language existence

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+# compact representation
+compact representation is a hopefully compact representation for ideas. this document serves as its official specification.
+
+a CR "document" is a sequence of ASCII characters. characters outside of the range 0x20-0x7E are forbidden, except for `\n` (0x0A) and `\t` (0x09). when presenting CR to a human person, the exact encoding details are irrelevant, as humans read text with their eyes (or other sense organs). however, the characters in a CR document must be reasonably legible as their ASCII equivalents. it does not matter if the human reader is not able to discern the exact whitespace characters used in a document as long as they are able to discern their presence and location.
+
+## syntax
+a CR document consists of any number of sentences. a sentence in CR consists of a single expression. each expression in CR evaluates to a noun.
+
+an expression consists of a literal noun (expressed as a sequence of alphebetic characters or if it is a number, numerical characters), a binary operation, or a unary operation. unary operators prefix the expression they operate upon. binary operators appear between the expressions they operate upon and are right-associative. parenthesis can be used to explicitly group expressions.
+
+"quotations" are a special type of literal noun which refer to statements or sequences of text themselves. there are two types of quotations. a bracket quotation is surrounded in square brackets, and must contain within it a syntactically valid CR document. a normal quotation is enclosed in double quotes and may contain anything of any syntactic validity or language. however, a normal quotation must be properly escaped. the only escape sequences available in a normal quotation are `\\` and `\"`.
+
+### described in EBNF
+```
+alpha = ? [a-z][A-Z] ? ;
+num = ? [0-9] ? ;
+ws = { ? whitespace characters ? } ;
+
+literal = alpha , { alpha } | num , { num } | quote ;
+
+binop = ? binary operator, see § binary operators ? ;
+unop = ? unary operator, see § unary operators ? ;
+
+operation = unop , ws , expr
+	| ( literal | "(" , ws, expr , ")", ws ) , binop , ws , expr ;
+
+expr = literal | operation | "(" , ws , expr , ")" , ws
+
+document = ws , { expr }
+
+quote char = "\\" , ? any character ? | ? any character except double quotes ?
+normal quote = "\"" , { quote char } , "\""
+
+bracket quote = "[" , document , "]"
+
+quote = normal quote | bracket quote
+```
+
+## the meaning of a noun
+the meaning of literal nouns (which are not quotations or numbers) is determined thusly (in this exact order):
+
+1. if the meaning of the literal noun, is defined in this standard's noun list, then the meaning of the noun is according to the list.
+2. if the meaning of the literal noun has been defined previously via the `::=` operator, then the meaning of the noun is according to that definition.
+3. the meaning of the literal noun must be determined from context, e.g. it is the name of a person.
+
+it is recommended that nonstandard nouns (nouns defined via step #2 or #3) are initially capitalized to distinguish them from standard nouns, which will never be capitalized. however, this is just proposed convention and is not required to conform to the standard.
+
+## the meaning of a sentence
+a sentence consists of a single expression. each expression evaluates to a noun, and so to find the meaning of a sentence, the expression is evaluated. if the expression's meaning is X, then the meaning of the sentence is "there exists X".
+
+CR makes no distinction between statements such as "the/a person who is thinking exists" and "the/a person is thinking". both would be:
+```
+g>:f
+```
+## operator side-effects
+some operators have **side-effects** which means that
+
+## binary operators
+the binary operators, when used, evaluate to their definitions below.
+
+the two operands are denoted as `x` and `y` in these definitions. they are the first and second operands respectively. `*_x` or `*_y` are to be intepreted as "(an) instance(s) of `x`" or "(an) instance(s) of `y`".
+### `=`
+`x` which is the same thing as `y`
+
+### `>`
+`x` which causes `*_y`
+
+### `>:`
+`x` which manifests `*_y`
+
+### `&`
+`x` and `y`
+
+### `^`
+`x` xor `y`
+
+### `|`
+`x` or `y`
+
+### `?`
+`y` which exists if `x` exists
+
+### `?_`
+a hypothetical `y` which exists according to/in the perspective of `*_x`
+
+### `/`
+`y` which is located in/on/at `*_x`
+
+### `%`
+`y` which concerns/pertains to/is about `x`
+
+### `~`
+`y` which is similar to/like/as `x`
+
+### `$`
+`y` which is the conduit of/embodies `x`
+
+### `#_`
+`x` number of `y`
+
+## unary operators
+the unary operators, when used, evaluate to their definitions below.
+
+the operand to the unary operator is denoted as `x` in these defintions. `*_x` is to be interpred as "(an) instance(s) of `x`".
+
+### `*_`
+some specific instance(s) of `x`
+
+### `&_`
+all instances of `y` where `x` is an instance of `y`; *such that* `&_*_x` *is equivalent to* `x`
+
+### `!`
+nothing that is `x` or `*_x`
+
+### `!!:`
+`x`; *this operator has the* **side-effect** *of emphasizing* `x` in the sentence
+
+### `?:`
+a hypothetical/possible `x`
+
+### `?/`
+the truth value of the statetment "there exists `x`"
+
+### `#`
+the amount of `x` which exist
+
+## clarification: the meaning of `*_x`
+the difference between `*_x` and `x` can be thought of like this: if `x` is "dog"/"dogs", then `*_x` is "some dogs" or "a dog". the difference becomes quite relevant when one performs definitions.
+
+if one makes the definition `X::=a`, then `X` is exactly the same thing as `a`. any usage of `X` would be identical to using `a`, which means that this definition wouldn't be very useful. instead, you can define `X` as an instance of `a` and then makes tatemetns about it, for instance `X::=*_a i>:X` would mean that `X` is a specific something, and that something is something you did.
+