[Lingtyp] syntactic construction formula

[JOO, Ian [Student]]

Dear Christian,

How about X{YC|CY}?

From Hong Kong,
Ian
On 20 Dec 2020, 6:23 PM +0800, Christian Lehmann , wrote:

Dear all,

Guillermo González Campos and I are garnishing our (future) Cabecar grammar with formulas of syntactic structure. Each representation layer (like "structural", "semantic", ...) is one-dimensional. The structural layer involves symbols representing significative components plus indexed brackets. Some constructions comprise a component C which is obligatory, but may occur in different positions. Sometimes a "basic" position may be identified, of which other positions are optional permutations. If so, I can provide a formula for the basic position and add a prose sentence on the variation. Now suppose there is no such basic position. A possibility of representing such a state of affairs is to provide a construction formula for each of the variants, like:

X C Y

X Y C

Rather space-consuming and less than elegant. Is there a notation which allows one to write something like

X C Y C

to mean that C can and must occupy either of the two positions? (Ordinary parentheses would not work, in my view, as they imply optionality.)

Thanks for advice,

Christian

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