Comments on Coding Instinct: English defined in MGrammar

@Brian Interesting, I wounder who Word implements...

2009-11-04T15:39:52.812+01:00

@Brian

Interesting, I wounder who Word implements it grammar checker. I would also suspect that they use more fuzzy logic approach.

If you would have continued, you would have also l...

2009-11-04T15:34:47.837+01:00

If you would have continued, you would have also likely found that strict rule based systems are essentially useless in the modern day. Many (dare I say most) English speakers no longer stick to the 'rules' of the language and this throws a monkey wrench in the works. Of course you can continue to add rule after rule to encompass all the exceptions, but this is error prone and can cause the system to become unwieldy. A better approach would utilize example based or 'fuzzy' systems that are more tolerant of (or at least better represent) such variations between formal language specification and actual usage.

Ok, thanks. You can do what ever you like :)

2009-09-20T20:36:02.607+02:00

Ok, thanks.

You can do what ever you like :)

I've found some interesting reads here. thanks...

2009-09-20T09:19:52.352+02:00

I've found some interesting reads here. thanks!

looks like your final Sentence production rule isn't defined as your final example requires it to be.

using: (my own Language Workbench)
http://www.robusthaven.com/products
/Parsing+Expression+Grammar

here are my peg rules:
Space: [ ]+;

(?<Determiners>): 'a'\i / 'the'\i / 'one'\i ;
(?<Noun>): 'boy'\i / 'girl'\i / 'dog'\i / 'school'\i / 'hair'\i ;
(?<Verb>): 'likes'\i / 'bites'\i / 'eats'\i / 'discuss'\i ;
(?<Preposition>): 'on'\i / 'in'\i / 'from'\i / 'with'\i ;
(?<Adjectives>): 'happy'\i / 'lucky'\i / 'tall'\i / 'red'\i / 'nerdy'\i ;

(?<PrepositionalPhrase>): Preposition Space NounPhrase ;
(?<NounPhrase>): (Determiners Space)? (Adjectives Space)* Noun (Space PrepositionalPhrase)?;
(?<VerbPhrase>): Verb Space NounPhrase ;
(?<Sentence>): NounPhrase (Space VerbPhrase)? '.' ;

(?<Main>): Sentence* !.;
my unit tests are:
1) The boy likes the girl.
2) The nerdy boy likes the girl.
3) The nerdy boy likes the girl from school with red hair.
4) The girl from school with red hair.

currently 1-3 pass my tests.
4 fails.

by changing
VerbPhrase to be optional

4 provides an ast also.

is there an update missing to S?
maybe it should be...
syntax S = NP VP? ".";

by the way can i post this as a project .zip file with user contributed examples downloadable from my product page?

thanks,

lm