more on attribute proposal

More on the attribute proposal (and you won't hear further from me for the next two weeks -- I'm trying hard to get this out last minute, rather than wait two week, which however would likely result in a more rational note) .....  

There's consensus (among those who have participated in this discussion) that allTheseWords, anyOfTheseWords, adjacentWords should be changed from Structure/format  to Comparison attributes. 

There's less consensus about adding two new Structure/format attributes, (1) word(s), and (2) string (or 'completeValue').  Mike feels strongly that they should be added, and I don't feel strongly but am somewhat uncomfortable about adding them (without clarifying certain other parts of the proposal). I don't know how strongly Alan feel.  And I'd like to get other opinions.

This is how I see it: if the query term is a set of words, and the comparison attribute is one of the above three, then clearly a structure/attribute to indicate  "words" is not necessary. Conversely, if the desire is to search for words (as opposed to a complete string) then can the comparison attribute be anything but one of these three? (Ignoring the case of non-adjacent proximity which involves a completely different construct.) 

However, what if the term is a single word? If the intent is to search for it as a word (not a string), I don't think Alan's proposal addresses whether this should fit within the three attributes proposed - all three would mean the same thing, and so there may be  sentiment for separating out the single-word case. If so, then I can see a stronger argument for having  'word' and 'string' format/structure values.

So I see two possibilities:
1.  A single-word search would be handled by one of the word-comparison attributes (one of these would be "singled-out" for this use),  no format/structure attribute included. If the term is a single-word but is to be searched as a string, then another comparison would be used. [aside: I'm not sure which one though. "Equal" seems to be precluded, since the Utility set prose says that it cannot be used with expansion/interpretation. On the other hand, Bath uses it.  This may be another defect that we should address.]
2. When the term is a single-word, the comparison attribute may not be one of the above three (they can only be used for multiple words) and the format/structure 'word' or 'string' is supplied.

I think we need to nail down one of these two, and I don't really care which. 

--Ray