From @uga.cc.uga.edu:LOJBAN@CUVMB.BITNET Mon Oct 5 16:10:42 1992 Received: from uga.cc.uga.edu by MINERVA.CIS.YALE.EDU via SMTP; Mon, 5 Oct 1992 12:33:36 -0400 Received: from UGA.CC.UGA.EDU by uga.cc.uga.edu (IBM VM SMTP V2R2) with BSMTP id 9962; Mon, 05 Oct 92 12:32:08 EDT Received: by UGA (Mailer R2.08 PTF008) id 1834; Mon, 05 Oct 92 12:32:07 EDT Date: Mon, 5 Oct 1992 15:10:42 +0100 Reply-To: And Rosta Sender: Lojban list From: And Rosta Subject: Re: TECH(?): can everyone write impeccably grammatical Lojban? X-To: lojban@cuvma.BITNET To: Erik Rauch In-Reply-To: (Your message of Fri, 25 Sep 92 17:23:55 A.) Status: RO X-Status: Message-ID: >From Ivan: > > From: And Rosta > > 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. > > > 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. :-)) A significant amount of spoken & written text in all languages is ungrammatical. But we manage to process it without problems. We produce and comprehend utterances using more than our knowledge of grammar. So we can use these additional mechanisms in tandem with our knowledge of grammar to produce and comprehend utterances that aren't generated by the grammar. The optimal computer parser would surely manage at least as well as we do with ungrammatical input. Of course I don't claim that this parser would be easy to write. I don't think that any utterance is "in" any particular language. It may represent text generated by many different grammars. Or it may represent text not generated by any grammar - or at least not by any grammar anyone knows. We say a text is "in" English if English grammar is the most efficacious for 'decoding' it. This is why G.M.Hopkins, E.E.Cummings, etc., are thought of as poets who wrote in English. All this is of course pertinent to Lojban. Rigorous formalization of Lojban grammar is to be applauded, but this should not mean that Lojban more than other languages requires its speakers to produce rigorously grammatical text. --- And.