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Date: Fri, 9 Apr 2004 14:04:38 -0700 (PDT)
From: Jorge "Llambías" <jjllambias2000@yahoo.com.ar>
Subject: [lojban] Re: Official parser and "lo ni'a zu crino"
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--- Robin Lee Powell <rlpowell@digitalkingdom.org> wrote:

> The point that you seem to be missing is that "lo broda joi lo brode"
> requires infinite lookahead only to insert the elidable terminators,
> i.e. to read it as "lo broda ku joi lo brode ku". 

That's what I thought. But then what does John mean when he says:

> > > > > For one thing, human beings don't support
> > > > > infinite lookahead.  But I am okay with accepting things like
> > > > > "le broda joi le brodi", since that is not truly an ambiguity

How can he reject {le broda je le brode} on the grounds that
humans don't support infinite lookahead while in the same paragraph
accept {le broda joi le brode}? Isn't that self-contradictory?

> The difference between "lo broda joi lo brode" and "lo broda je lo
> brode" is that the latter is an actual change to the language, as
> defined by grammar.300, grammar.bnf, and the reference grammar. 

Of course. 

> The
> former contradicts none of those documents (as far as I know; if I'm
> wrong, show me where).  The former is a distinction that makes no
> difference, the latter is not.

I understand that. But that wasn't what John was arguing.

> I'll grant you that neither change invalidates past usage (at least, the
> JA change can be made to not do so), but one is obviously more extreme
> than the other.

Certainly.

> Last I checked, the LLG was still trying to maintain some form of
> constancy to the language so that people could actually learn it.  I
> still consider this worthwhile.  You obviously don't.  So we're kind of
> stuck with agreeing to disagree, AFAICT.

That's why I proposed the compromise solution of allowing
{le broda je le brode} without disallowing {le broda e le brode}.
That gives us both backwards compatibility plus a simpler grammar.

mu'o mi'e xorxes


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