From @uga.cc.uga.edu:LOJBAN@CUVMB.BITNET Fri Sep 25 12:29:42 1992 Received: from uga.cc.uga.edu by MINERVA.CIS.YALE.EDU via SMTP; Fri, 25 Sep 1992 12:29:37 -0400 Received: from UGA.CC.UGA.EDU by uga.cc.uga.edu (IBM VM SMTP V2R2) with BSMTP id 5775; Fri, 25 Sep 92 12:28:14 EDT Received: by UGA (Mailer R2.08 PTF008) id 9134; Fri, 25 Sep 92 12:26:06 EDT Date: Fri, 25 Sep 1992 17:23:55 BST Reply-To: Ivan A Derzhanski Sender: Lojban list From: Ivan A Derzhanski Subject: TECH(?): can everyone write impeccably grammatical Lojban? To: Erik Rauch In-Reply-To: And Rosta's message of Fri, 25 Sep 1992 16:58:55 +0100 <12488.9209251609@cogsci.ed.ac.uk> Status: RO X-Status: Message-ID: > Date: Fri, 25 Sep 1992 16:58:55 +0100 > From: And Rosta > > Obviously most of the Lojban written > at the mo is in practise ungrammatical but nevertheless communicative Maybe not most of it. Quite a bit of it is, obviously. > but in principle I suppose the technical lojbo line is that if it's > ungrammatical then it's not Lojban. As is the technical linguistic line, for that matter: if it doesn't follow the grammar of L, then it is not L, it is another language. > As Ivan no doubt knows better than me, the distinction is sometimes > (usually? always?) made between a *parser* and (don't know the > technical comput ling term) a *grammaticality tester*. > > A grammaticality tester looks at a sentence & if it's grammatical > gives you its structure(s), or, if it's ungrammatical just tells > youtopiss off. > > By contrast, a parser strives tocome up with ananalysis whatever the > input. I'm afraid you and I are using the terms "parser" and "grammaticality tester" very differently. In my experience an ordinary parser tries to come up with an analysis, assuming in any case that the text is built according to its grammar, and if it works, it outputs the structure (here's the difference: I would expect a GT to simply smile at this point), and if it doesn't, it says so. Now there are special parsers which are engineered for garbled input, but they are not what people usually mean when they say "parser". > So basically if you > elide one terminator too many or whatever you've had it. Yes. The reason being that it is damn difficult to formulate any criteria for near-Lojbanness (or near-correctness) of a text. Try to imagine a grammar of near-correct English -- a set of rules that generate utterances which may not be grammatical English, but from which someone with competence in English would be able to derive a meaning. (I didn't say write it, just imagine it. :-)) Ivan