Friday, March 9, 2012

Why natural languages have grammars

This occurred to me after reading several NetKernel forum entries crying out for help with NK's "declarative syntax". I think there are some great ideas in NetKernel but the idea of burying your programming language within XML is not one of them.
<sentence>
<np>
<verb type="gerund" subject="true">Programming</verb>
<pp>
<preposition>in</preposition>
<noun type="proper" acronym="true">XML</noun>
</pp>
</np>
<vp>
<verb tense="present">is</verb>
</vp>
<np>
<determiner singular="true" indefinite="true">a</determiner>
<noun>pain</noun>
<pp>
<preposition>in</preposition>
<determiner definite="true">the</determiner>
<noun>ass</noun>
</pp>
</np>
</sentence>