Even with a non-linguist disclaimer, you cannot get away with saying that inflection is anywhere close to diacritic.
However, in the context of J, the historical diacritics of (Rational) APL, such as .. over o and other overstrikes, have migrated, to a certain extent, to the inflections made up of the trailing "." and ":" combinations. > From: Dan Bron <[email protected]> > > Bear in mind control words are really defined by a sublanguage of J, and > could > easily have been defined under the ":" vocab entry with no ramifications in > the > interpreter. > > For J primitives, the answer is (B); . is an inseparable part of the > spelling. It is the last letter of the word. It is like the "e" in "fate". > Removing it results in a different word. > > Traditionally, we have called it an "inflexion", which as a non-linguist I > take > to mean "diacritic", or essentially an extra decoration or marker added to a > letter, to produce a new letter. Like umlaut. I am fine with this > nomenclature > so long as there exist (relatively) well known human languages in which the > diacritic "makes all the difference", i.e. the diacritic is not a merely hint > towards pronunciation but matter of identity, and removing it renders a new > and > different letter, and consequently a new and different word (like changing > a->u > changes "cat" to "cut"). > > But I speak only English, so I don't know if other well-established languages > have this "diacritical dependency" certainly I can cite none. > > My gut says that the role of . in control words is different and more > akin to (A), but I don't know if I could support such an argument. But I do > know that if I were writing a J interpreter, I would have separate rules for > primaries and control words. In broad strokes, something like > > primitive =: '[:graphic:]|([:graphic:]|[:alphanum:][.:]+)' > control_word =: '[:alpha:]{2,}\.' > > The latter could have been rendered '[:alpha:][:alpha:]+\.' But the key thing > is > that control words have 2 or more chars before the inflexion, and anything > with > a single char and and inflexion is a primary by definition (and of course > primaries can be uninflected or inflected differently (using colon or > multiple > inflections), and control words are only recognized by the explicit > interpreter, > always end only with a single . , are always lowercase except for > user-defined > parts of them, etc etc etc). Underscores and other details left as an > exercise > for the (bored) reader. > > So the overall answer is (C), but with "sometimes" well defined. > > -Dan > > Please excuse typos; composed on a handheld device. > > -----Original Message----- > From: "Sherlock, Ric" > Date: Wed, 13 Jan 2010 11:49:19 > To: Programming forum > Subject: [Jprogramming] The role of the . in J words > > I am working with the maintainer of GeSHi (syntax highlighter used on Rosetta > Code) to improve support for J. > > As part of that process I'm seeking clarification of the role of the fullstop > character (.) as it appears in J words, eg: (do.) (for.) (p.) (p..) (*.) (.) > (.:) (..) > > Is the fullstop > A) a symbol to control language flow, > B) an integral part of the word, > C) some other better description? > > Or slightly differently: > Is the fullstop > A) syntax/punctuation, > B) spelling, > C) sometimes one, sometimes the other? > > ---------------------------------------------------------------------- > For information about J forums see http://www.jsoftware.com/forums.htm > ---------------------------------------------------------------------- > For information about J forums see http://www.jsoftware.com/forums.htm ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For information about J forums see http://www.jsoftware.com/forums.htm
