4 ms·

Fair enough, thanks for replying. I don't see the task of specifying a grammar as straightforward as you do, perhaps. I guess I just didn't understand the chain

by qwery 1y ago

Fair enough, thanks for replying. I don't see the task of specifying a grammar as straightforward as you do, perhaps. I guess I just didn't understand the chain of comments. I find that clear-cut, rigid rules tend to be the least helpful ones in writing. Obviously this class of rule is also easy/easier to represent in software, so it also tends to be the source of false positives and frustration that lead me to disable such features altogether.

phoe-krk 1y ago
When you do writing as a form of art, rules are meant to be bent or broken; it's useful to have the ability to explicitly write new ones and make new forms of the language legal, rather than wrestle with hallucinating LLMs. When writing for utility and communication, though, English grammar is simple and standard enough. Browsing Harper sources, https://github.com/Automattic/harper/blob/0c04291bfec25d0e934eaeb057d0f54af8e14a78/harper-core/src/word_metadata.rs https://github.com/Automattic/harper/blob/0c04291bfec25d0e93... seems to have a lot of the basics already nailed down. Natural language grammar can often be represented as "what is allowed to, should, or should not, appear where, when, and in which context" - IIUC, Harper seems to tackle the problem the same way.
- qwery 1y ago
  I'm certainly not disputing the existence of grammar nor do I think an LLM is a good way to implement/check/enforce one. And now I realise how my first comment landed. Thanks again!
  - fl0id 1y ago
    Your first point would be more fitting if a language checker would need a complete, computable grammar that can be parsed and understood. That would be problematic for natural languages.
- tolerance 1y ago
  You get it!!
bombcar 1y ago
Just because the rules aren’t set fully in stone, or can be bent or broken, doesn’t mean they don’t “exist” - perhaps not the way mathematical truths exist, but there’s something there. Even these few posts follow innumerable “rules” which make it easier to (try) to communicate. Perhaps what you’re angling against is where rules of language get set it stone and fossilized until the “Official” language is so diverged from the “vulgar tongue” that it’s incomprehensibly different. Like church/legal Latin compared to Italian, perhaps. (Fun fact - the Vulgate translation of the Bible was INTO the vulgar tongue at the time: Latin).

by qwery 1y ago

phoe-krk 1y ago

When you do writing as a form of art, rules are meant to be bent or broken; it's useful to have the ability to explicitly write new ones and make new forms of the language legal, rather than wrestle with hallucinating LLMs. When writing for utility and communication, though, English grammar is simple and standard enough. Browsing Harper sources, https://github.com/Automattic/harper/blob/0c04291bfec25d0e934eaeb057d0f54af8e14a78/harper-core/src/word_metadata.rs https://github.com/Automattic/harper/blob/0c04291bfec25d0e93... seems to have a lot of the basics already nailed down. Natural language grammar can often be represented as "what is allowed to, should, or should not, appear where, when, and in which context" - IIUC, Harper seems to tackle the problem the same way.

qwery 1y ago
I'm certainly not disputing the existence of grammar nor do I think an LLM is a good way to implement/check/enforce one. And now I realise how my first comment landed. Thanks again!
- fl0id 1y ago
  Your first point would be more fitting if a language checker would need a complete, computable grammar that can be parsed and understood. That would be problematic for natural languages.
tolerance 1y ago
You get it!!

bombcar 1y ago

Just because the rules aren’t set fully in stone, or can be bent or broken, doesn’t mean they don’t “exist” - perhaps not the way mathematical truths exist, but there’s something there. Even these few posts follow innumerable “rules” which make it easier to (try) to communicate. Perhaps what you’re angling against is where rules of language get set it stone and fossilized until the “Official” language is so diverged from the “vulgar tongue” that it’s incomprehensibly different. Like church/legal Latin compared to Italian, perhaps. (Fun fact - the Vulgate translation of the Bible was INTO the vulgar tongue at the time: Latin).