From nobody@digitalkingdom.org Thu Jul 13 10:34:51 2006 Received: with ECARTIS (v1.0.0; list lojban-list); Thu, 13 Jul 2006 10:34:51 -0700 (PDT) Received: from nobody by chain.digitalkingdom.org with local (Exim 4.62) (envelope-from ) id 1G1557-0006ML-Dm for lojban-list-real@lojban.org; Thu, 13 Jul 2006 10:34:33 -0700 Received: from rlpowell by chain.digitalkingdom.org with local (Exim 4.62) (envelope-from ) id 1G1557-0006MD-37 for lojban-list@lojban.org; Thu, 13 Jul 2006 10:34:33 -0700 Date: Thu, 13 Jul 2006 10:34:33 -0700 To: lojban-list@lojban.org Subject: [lojban] Re: Do jbopre use terminators? (was: Is Lojban a CFG?) Message-ID: <20060713173433.GR18359@chain.digitalkingdom.org> Mail-Followup-To: lojban-list@lojban.org References: <737b61f30607131027l1306b033qd32a1ecd2f51281d@mail.gmail.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline In-Reply-To: <737b61f30607131027l1306b033qd32a1ecd2f51281d@mail.gmail.com> User-Agent: Mutt/1.5.11+cvs20060403 From: Robin Lee Powell X-archive-position: 12180 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 Thu, Jul 13, 2006 at 12:27:17PM -0500, Chris Capel wrote: > On 7/12/06, Robin Lee Powell wrote: > >I find the general idea interesting; I'm going to have to ponder > >it a bit. I think, though, that most people would rather the > >parser reject a sentence like: > > > >le nu le gleki prenu klama cinri > > > >rather than turn it into the equivalent of: > > > >le nu le gleki ku prenu ku klama cinri > > > >when the user obviously intended: > > > >le nu le gleki prenu ku klama ku cinri > > > >This (the current behaviour) seems to me to reduce the chances > >for confusion *substantially*. But then I haven't thought about > >it much yet. > > That's an interesting example, because it really *is* obvious what > the speaker intended. In this case, yes. Try "le xekri blanu". Is that the answer to a question (i.e. a single sumti), or a statement? > I wonder: Let's say Lojban came to be used by a sizable number of > people for everyday communication. People would probably sometimes > mistakenly leave out terminators like that, especially when the > listener can easily fill them back in. Most times they would be > understood, and the error might even go unnoticed. Yes, this happens already on IRC (although it's usually swiftly corrected). > Because strictly unnecessary grammar tends to evolve out of a > language, this tendency would probably increase over time. So > would these required elidable terminators (is that the right > term?) eventually come to be used only in contexts where the > listener would have trouble semantically "fixing" the statement > (probably still much of the time), and left out when the meaning > is obvious (perhaps only occasionally)? If this happened, would > speakers retain the ability to include them all easily, if needed? No idea. An interesting thought, though. -Robin -- http://www.digitalkingdom.org/~rlpowell/ *** http://www.lojban.org/ Reason #237 To Learn Lojban: "Homonyms: Their Grate!" Proud Supporter of the Singularity Institute - http://singinst.org/ To unsubscribe from this list, send mail to lojban-list-request@lojban.org with the subject unsubscribe, or go to http://www.lojban.org/lsg2/, or if you're really stuck, send mail to secretary@lojban.org for help.