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1374: Re: [MUD-Dev] Re: Prepositions and parsing
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From: "Chris Gray" <cg@ami-cg.GraySage.Edmonton.AB.CA>
Newsgroups: nu.kanga.list.mud-dev
Date: Wed, 14 May 97 07:59:38 MST
Organization: Kanga.Nu
[Chris L:]
:It seems more friendly and not terribly more expensive to me to have
:the parse try and resolve *both* sides of the ambiguity, and to then
:pick as to which is supportable in the current context.
Doing that requires more smarts in the parser than I want to put into it.
I don't want the "parser" to understand the concepts of 'under', 'behind',
etc., but to just know that they are acceptable for use with 'put'.
:Bingo. And here it gets really messy. You end up with a really
:glorious hodge-podge between a global parser and a a per-object
:parser. Consider the case of:
:
: shoot the paper under the book on the table
:
:Does that mean to shoot the paper which is located under a book which
:is located on the table, or to shoot a free paper such that it moves
:to be under the book which is located on the table, or to shoot the
:paper such that it moves from under the book to being on the table?
How unhappy would a typical player be if told that the above is ambiguous?
Or that there is no paper nearby (even if there is some under the book)?
It's likely such a rare case those most would wave it off. In English
we disambuate such things by a slight rephrasing:
shoot the paper which is under the book on the table
shoot the paper under the book which is on the table
Perhaps handling syntax something like that is a way to go?
--
Chris Gray cg@ami-cg.GraySage.Edmonton.AB.CA