Phase 5 item 1 asked for the overlap to be sized "by measuring the reader's construction set against the writer's rather than by growing corpora blindly". New lane `evals/construction_inventory` does that: it sweeps the writer's whole parameter space (every RhetoricalMove x IntentTag x predicate x quantifier x tense x aspect, both public entry points, 32292 cells), quotients it by the reader's OWN function-word skeleton, and comprehends each construction under three vocabularies. writer constructions 1739 reader constructions 19 (mint-site AST-guarded) overlap, faithful 6 accepts but MIS-READS 22 refuses 1711 vocabulary-dependent 0 Faithfulness, not acceptance, is the criterion — and that reverses two claims in the plan's §6 RESULT, using a metric that was already on the page: * g_read_rate is 1/293 but **g_args_rate is 0.0**. The one surface that "reads", `all molecules are defined as compounds`, is comprehended as `subset(molecule, defined_as_compound)` — the reader chunked the writer's verb phrase into a class name. It accepted; it did not comprehend. * "one construction wide" was wrong both ways: zero on that corpus, six over the writer's actual output space. A corpus cannot report an inventory's size. Three findings re-order Phase 5 item 1: 1. The reader FABRICATES on 22 constructions — neither reads nor refuses. `every dog is a mammal` -> member(every_dog, mammal); `furthermore, all dogs are mammals` -> asserted(furthermore). Both are ordinary user English, not writer artefacts. Root cause: _RESERVED lacks the function words the writer emits, and _parse_propositional accepts any single token as a fact. 2. It reaches SERVED output. deduction_surface recites `Given: furthermore; p implies q; p.` — a premise the user never stated — and chat/runtime.py realizes declarative turns into the held self, so a fabricated atom is vault-writable. Widening the inventory first would widen the fabrication surface with it. 3. ADR-0265's defect class survives inside ADR-0265's designated owner of clause grammar: the four aspect arms of _inflect_predicate bind `negated` to a wildcard and never read it, so `dog has been defined as mammal` serves both the assertion and the denial (10530/16146 points). Unreachable today — no producer sets aspect — so a loaded gun, not a casualty. It survived because ADR-0265's invariant is structural (is `negated` threaded?) and cannot see an arm that receives the flag and ignores it. A behavioural sweep can. The two fixes are written already, as the mutations that turn the defect pins red. They are NOT applied here: they change what CORE comprehends from user input, which is a serving change on the truth path — authorization-gated, ADR first, on the ADR-0261 §5.1 refuse-don't-drop precedent. Guards, so the tables cannot rot: reader constructions are pinned to an AST count of the reader's 10 mint sites; the declared tense/aspect axes are pinned to _inflect_predicate's match arms; the committed corpus is pinned to the fillers in use. 14 pins, 13 mutations observed RED. [Verification]: in-worktree, CPython 3.12.13, uv sync --locked. deductive 517 (was 503, +14 — count moved, registration confirmed) smoke 641 (unchanged; the file is registered in `deductive`) lane SHAs 11/11 match, no pin edited pyright 0 errors on all new files mutations 13/13 red, including both fabrication fixes
7.4 KiB
Grammar Round-Trip Eval Lane — Contract
Lane: grammar_roundtrip
Version: v1
Created: 2026-07-26
Plan: docs/plans/grammar-unification-2026-07-26.md (Phase 1)
What this lane measures
Whether CORE can read what it writes and write what it reads — and, critically, whether it refuses word salad.
Why it exists
evals/deterministic_fluency reports 1.00 on all six of its predicates
and still passes every one of these:
| candidate | passes deterministic_fluency? |
|---|---|
"banana does the." |
yes |
"wet ground rains the is." |
yes |
"is is is is." |
yes |
It checks terminal punctuation, presence of a verb-shaped token, and two anti-shape regexes. It cannot distinguish English from word salad, so its 100% carries no information about fluency.
Heuristic predicates will always have that failure mode, because grammaticality cannot be measured without a grammar. This lane therefore measures agreement between the two halves of CORE that already encode grammar — the reader and the writer — and requires the measurement to fail on salad. Round-trip is falsifiable with no judge, no embedding, and no gold aesthetic.
The two directions
| direction | pipeline | what a failure means |
|---|---|---|
| G-round-trip | graph → realize_target → surface → comprehend → graph |
CORE cannot read its own writing |
realize_targetis eval-only (Phase 4).core/cognition/pipeline.pycallsrealize_semantic, neverrealize_target, sog_read_rateis a measurement of the grammar library and not of served English. Run through the serving writer instead, the G-direction reads back nothing (0.0 vs 0.003413) — seetests/test_phase4_realizer_resolution.py. Any claim made from this metric must say which writer it is about.
| S-round-trip | surface → comprehend → graph → categorical renderer → surface | CORE cannot reproduce what it just understood |
Both are reported because they fail for different reasons and have different remedies.
