From jack  Sat Mar  6 22:55:37 2010
Date: Thu Sep 27 10:52:40 1990
To: uunet!cbmvax!snark.thyrsus.com!lojbab
From: jack
Subject: uunet!cbmvax!snark.thyrsus.com!lojbab
X-From-Space-Date: Thu Sep 27 10:52:40 1990
X-From-Space-Address: jack
Message-ID: <wsA33qrtMUJ.A.MHB.p30kLB@chain.digitalkingdom.org>

[ . . . ]

I haven't had time to read the explanation of the machine grammar.
Maybe it will solve the concern I have about the readability
of the grammar.

It is a bit disappointing, although expected, that you are
announcing the baselining of the grammar in its current state.
I think it should have undergone a simplification pass.
I think I oppose the "let a thousand flowers bloom"
philosophy.  Every learner of the language has to know all
the little words in order to parse arbitrary grammatical
utterances.  Therefore, complexity in the grammar is very
expensive in learning time.
Predicate language is not supposed to be a word-for-word
translation of a natural lanugage.  It started out
radically different.  I suspect some of the grammatical
complications that have crept in will let speakers continue
in the grammatical viewpoint of natural languages and thus
have less tendency to adopt the predicate viewpoint and
think about what they really mean to say.  Of course, I have
no place from which to stand and complain, since I have not
given time to the grammar myself.

If you want to debate with me about grammar (which I suppose
you don't, and I am not asking you to, but if you do), we need
more precisely-defined terms.
Let grammar-1 mean the mathematical function that maps from
utterances to parses (or to rejections as ungrammatical),
independently of how that function might be expressed or
prescribed.  Then if A and B stand for grammar-1s and U is
a putative utterance, if for all U A(U) = B(U) then A = B.

Let a grammar-2 (you might know better terms than grammar-1
and grammar-2) be a pair (E, L) such that E is an expression
in some mathematical notation and L (for "language") is
the meaning of the notation used in E, such that L(E) is a
grammar-1.

Let a grammer-3 be the expression E of a grammar-2 (E, L).

Then the official YACC grammar of Lojban is a grammar-3 (and L is
YACC plus the preprocessor, in essence).

A goal often expressed for a grammar-3 of a version of Loglan is
that it be "unambiguous".  Hidden behind this is some kind of
constraint or criterion on L, since L could always be constructed
so that E couldn't be ambiguous.

[end]