Separate library about grammark

[markfullmer]

Thanks for your interest. I've been thinking about making an abstracted library that could be used with the Drupal CMS, or a CKEditor plugin -- I definitely agree with your reasoning about the value of this approach.

I am currently finishing up a JS-based version with an Angular frontend, which CDN-ifies the business logic and requires no database backend: https://github.com/markfullmer/grammark/tree/angular but this is still a bit intertwined with the Angular front end.

It'll probably be a few more months before I have a working library up, though. I'll ping you when it is ready.

[codito]

@markfullmer may be the rules can be considered separate entity (as a set of json files for example). The language specific libraries (js, ruby, java etc.) can be built on top of it. Thoughts?

I've a similar requirement as @pavarnos, but for a command line python app.

[markfullmer]

Hey @codito,

Yes, I think JSON would be the way to go for the rules, and many of them are quite close to that model already: https://github.com/markfullmer/grammark/blob/angular/app/scripts/models/grammar.js

The tricky part would be how to send the logic for things like passive voice or nominalizations, which is more logic-based than rule-based. I think it would really require an API approach...doable, but it would take more time.

[pavarnos]

what if the static stuff were separated into json, and the dynamic (logic driven) stuff were implemented in several languages with a reference implementation in javascript? If the logic is small and clean I should be able to find time for a php implementation. Maybe @codito might contribute a python version?. If this was created in a separate repo with the relevant package manager config files (eg composer.json) it would be very easy to consume in other projects and much more re-usable for your own... plus you'd gain more hands to help you extend / improve it...

just a thought...

[markfullmer]

Working on this now...

[glennhefley]

That would be seriously great from my efforts -- which has been adding in a few hundred "rules" which I'm putting in as 'suggested' changes, not grammar mistakes -- wordiness issues for the most part, but there is another level I'm interested in applying which has to do with the usage of verbs --
[When_push_comes_to_shove_verbs.pdf]
(https://github.com/markfullmer/grammark/files/700910/When_push_comes_to_shove_verbs.pdf)

The ability to predict which patterns are formed in brain scans when imagining a celery or an airplane,based on how these concepts as words co-occur in texts, suggests that it is possible to model mental representations based on word statistics. Whether counting how frequently nouns and verbs combine in Google search queries, or extracting eigenvectors from matrices made up of Wikipedia lines and Shakespeare plots, these latent semantics approximate the associative links that form concepts. However,cognition is fundamentally intertwined with action; even passively reading verbs has been shown to activate the same motor circuits as when we tap a finger or observe actual movements. If languages evolved by adapting to the brain, sensorimotor constraints linking articulatory gestures with aspects of motion might also be reflected in the statistics of word co-occurrences.

After reading a few of his papers, and some others, I believe they are interested in advancing stuff like computer interaction via thought and driverless cars... but as a writer I know they are dead on, I just didn't realize they had taken the studies so far. We hear all the time that 'words have power', and we nod our heads and think of things like affirmations and pop-psychology -- promised by the myriad of pop-psychologists from the rows of self-help paperbacks covers to be magical, and able to change your life -- if practiced over several years.

Awkward that these snake oil salesman were selling the real medicine and could not believe it themselves. Yet, here we are, Gods -- with the ability to create with a word, to alter the physical with a breath. Take for example the word yawn. Yawn is short, and basic. Yawn is not a command, and thus benign. Yawn is even a common word. We hear the word yawn all the time. When someone yawns, however, other people yawn. There is a strange connection between yawning people, yawning. I’m sure there have been studies on yawning, explaining why when I yawn, you will yawn too. In fact, you don’t even need to see me yawn do you? No. You don’t. You just have to read the word yawn, a few times, and your mind will react just like the word yawn was a real yawn, instead of just a word on the page.

And there we have a simple Middle English word physically affecting our body. Being in marketing and copy writing for so long, I knew better than most that language was far from benign, but the levels these researchers have delved into is stunning. I have a data file that has been peer-reviewed and duplicated several times since 2011 of over 40k verbs, and their 'activity' matrices from being calming to intensely arousing -- sexually and emotionally. And, like our little Middle English spell word, just as difficult to ignore. In fact we have no control over our sexual arousal, and it takes serious effort to defend against emotional arousals.
Spider-Man- Sure- The neuroscience of suspending disbelief-NHolland.pdf
And that little paper suggests that we've been all wrong on the idea of the Suspenion of Disbelief. We use to believe that we made a conscious decision to suspend our disbelief, but that has be shown to be flipped to the wrong side -- we believe, and then have to make a conscious choice to disbelieve.

So, I've been thinking of putting their work into a tool of some sort, and a grammar checker feels like the obvious place to put in a 'emotional intensity' checker. Of course, this is a new area and I'm more like a caveman that's discovered uranium -- more dangerous to myself than anyone else and other than making me feel a little sick and making crappy arrow head, not really sure what to do with this rock. But, I still like the idea and being able to add in 'wordiness' checks would be great -- and it comes to mind that it would be nice at the 'user' level.

Writers frequently have phrases that we use all of the time which during the edit process we have to go in a search-and-replace for. They call the 'rhythm' words. One of mine for example is 'that'. I'll throw that word around like it will get my laid by movie stars. 98% of the time deleting it with no other changes makes the sentence much stronger. But attempting to write without using it frequently results in forgetting the idea I was writing -- which costs me money -- so I don't even try not to use it-- hence the term 'rhythm' words/phrases.

Anyway, I don't have much time, but I'll keep checking back to see if you're going to go in this direction and help where I can.

Love your project, and thanks again for choosing to put this out there for us.