SFGPL stands for "Simple Functional General Purpose Language" and is a language for formalising natural languages. The language was designed to make sentence structure and meaning easily interpretable and communicable. In particular, long and complex sentences containing conjunctions and relative pronouns are often difficult to interpret. The language was created by me as a hobby and has not been rigorously tested, so there may be flaws.
The project then makes the materials and programmes available on GitHub:https://github.com/Eruhitsuji/SFGPL.
In the grammars of many natural languages, there are many exceptions and many cases that annoy the learner. To solve this problem, artificial languages have been proposed for a universal language, but like many natural languages, they have ambiguous meanings and are open to multiple interpretations. In particular, long and complex sentences containing conjunctions and relative pronouns are often difficult to interpret. To solve these problems, the SFGPL is an artificial language created with the aim of making languages formally and logically understandable.
SFGPL is a functional language and the types of arguments taken by functions are strictly defined. In SFGPL, functions are assigned to each sentence structure, so that grammatical roles such as subject, predicate, object, and complement are easy to understand. In addition, complex sentences can be created by combining sentence structures.
- Only function words and a few words exist in the SFGPL and have a strictly defined meaning. Other words are borrowed from other languages.
- Function words are followed by a number of arguments, the meaning of which is determined by the arguments.
- In principle, each argument corresponds to a word or an object, but if the source word is more than one word, it can be regarded as a single word by connecting it with an underscore.
- Borrowed words are distinguished by placing a single quotation mark before and after them.
- There are no grammatical distinctions between genders, numbers, etc., and there are no articles.
- A semicolon ( ; ) is added at the end of a sentence. However, it can be omitted in the case of a single sentence.
The word order of the SFGPL is SVO, but a function word that determines the structure of the sentence is attached to the beginning of the sentence. Also, the sentence structure of the SFGPL is strictly defined by proper words. The following table shows the sentence structures that can be expressed in the SFGPL. The details of how to use them are described in Sentence Pattern.
| word | function | arguments | supplement | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | S V | ta | Noun.do | S,V | |
| 2 | S V C | ma | Noun.eq | S,V,C | C is the noun |
| 2 | S V C | me | Noun.haveP | S,V,C | C is the modifier |
| 3 | S V O | te | Noun.doT | S,V,O | |
| 4 | S V O1 O2 | ti | Noun.give | S,V,O1,O2 | |
| 5 | S V O C | tu | Noun.makeN | S,V,O,C | C is the noun |
| 5 | S V O C | to | Noun.makeM | S,V,O,C | C is the modifier |
| - | A has B | mi | Noun.have | A,V,B | |
| - | A belongs to B | mu | Noun.belong | A,V,B | |
| - | A is more B than C | mo | Noun.gt | A,V,B,C | |
| - | According to C, A V B | moa | Noun.hearSay | A,V,B,C | A(Subject) V(Verb) that B(Content) according to C(Source) |
There are no pronunciation exceptions in the SFGPL's native words. The International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) in the table below is an example of pronunciation.
Consonants of the SFGPL are listed in the table below.
| Spell | IPA |
|---|---|
| p | /p/ |
| b | /b/ |
| f | /f/ |
| m | /m/ |
| t | /t/ |
| d | /d/ |
| s | /s/ |
| n | /n/ |
| l | /l/ |
| k | /k/ |
| g | /g/ |
| j | /j/ |
| w | /w/ |
On the other hand, the vowels in the SFGPL are as shown in the table below. SFGPL unique words do not have double vowels, except in a few words.
| Spell | IPA |
|---|---|
| a | /a/ |
| e | /e/ |
| i | /i/ |
| u | /u/ |
| o | /o/ |
| oa | /oa/ |
Borrowed words are read with the pronunciation specific to the borrowed words.
The SFGPL word is mainly divided into SFGPL-specific words and loan words.
The unique words are mainly function words necessary for sentence structure, and basic words for verbs and modifiers. The rest of the words are loan words.
And in the sentence structure of the SFGPL, the position of the part of speech is determined and words must be used according to their part of speech.
There are three parts of speech in the SFGPL: Noun, Verb and Modifier. Phrase, Pronoun, BoolList, LangList, LangFunc, LangVar and NumberList exist as subclasses of Noun.
BoolList, LangList, LangFunc, and LangVar are used to create logical statements in addition to general statements. Then, there is a Bool type that represents true/false.
NumberList is mainly used as a numeral. There is also a Number class as a base numeral. This Number class is not normally used by itself.
In addition, there are two special words that modify nouns and verbs: noun determiners (DeterminerN) and verb determiners (DeterminerV).
Each part of speech has its own function words, which change the part of speech and determine its meaning. Other words that implement the basic vocabulary are Word. The SFGPL's specific words are classified according to their parts of speech: verbs are "WordV", modifiers are "WordM".
Nouns are words that describe any concept, such as any object, substance, person or place. Verbs are words that describe any action, action, state, being, etc. Modifiers are words that modify other words. Modifiers are words that modify other words; the SFGPL makes no distinction between adjectives and adverbs.
In the Python library SFGPL, there are classes for each part of speech. LangObj is the basic structure of a word and _BaseList defines the basic structure for a List. In addition, DeterminerN and DeterminerV are words that are only used to add meaning to words and are represented in Python as just static functions.
Function words determine the role, part of speech, etc. of a sentence. The function, role and meaning of function words are only applicable within arguments.
These function words are one-to-one with Python functions. They also have a fixed number of arguments, and the role of each argument is determined by its location.
For a list of function words and how to use them, see dict.csv.
Borrowed words are used for words that do not exist in the SFGPL. It is preferable to borrow words from languages commonly used in the world, such as English, but this should not be a problem as long as the words can be understood by others. However, it is recommended that borrowed words are used in their original form, and if there is a conjugation, it should be done in SFGPL function words.
SFGPL sentences can be rewritten into Python objects. This project contains a file in which the SFGPL is defined. To use the SFGPL in Python, use SFGPL.py can be used by importing it. Examples of use are samples in the Python files. Also, for detailed instructions on how to run the SFGPL library in Python, see How_to_Use_SFGPL_in_Python.ipynb.