Return-Path: Message-Id: From: cowan (John Cowan) Subject: Re: Uncertainties in (English) Notation To: lojban-list Date: Tue, 16 Apr 91 11:29:43 EDT In-Reply-To: ; from "cowan" at Apr 16, 91 11:25 am X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.2 PL13] Status: RO X-From-Space-Date: Tue Apr 16 11:30:51 1991 X-From-Space-Address: cowan I wrote, in the EBNF grammar explanations: > The elidable terminators make the language unambiguous, but may often be > omitted without loss of ambiguity, especially when there is more than one > in a row. Doug Landauer rewrote this as: > The elidable terminators, when present, make the language > unambiguous. However, they may often be omitted without > making an utterance ambiguous, especially when there are > more than one in a row. That's more like it. "Loss of ambiguity" should have been just "ambiguity". In addition, the confusion over whether "elidable" was descriptive (as I intended) or defining (as Guy Steele assumed) made matters worse. -- cowan@snark.thyrsus.com ...!uunet!cbmvax!snark!cowan e'osai ko sarji la lojban