From wetblu!uunet!cs.NYU.EDU!est Wed May 16 07:33:55 1990 Return-Path: Received: by marob.masa.com (/\=-/\ Smail3.1.18.1 #18.7) id ; Wed, 16 May 90 07:33 EDT Received: by wetblu.hollander.com (/\=-/\ Smail3.1.16.1 #16.12) id ; Wed, 16 May 90 07:20 EDT Received: from cbmvax.UUCP by uunet.uu.net (5.61/1.14) with UUCP id AA19440; Wed, 16 May 90 04:45:13 -0400 Received: by cbmvax.cbm.commodore.com (5.57/UUCP-Project/Commodore Jan 13 1990) id AA20092; Wed, 16 May 90 04:33:02 EDT Received: by snark.uu.net (smail2.3) id AA16007; 16 May 90 03:34:38 EDT (Wed) Received: from CS.NYU.EDU by uunet.uu.net (5.61/1.14) with SMTP id AA22096; Tue, 15 May 90 15:00:45 -0400 Received: by cs.NYU.EDU (5.61/1.34) id AA17134; Tue, 15 May 90 15:00:29 -0400 Date: Tue, 15 May 90 15:00:29 -0400 From: wetblu!uunet!cs.NYU.EDU!est (Eric Tiedemann) Message-Id: <9005151900.AA17134@cs.NYU.EDU> To: snark!lojban-list, yh0a+@andrew.cmu.edu Subject: Re: Some things about lojban Status: RO Date: Mon, 14 May 90 16:14:32 -0400 (EDT) From: Yary Richard Phillip Hluchan gismu are the basic words... Kind of. They're the basic substantives--similar in significance to nouns, verbs, adjectives and adverbs in English. that fit inside the places defined by the lujvo, right? Nope. The lujvo are abbreviated compunds of gismu. The mailing mentioned that there was some trouble with representing mathematical concepts, but there was no description of the current method. It's hard to get detailed information about the language questions the Logical Language Group is pondering at any point in time. I've tried. Could you mail me a copy of the math grammar? I'll mail you the full grammar in a couple of days, but read on. One big problem that I remember- and it would take a lot of work to fix-is lojban's use of the postfix grammar. It doesn't use postfix grammar. As a matter of fact, it tends toward prefix and infix, but it's actually a fairly complex (more so than most programming languages) context-free grammar. (BTW, as a one-time FORTH hacker, I'd dispute your contention the postfix grammar strains human comprehension, but then, most people consider FORTH hackers to be certifiable.) If I remember correctly, the reason postfix was chosen was to make machine interpretation easier, since most machines used a stack-based architechture. However, today's machines don't need to store data structures on a stack; stacks can be used but they're no easier to represent than a binary tree, an array, or a DAG. Yes, some of us know about modern programming. In fact, the current form of the lojban grammar is as input to YACC, a LALR(1) parser generator. (If you need to learn how these things work, I'd recommend Aho, Sethi & Ullman's _Principles of Compiler Design_. Kernighan & Pike's _The UNIX Programing Environment_ shows a little about how YACC is used.) For *practical* purposes, lojban's grammar seems slightly beyond the abilities of YACC, which fact forces a hybridized approach to parsing. LLG won't disclose details of the most advanced effort in this direction. I am sorry that I don't have the grammar rules here, with some concrete examples I'm sure I could make a more convincing argument. I doubt it, but why don't we bring you up to speed. The "OVERVIEW OF LOJBAN" has some basic information on lojban grammar. The LLG (now snark!lojbab@uunet.uu.net) used to make this available in electronic form. *Someone* should send it to the planned languages mail-server, or to me, so it can be easily available again. To get information about the mail-server, send a message with the single word "help" to: langserv@ivory.cc.columbia.edu I could also send you the ascii form of draft textbook lesson 1 (152K!), but please don't redistribute it; refer other curious people to me or the LLG. Both the YACC grammar and the draft textbook lessons should be considered already outdated. Remember that it's a nascent, protean language you're looking at. Feel free to ask further questions in private mail or send me messages for review before you post them to lojban-list. -est