What is a language construct? (was Re: Comment on state of Project Jigsaw)

[Neal Gafter]

A language construct is a syntactic construct that appears within source
files of the programming language.

In this case (if I understand it) the language "addition" is distinct from
and never intermixed with syntax of the underlying programming language.
 It is therefore a distinct language.

On Wed, Dec 21, 2011 at 1:48 PM, <mark.reinhold at oracle.com> wrote:

> 2011/12/21 10:33 -0800, neal at gafter.com:
> > My main high-level comment on project Jigsaw is that is fails its first
> > principle: modularity appears in the draft not to be a language
> construct,
> > but at best a completely separate language from the Java programming
> > language.
>
> Module declarations control the visibility and accessibility of types in
> all phases of development.
>
> If that's not sufficient to make them a language construct, then what is
> your criterion?
>
> - Mark
>