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Typed Japanese

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Re: Typed Japanese

#21

Post by [deleted] »

sparkie wrote: post #19
thaumasiotes wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> A verb (or verbal adjective) basically forms the "root" of a clause, and typically appears at the end of it. > Compared with a typical programming language, Japanese is structured the opposite way - from right to left. How consistent is that across different types of phrases? English is generally described as being strongly right-headed. But that's really a statement about English noun phrases. Prepositional phrase…

Japanese is consistent about the verb (or adjective, adverb) coming last in the clause/sentence (besides certain sentence-ending particles). There are no "particles" necessary on verbs because they're always in the right position. The subject/object/means/destination/etc are flexible and can appear in any order - but typically subject appears before object - `NOUN ga NOUN wo VERB`, `NOUN ga NOUN ni VERB` (where `ga`…

[deleted]

Re: Typed Japanese

#22

Post by GolDDranks »

oceanhaiyang wrote: post #5
retrac wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure what you mean by strict. If by "regular and consistent" then, yes. There are a handful of irregular verbs. Everything else is completely regular with suffixes attached to the verb root. Japanese is not unusual (on this particular point). That is probably the most common structure for a language. Swahili verbs are entirely regular and can have a long sequence of prefixes which follow a strict order. kula…

I think what they mean is can you form sentences that are not textbook and still make sense. In that case as long as you understand the particles and grammar you can make highly backwards sentences still work.

Every human language works this way...? This is why we have systems called "grammars" in the first place: they capture regularity in the structure of a language.

Human languages are, in a sense, "infinitary", so that they aren't simply a set of fixed phrases. However there are, depenging on the language, also patterns they don't allow. (And some patterns _any_ human languages don't allow.)

This logically necessities language to have regularities. We capture these regularities as "generative grammars".

Re: Typed Japanese

#23

Post by canjobear »

guerrilla wrote: post #20

This reminds me of categorial grammars. Has anyone here ever looked into them? I loved them. They're like simply typed lambda calculi but instead of a single arrow type there are two, one for the left and right side of a symbol. So you can so like: and : Phrase \ Conjunction / Phrase do : Subject \ Verb / Object Sorry if I have the directionality wrong but `and` would take a phrase on the left, another on the right a…

Lots of work on this kind of thing.

A good starting point is https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Combinatory_categorial_grammar

Re: Typed Japanese

#24

Post by canjobear »

thaumasiotes wrote: post #18
sparkie wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not strict, but there is underlying structure. It's not really practical, but it is interesting to compare it structurally to programming languages. A verb (or verbal adjective) basically forms the "root" of a clause, and typically appears at the end of it. If we related that to the concept of a function, it would be like writing them in postfix form, with whatever comes before it acting as the arguments to it. (args…

> A verb (or verbal adjective) basically forms the "root" of a clause, and typically appears at the end of it. > Compared with a typical programming language, Japanese is structured the opposite way - from right to left. How consistent is that across different types of phrases? English is generally described as being strongly right-headed. But that's really a statement about English noun phrases. Prepositional phrase…

English is mixed head-initial and head-final, for example objects go after verbs (head-initial) but adjectives go before nouns (head-final). Japanese is strictly head-final.

Re: Typed Japanese

#25

Post by GolDDranks »

lewisjoe wrote: post #7

Can this be used to build a grammar checker for japanese language?

No, because what people mean when they say grammar checker, it doesn't suffice to check whether a sentence is (formally speaking) ungrammatical or not. You'd expect it also check word choice, ortography etc. Those aren't part of the syntax structure. This means that it would allow many very flawed sentences.

Besides, the grammar this project uses is not likely to reflect accurately the actual grammar of modern spoken or written Japanese, and it's likely not to be even nearly complete; that would mean it would also have a quite lot of false positive "ungrammaticals".

Something _like_ this can certainly be used as a part of a grammar checker. But in that case, you shouldn't implement it in TypesScript's type system in the first place.

Re: Typed Japanese

#26

Post by thaumasiotes »

canjobear wrote: post #24
thaumasiotes wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> A verb (or verbal adjective) basically forms the "root" of a clause, and typically appears at the end of it. > Compared with a typical programming language, Japanese is structured the opposite way - from right to left. How consistent is that across different types of phrases? English is generally described as being strongly right-headed. But that's really a statement about English noun phrases. Prepositional phrase…

English is mixed head-initial and head-final, for example objects go after verbs (head-initial) but adjectives go before nouns (head-final). Japanese is strictly head-final.

> for example objects go after verbs (head-initial)

There would be a better argument that this was an example of left-headedness if subjects also went after verbs.

Re: Typed Japanese

#27

Post by GolDDranks »

thaumasiotes wrote: post #18
sparkie wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not strict, but there is underlying structure. It's not really practical, but it is interesting to compare it structurally to programming languages. A verb (or verbal adjective) basically forms the "root" of a clause, and typically appears at the end of it. If we related that to the concept of a function, it would be like writing them in postfix form, with whatever comes before it acting as the arguments to it. (args…

> A verb (or verbal adjective) basically forms the "root" of a clause, and typically appears at the end of it. > Compared with a typical programming language, Japanese is structured the opposite way - from right to left. How consistent is that across different types of phrases? English is generally described as being strongly right-headed. But that's really a statement about English noun phrases. Prepositional phrase…

Japanese is often described as "strictly head final". However, there are some exceptions such as head-initial phrases with modifiers like "dake", "bakari", "goro", "gurai" and "hodo".

Also, the morphology in verb inflection and case declination is often head-initial, if it makes sense to say that about morphology. Word formation seems to be kinda mixed.

But Japanese syntax is a lot more consistently head-final than with how many European languages have their parameter setting.

Re: Typed Japanese

#28

Post by [deleted] »

thaumasiotes wrote: post #17
retrac wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure what you mean by strict. If by "regular and consistent" then, yes. There are a handful of irregular verbs. Everything else is completely regular with suffixes attached to the verb root. Japanese is not unusual (on this particular point). That is probably the most common structure for a language. Swahili verbs are entirely regular and can have a long sequence of prefixes which follow a strict order. kula…

> That is probably the most common structure for a language. Swahili verbs are entirely regular and can have a long sequence of prefixes which follow a strict order. This seems a little confused. If a language's verbs are entirely regular, the normal point of view would be that that language doesn't inflect verbs at all. For example, an English verb can include up to four prefixes, which occur in an order that never…

[deleted]

Re: Typed Japanese

#30

Post by makeitdouble »

GolDDranks wrote: post #22
oceanhaiyang wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think what they mean is can you form sentences that are not textbook and still make sense. In that case as long as you understand the particles and grammar you can make highly backwards sentences still work.

Every human language works this way...? This is why we have systems called "grammars" in the first place: they capture regularity in the structure of a language. Human languages are, in a sense, "infinitary", so that they aren't simply a set of fixed phrases. However there are, depenging on the language, also patterns they don't allow. (And some patterns _any_ human languages don't allow.) This logically necessities…

While you're right, I think parent/OP's discussion is on how composable a language is with low semantic knowledge of the components, just going with the grammatical rules.

For instance in English you'll need to know if a subject is a third person singular or not to adjust the verb. Or even just singular vs plural for the adjectives and pronouns. And you'll need the gender in gendered languages (French, Italian etc)

In general, Japanese doesn't require that kind of care: the verb doesn't change, adjectives don't either, most of the words are unaffected if you swap semantically different parts.

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