I am the author of a (somewhat) competing parser called mathup[1] which has a similar syntax. I based mine heavily off of AsciiMath which has {: group :} as a fallback grouping operator. I kept it, but if I would have done it over I would have replaced it with { group } and used {: group :} for curly brackets.
I had a similar dilemma before I released 1.0.0 last spring, and decided against special cases like these. In Mathup binary operators (^, _, and /) always operate on exactly one group after the operator, regardless of (what I believe is) the author’s intention. So 1/2(x, y) is the same as 1/x(i, j) is the same as 1/f(x, y). I only have a couple of exceptions regarding spacing on trig functions, and (what I believe is) the differential operator. But if you want an implicit group to e.g. under a fraction, in a superscript, you must either denote that with spaces e^ x-1, or with parens e(x-1) [I courteously drop the parens from the output in these troubled expressions].