From nobody@digitalkingdom.org Tue Jul 04 15:01:13 2006 Received: with ECARTIS (v1.0.0; list lojban-beginners); Tue, 04 Jul 2006 15:01:13 -0700 (PDT) Received: from nobody by chain.digitalkingdom.org with local (Exim 4.62) (envelope-from ) id 1FxsxF-0003A4-Hj for lojban-beginners-real@lojban.org; Tue, 04 Jul 2006 15:01:13 -0700 Received: from ms-smtp-05.texas.rr.com ([24.93.47.44]) by chain.digitalkingdom.org with esmtp (Exim 4.62) (envelope-from ) id 1FxsxD-00039v-2T for lojban-beginners@lojban.org; Tue, 04 Jul 2006 15:01:13 -0700 Received: from [192.168.1.103] (cpe-66-68-161-49.austin.res.rr.com [66.68.161.49]) by ms-smtp-05.texas.rr.com (8.13.6/8.13.6) with ESMTP id k64M0srM018629 for ; Tue, 4 Jul 2006 17:00:55 -0500 (CDT) Message-ID: <44AAE516.0@hypermetrics.com> Date: Tue, 04 Jul 2006 17:00:54 -0500 From: Hal Fulton User-Agent: Mozilla Thunderbird 1.0RC1 (X11/20041209) X-Accept-Language: en-us, en MIME-Version: 1.0 To: lojban-beginners@lojban.org Subject: [lojban-beginners] Re: RK-like diagramming: Anyone interested? References: <44AAC810.2070300@hypermetrics.com> <44AADE4C.3080601@hypermetrics.com> In-Reply-To: Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Virus-Scanned: Symantec AntiVirus Scan Engine X-Spam-Score: -2.6 (--) X-archive-position: 3330 X-ecartis-version: Ecartis v1.0.0 Sender: lojban-beginners-bounce@lojban.org Errors-to: lojban-beginners-bounce@lojban.org X-original-sender: hal9000@hypermetrics.com Precedence: bulk Reply-to: lojban-beginners@lojban.org X-list: lojban-beginners Jonathan Gibbons wrote: > I was under the impression that that's one of the special things about > this language - that a particular syntactic structure associated > unambiguously with a particular semantic structure. So, for instance, > a tanru is a seltau/tertau pair, where either may be itself a tanru, > and the semantic meaning of that syntactis structure is that the > seltau in some manner modifies or restricts the meaning of the > tertau... so a parse tree that displays the nonterminal for a tanru > and has as leaves the seltau and tertau /would/ emphasize the semantic > meaning. True enough. But a syntax tree would never, for example, draw a line from {ri} to the thing referred to. Basically a sentence diagram just isn't identical to a syntax tree. I'm guessing you never used them in school? Most Americans under 40 have not. (Of course, I have no idea about other countries, nor do I know your nationality or age.) As for generating them automatically: That is OK, but it's a little like having a symbolic differentiator do your calculus for you. The end result is the same, but you miss the learning experience. Half the point of sentence diagrams is not the completed diagram, but the analytical process of creating one. Hal