Subject: Re: [lojban] (Technical) Problem area in v3 grammar

From: "Bob LeChevalier (lojbab)" <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 20 May 2000 15:40:37 -0400

At 11:39 PM 05/19/2000 +0100, Richard Curnow wrote:
>coi rodo
>
>Consider the following (contrived) example :
>
>"Before the month in the springtime, I went to the house"
>
>Possible translations :
>
>pu le masti pe zi le vensa mi klama le zdani
>
>or maybe if we paraphrase a bit
>
>pu le masti ezibo le vensa mi klama le zdani
>
>or perhaps if we paraphrase a bit more ...
>
>pu zi gi le masti gi le vensa mi klama le zdani
>
>Unfortunately not! The pu is 'absorbed' into the tense associated with
>the 'gi' construct, so the whole pu..vensa phrase becomes the x1 of klama,
>instead of 'mi', which becomes x2.
>
>In my makefile for jbofi'e, I have a target where all the grammar
>rules with optional terminators are removed, leaving only those with
>the terminators in. This sumti-tcita + tag/gi/gi sumti forethought
>connective case turns out to be the only remaining shift-reduce conflict
>in the grammar after the pruning : there is no way to terminate the 'pu'
>tense before starting the tense that is the connective associated
>with the gi/gi pair.

I'll have to think about this. My preliminary guess is that this will be a 
limitation on forethought tense constructs (which aren't the most used 
things in the grammar anyway). John Cowan will of course have to opine.

>BTW, is anyone taking ideas yet for things to look at after the 5
>year freeze is up? What is the methodology for proposing, debating
>and selecting potential changes?

The concept of the freeze is that we will not even take ideas, propose them 
or debate them during the time of the freeze (which is open-ended - it is a 
5 year MINIMUM in which the 5 years starts only after the books are all 
published, which still has not occurred yet).

We of course can't or won't stop discussions on the subject, but LLG has a 
firm position to not consider changes during the baseline. I am not sure 
we will even consider a methodology for changes during the baseline.

> [I don't expect there will be
>many significant ones, I'm just wondering what happens if there are any
>at all.]

If there are any at all, we ignore them for now, and think about it later 
if they somehow stick around or resurface later. With any luck, 
discussions in that later time will be required to be in Lojban, so that 
decisions are made internal to the language, but I have given no more 
thought to the subject than that.

> Following a thread a week or so back, the only other topic
>I've thought about (besides the problem earlier) is to start using the
>CV'VV cmavo space to build abbreviations for frequently occuring strings
>of cmavo, e.g. ca'ai for 'ca le nu' and so on.

That space is experimental; it is not a baseline violation to experiment.

lojbab

----
lojbab [email-masked]
Bob LeChevalier, President, The Logical Language Group, Inc.
2904 Beau Lane, Fairfax VA 22031-1303 USA 703-385-0273
Artificial language Loglan/Lojban: http://www.lojban.org