From rlpowell@digitalkingdom.org Tue Apr 06 12:03:51 2004 Received: with ECARTIS (v1.0.0; list lojban-list); Tue, 06 Apr 2004 12:03:52 -0700 (PDT) Received: from rlpowell by chain.digitalkingdom.org with local (Exim 4.30) id 1BAvrO-00023I-Ae for lojban-list@lojban.org; Tue, 06 Apr 2004 12:03:46 -0700 Date: Tue, 6 Apr 2004 12:03:46 -0700 To: lojban-list@lojban.org Subject: [lojban] Re: Robin Confused (was Re: Re: "pu" versus "pu ku" and LR(1)) Message-ID: <20040406190346.GG5197@digitalkingdom.org> Mail-Followup-To: lojban-list@lojban.org References: <20040329070110.GO6569@digitalkingdom.org> <20040329120955.GB16482@ccil.org> <20040329231516.GU6569@digitalkingdom.org> <20040330055426.GD27631@ccil.org> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline In-Reply-To: <20040330055426.GD27631@ccil.org> User-Agent: Mutt/1.5.5.1+cvs20040105i From: Robin Lee Powell X-archive-position: 7448 X-ecartis-version: Ecartis v1.0.0 Sender: lojban-list-bounce@lojban.org Errors-to: lojban-list-bounce@lojban.org X-original-sender: rlpowell@digitalkingdom.org Precedence: bulk Reply-to: lojban-list@lojban.org X-list: lojban-list On Tue, Mar 30, 2004 at 12:54:26AM -0500, John Cowan wrote: > I was concerned to point out that I thought it probably *was* > syntactic, but I wasn't 100% sure because of the question of ordering > -- is it strictly leftmost-outermost to rightmost-innermost, or do > bare tenses have different rules from tense+KU in the way that bare NA > is different from NA+KU? I think it's the former, and so does xorxes, > and so does the Red Book -- so what it boils down to is, go ahead and > allow tense with or without KU. Mmmmmm, boiling. Thanks. > The only point of my examples was to give a concrete case where > ordering of tense instances can change the meaning. Gotcha. > This, however, leads to a more fundamental point that xorxes has > pointed out before. In Loglan, tense cmavo can appear in any order > with no grammatical rules. Lojban has an intricate tense grammar with > strong restrictions, but in most contexts if you break the restriction > the parser will just supply appropriate ku's and it becomes > grammatical anyhow. So nobody will be able to learn those rules except > in restricted contexts like I+tense+BO, where no KU is allowed. That > makes me wonder if the byfy shouldn't just jettison the rules, or > transform them into something other than syntactic rules -- > conventions of interpretation instead. Or transform them into grammatical rules. I agree; they should be made either more or less formal. My stance on half-way pseudo-formality should be obvious at this point. -Robin -- Me: http://www.digitalkingdom.org/~rlpowell/ *** I'm a *male* Robin. "Constant neocortex override is the only thing that stops us all from running out and eating all the cookies." -- Eliezer Yudkowsky http://www.lojban.org/ *** .i cimo'o prali .ui