Dabanese 2008. Syntax.

A dabanese reader/writer, dabaner for short, has to know only four notions and the simple syntax rules. The notions are:

• ideogram
• unordered daba phrase
• ordered daba phrase
• accent (subject)

Now the rules:

1. ideogram is a daba phrase;
2. a finite sequence of daba phrases enclosed between braces, {...}, is a daba phrase – it's called an unordered phrase;
3. a finite sequence of daba phrases enclosed between parentheses, (...), is a daba phrase – it's called an ordered phrase;
4. a daba phrase enclosed in brackets, [...], is a daba phrase – it's called an accented phrase or a subject;
5. all daba phrases are obtained by a finite application of rules 1-4.

All elements of dabanese should be separated by white spaces (or they may be separated by some other graphic device).

Phrases { A B C } and { B C A } are in principle equivalent, they have the same meaning in dabanese, the difference is at the most artistic and similar. When you quote a daba text then you may change the order of subphrases in the unordered phrases (unless there is a claim of the completely exact quoting). In particular it is legal to change the order of subphrases in unordered phrases when quoting in legal situations. On the other hand you must preserve the order of subpphrases of the ordered daba phrase, when you quote them even in informal situations or otherwise it is not a quote. Any change of order in ordered phrase is likely to result in a drastic change of its meaning. Claiming to be quoting when changing on purpose the order in ordered phrases would be cheating, while an inadvertent change would be an irresponsible sloppiness.

Rules 2. and 3. applied to the empty sequence give us phrases { } and ( ), which stand for "nothing" or for emptiness, etc. There will be dabanese dictionaries but there always will be the room for the customary poetic interpretation of the text by the dabaners, depending on the context, just as in the natural languages. For instance, [ hmn ] phrase tells us that human is the subject (of the respective portion of a daba text), as in { ( ) [ hmn] }, which points perhaps to a human who does not represent anything, who is totally uninteresting. Now let's consider phrase [ [ hmn ] ], with a double accent. To me it means that the topic is the attention on human, while I am afraid that to many people it will mean an extra strong accent on human. Thus daba phrase { ( ) [ [ hmn ] ] } means to me something like "an empty (useless) attention on human", while to others it may mean that especially all or some or particular human is silly (more silly than non-humans or other humans), with the extra emphasis on the group which is meant. Possibly, the same phrases will mean different things to different people.

Dabanese cannot and does not attempt to define every reading of the dabanese text. For instance someone may talk about arithmetic calculations using the infix notation ( 2 + 5 ), and another may use the postfix ( 2 5 + ). it is up to dabaners to understand each other. In the given text they should use the ordered phrase in each case. But if they want to make sure to be understood they may add an extra description: let ideogram rPn stand for the reversed Polish notation. Then one may write { rPn ( 2 5 + ) }. Perhaps the best is to write it as follows: { 2 5 [ + ] }. Now it is pretty clear. The subject is sum, but it is a sum described by 2 and 5, so it is 7. Then phrases { 2 [ + ] 5 } and { [ + ] 5 2 } mean the same, i.e. 7. A different meaning would have a phrase like ( [2] + 5) – it would mean something like: 2, to which 5 was/is/will be added.

A daba phrase without any subject (i.e. when none of its subjects are accented; even when a subject of a subject may be accented) are called lists – there are ordered and unordered lists. A daba phrase may have more than one accent but it is not advised. A strict daba phrase should have at the most one accent. If you want to have more than one then do it for instance as follows: { A B [ { C D } ] } rather than by { A B [ C ] [ D] }, but it's up to you.