with the word on its > left (which will then be processed by the rest of the > sentence) > > Amazingly, > +:@-: *:@(+: p 1) > +:@-: *:@+: > +:@-: 2 + p + + > +:@-: (2 + +) > +:@-: 2 (+ p +) + > +:@-: (2 + +) > > Can you say that for any conjunction c, sentences s > and words w: > s3 (s2)c(s1) -: s3 ((s2)c(s1)) > s3 w2 c w1 -: s3 (w2 c w1) > > I'm very surprised that there seems no way to limit > the left argument to a conjunction by parenthesising. > > Here's another example that better illustrates the > concept that conjunctions really left-bind with one > word: > -/ +/"(0) 3 2 3 > 4 > -/"0 +/"(0) 3 2 3 > 3 2 3 > (shouldn't rank be setting all verbs on the left > side?) > > what semantics make that meaningful? > > __________________________________________________ > Do You Yahoo!? > Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around > http://mail.yahoo.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
