Jonathan Gibbons wrote:
I was under the impression that that's one of the special things about this language - that a particular syntactic structure associated unambiguously with a particular semantic structure. So, for instance, a tanru is a seltau/tertau pair, where either may be itself a tanru, and the semantic meaning of that syntactis structure is that the seltau in some manner modifies or restricts the meaning of the tertau... so a parse tree that displays the nonterminal for a tanru and has as leaves the seltau and tertau /would/ emphasize the semantic meaning.
True enough. But a syntax tree would never, for example, draw a line
from {ri} to the thing referred to.
Basically a sentence diagram just isn't identical to a syntax
tree. I'm guessing you never used them in school? Most Americans
under 40 have not. (Of course, I have no idea about other countries,
nor do I know your nationality or age.)
As for generating them automatically: That is OK, but it's a little
like having a symbolic differentiator do your calculus for you. The
end result is the same, but you miss the learning experience.
Half the point of sentence diagrams is not the completed diagram,
but the analytical process of creating one.
Hal