On Mon, Apr 16, 2012 at 12:19 PM, Christophe Grandsire-Koevoets <
[log in to unmask]> wrote:

> Finally, if this is really only about whether in parse trees branches cross
> each other or not, then I'd like to know what the big deal is. I'm pretty
> sure if you parsed 90% of the texts I had to understand and translate in
> Latin class, you'd see lots of branches crossing. Cicero had some weeeird
> speeches out there, and Classical Latin poetry can be frighteningly
> hermetic! :P Does it mean Latin grammar is context-sensitive? I wouldn't
> know. Would knowing give us some deep understanding of the Latin language
> that we would otherwise lack? That's my question. If so, then I'd be very
> happy to know what that understanding is, concretely speaking :) .


 You should be aware that the cross-dependency is a restrictive constraint.
Something like: "if you want a native speaker to understand a sentence in a
goven language, you must use cross-dependency".

In formal languages, the exponent notation means that a word/affix/letter
appears n times (the amount expressed in exponent notation). Therefore, a^n
b^n means that is there is 1 a, then there must be 1 b, if there are 2 a's,
then there must be 2 b's. So the possible strings are ab, aabb, aaabbb,
aaaabbbb, and so on... but not abb, aab, aaab, aabbb etc.

*, the Kleene Star, means 0 or more. So a*b* can represent _, a, b, aa, ab,
bb, aaa, aab, abb, bbb, aaaa, aaab, aabb, abbb, bbbb, and so on.

So, if Cicero can create weird speeches, it doesn't mean that simpler ones
can't be made.