This page contains some vain attempts to document and thus maybe eventually standardize some of the conventions used when writing grammars.

grammar-version

Information about the version of the grammar is kept in a string called *grammar-version*, defined in a file usually called Version.lsp. This is read in the lkb/script and pet/flop.set, as well as external utilities that care about the grammar version, such as the lextype-db. It is conventionally of the form “name (version)”, where version is normally some kind of date.

Examples:

(defparameter *grammar-version* "ERG (2020)")
(defparameter *grammar-version* "ERG-dict (2020)")
(defparameter *grammar-version* "Jacy (2007-10-10)")
(defparameter *grammar-version* "NorSource (Jan-06)")
(defparameter *grammar-version* "NoEn (27-aug-04)")
(defparameter *grammar-version* "GG (Jul-2006)")
(defparameter *grammar-version* "pseudo-japanese (Matrix-10-2006)")

Suggested convention

file name should be Version.lsp in the grammar top directory
name should be a short form of the grammar name
if you have subgrammars, then call them GRAMMAR-SUB, e.g. ERG-Singlish or ERG-mal
version should ideally be the iso-8601 date
the ltdb will complain and refuse to produce anything if you have an underscore in the name (FCB 2022)

Last update: 2022-11-27 by Francis Bond [edit]