From LOJBAN%CUVMB.bitnet@YaleVM.YCC.YALE.EDU Sat Mar 6 22:54:38 2010 Received: from YALEVM.YCC.YALE.EDU by MINERVA.CIS.YALE.EDU via SMTP; Fri, 26 Mar 1993 13:02:34 -0500 Received: from CUVMB.CC.COLUMBIA.EDU by YaleVM.YCC.Yale.Edu (IBM VM SMTP V2R2) with BSMTP id 6407; Fri, 26 Mar 93 13:01:17 EST Received: from CUVMB.BITNET by CUVMB.CC.COLUMBIA.EDU (Mailer R2.07) with BSMTP id 7927; Fri, 26 Mar 93 13:02:13 EST Date: Fri, 26 Mar 1993 11:42:04 -0500 Reply-To: John Cowan Sender: Lojban list From: John Cowan Subject: Re: TECH: grammar updates X-To: Lojban List To: Erik Rauch In-Reply-To: <9303261504.21969@mullian.ee.mu.OZ.AU> from "Nick Nicholas" at Mar 27, 93 01:04:27 am X-From-Space-Date: Fri Mar 26 06:42:04 1993 X-From-Space-Address: @YaleVM.YCC.YALE.EDU:LOJBAN@CUVMB.BITNET Message-ID: la nitcion. poi me la prolog. lojbo cu cusku di'e > [Dropping "*mo'u"] leaves us with little need for {mau} at all. > I hope you all are aware of this... (debate welcomed, but i'll have little > time to participate in it... Good point. I could live without "mau" and "me'a", and then we'd have two free CVV monosyllables! > though I *have* successfully implemented > tanru-unit-2 -> SE ... BRIVLA, and I allow cmene and brivla to be passed > onto Prolog from yacc directly, without needing to be predefined within > Prolog.) Hurrah, hurrah! > I don't remember well the discussions in October in which xo'e was invented > by Lojbab, but I do know that Lojbab regarded it with much suspicion, and > while I've used it in my lujvo paper to explain the selpinxe <> se pinxe > debate, I did not agree with Lojbab in considering its paedagogical use > reason enough to assign it a real cmavo. But so be it. See my remarks to Colin. If your argument about the Deep Gismu Hypothesis is sound, then "ne'e" must exist. > In fact, congrats to John for consistently dealing with grammatical issues > so elegantly. ki'e > One question though: your use of ZEI has: > > tanru_unit_2 -> anyword (ZEI anyword) ... > > I would have though something like > > tanru_unit_2 -> anyword [(ZEI anyword) ...] ZEI tanru_unit_2 > > to be more sensible: That would lead to a mixing of levels. "zei" compounding is done in the preparser, which doesn't understand nonterminals like "tanru-unit-2"; "xy. zei se broda" != "xy. zei selbroda" (oddly, both are grammatical; the first is a tanru with [bogus] seltanru "xy. zei se"). OTOH, I could restrict the final term of a "zei" compound to be a brivla, which I suppose is what you really want. > I find it hard to think of a place structure for > {xy zei zy}. So do I. -- John Cowan cowan@snark.thyrsus.com ...!uunet!lock60!snark!cowan e'osai ko sarji la lojban.