Roodylib Pronoun-Handling

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Roody_Yogurt
Posts: 2179
Joined: Mon Apr 29, 2002 6:23 pm
Location: Milwaukee

Roodylib Pronoun-Handling

Post by Roody_Yogurt »

I'm thinking of changing how Roodylib handles pronoun-setting. Among other things, the goal is to make AssignPronoun work more often and pronouns generally more intuitive. I just need to see if others agree on the same rules as me. take this survey! https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/3TB5XX5

Roody_Yogurt
Posts: 2179
Joined: Mon Apr 29, 2002 6:23 pm
Location: Milwaukee

Post by Roody_Yogurt »

I'll share the results of the survey at some point, but I figured I'd comment on the results so far now.

So, like I said at the end of the survey, I was imagining a system that was Infocom-esque but improved, where pronouns are set to the last item mentioned as long as there are not multiple items that could be used for that pronoun in that particular grouping.

Some people suggested that when a new pronoun can't be applied, whatever the old pronoun was should be maintained. I thought this also made good sense so I actually was going to design a system where authors could choose the pronoun-handling they prefer. I figure if Hugo is set up to easily replace the grammar to have the parser of your choice, there's nothing wrong with configurable pronoun-handling, either.

Still, the answer that surprised me the most was for this one:
You have some jelly beans and a gun. The gun contains six bullets.
I was expecting more people to agree with my gut and say "them" should apply to the bullets. In fact, nobody did (it was evenly split between the jelly beans and "them" receiving a "You'll have to be more specific." response).

Anyhow, I think I'll have to think about this some more and new pronoun stuff won't be in the upcoming Roodylib release.

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