Metrics
| metric | definition |
|---|---|
g_write_rate |
fraction of graph cases the writer produced any surface for |
g_read_rate |
fraction of written surfaces the reader comprehended |
g_args_rate |
fraction of expected propositions whose argument pair was recovered |
g_predicates_rate |
fraction whose predicate name was recovered on the same arguments |
g_exact_rate |
fraction recovered exactly (predicate + arguments + polarity) |
s_read_rate |
fraction of positive surfaces comprehended |
s_renderable_rate |
fraction whose projection the categorical renderer can express at all |
s_surface_match_rate |
fraction that render back to the input surface |
reject_rate |
fraction of the negative corpus refused or reduced to zero propositions |
g_args_rate and g_predicates_rate are reported separately on purpose. High
argument agreement with low predicate agreement means the grammars align and
only the vocabulary is split — a materially different remedy from both being
low. Collapsing them into one boolean would hide the distinction that decides
this arc's direction (plan §6).
Never quote
g_read_ratewithoutg_args_rate. They currently disagree:g_read_rate = 0.003413withg_args_rate = 0.0. The single surface that "reads" isall molecules are defined as compounds, which the reader accepts assubset(molecule, defined_as_compound)— it chunked the writer's verb phrase into a class name. Acceptance is not comprehension, and a reader scored on whether it returned a graph rather than on whether the graph is the one it was given is rewarded for guessing. Plan §6's RESULT drew a conclusion fromg_read_ratealone and had to be corrected; seeevals/construction_inventory/contract.md, which measures the same question against the writer's whole output space instead of a 293-case corpus.
Corpora
| corpus | source | size |
|---|---|---|
| positive graphs | committed english_fluency_ood + grammatical_coverage case files |
293 |
| positive surfaces | in-module, each verified comprehensible by probe | 8 |
| negative surfaces | hand-authored salad + deterministic token shuffles of the positives | 16 |
The shuffles are load-bearing: they are lexically identical to positive
cases — same vocabulary, same length, order destroyed. A lane that rejects
hand-authored salad but accepts the shuffles is doing vocabulary checking, not
grammar checking. Shuffling uses a fixed rotation rather than a PRNG so
reject_rate is byte-reproducible.
Thresholds
| metric | v1 requirement | rationale |
|---|---|---|
reject_rate |
1.00, always | the guarantee; regression is a hard failure |
g_read_rate |
recorded baseline, revised upward only | currently a measured defect |
s_surface_match_rate |
recorded baseline, revised upward only | currently a measured defect |
v1 baseline — measured on main @ 9696443a
graph_cases 293
g_write_rate 1.000
g_read_rate 0.000 <-- CORE reads 0% of what it writes
g_propositions_expected 370
g_args_rate 0.000
g_predicates_rate 0.000
g_exact_rate 0.000
surface_cases 8
s_read_rate 1.000
s_renderable_rate 0.625
s_surface_match_rate 0.000 <-- nothing renders back to its input
negative_cases 16
reject_rate 1.000 <-- the guarantee holds
Two of these are pins on known defects, not goals. They are expected to be revised upward by plan Phases 2B and 5, and must never be revised downward to accommodate a regression.
s_renderable_rate = 0.625 is not a defect: 3 of the 8 positive surfaces
project to member / less predicates, which have no all X are Y categorical
surface at all. Those are reported as unrenderable rather than as match
failures, because "cannot write this" and "wrote this wrongly" need different
fixes.
What this lane does NOT prove
Round-trip is necessary, not sufficient for fluency. It measures mutual
intelligibility — both halves agreeing about a surface. Two halves can agree
on an impoverished construction: english_fluency_ood accepts "river flows valley" as a correct surface, and round-trip would be perfectly happy with it.
So a high round-trip rate licenses "CORE means what it says", never "CORE writes well". The negative corpus is what prevents the first failure mode. Nothing in this lane prevents the second, and no metric here should ever be cited as evidence of prose quality.
Mutation guarantees
Every guarantee is paired with a test proving it can break
(tests/test_grammar_roundtrip.py):
test_reject_rate_goes_red_when_the_reader_accepts_everything— an accept-everything reader must drivereject_rateto 0.0. Without this,reject_rate == 1.0would be unfalsifiable, which is precisely the defect that makes the existing fluency lane decoration.test_shuffled_negatives_reuse_positive_vocabulary— closes the vocabulary-checking escape hatch.test_positive_surfaces_are_all_inside_the_reader_envelope— a refused positive would silently measure reader coverage instead of round-trip.test_quantifier_map_matches_reader— the lane keeps a deliberate local copy of the reader's quantifier map so it never becomes a consumer of the thing it measures; this test fails loudly if the reader's map changes.