From nsn  Sat Mar  6 22:44:40 2010
From: nsn (Nick Nicholas)
Subject: Re: your mail
To: lojbab@grebyn.com (Logical Language Group)
Date: Mon, 14 Jun 1993 18:36:51 +1000 (EST)
Cc: 91909372@bradford.ac.uk, cowan@snark.thyrsus.com
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The Seraphim surely rejoiced when Logical Language Group spoke thus:

}                    Nick's Second Coffeehouse Text

}     Unfortunately for Nick, I agree with Nora that Lojban's
}audiovisual isomorphism requires that the grammar be understandable
}based on what is supplied in the words themselves.  Lojban's design
}presumes that all 'punctuation' is spoken.  As such, any punctuation
}that is inserted to make a text easier to read must be algorithmically
}derivable from the text structure itself.  The bracketting that Nick
}included in the following text had no obvious explanation that could
}allow me to predict when he felt it to be useful, and when he felt it
}unimportant to include.  

My attitude to such brackets has been the same as that to spoken brackets:
don't insert when obvious. That isn't algorithmic, but an algorithm to do
the job does already exists --- it's the parser.

}Nick's use of quotation made it
}impossible to try to follow English-like practices of starting new
}quotations in a new paragraph.  He has quotations in the beginning of
}sentences, in the middle of sentences, at the end of sentences, and in
}some places he has a series of alternating quotes and names in a
}single sentence that a Lojban reader must take only as a random series
}of sumti, since no grammar suggests the relation between names and
}quotations.  

I welcome any suggestions for any better mechanism to associate speaker and
quotation. {.i la cmen. pe lu broda li'u} has already been rejected.

}I really wish that he would think
}about how his sylistic experiments would be understood by such an
}interpreter. .oiro'e).  

*smile* Lojbab, working as it is with logical form, it doesn't even understand
"the". (Making it do so would have meant taking it into discource analysis,
which was a bit beyond my scope, since my tecnhiques were of the sentene level).

}Nick's parentheses also are structurally
}confusing - a parenthetical note attaches as a free modifier to the
}previous word, and I thus often had no idea why he put his
}parentheticals where he did, even after looking at the English.

People will parenthesise when they feel like it, Lojbab; in any case, I
don't think my bracketing was always that random...

}     I also expanded Nick's compounds unless they are compounds that
}would be joined by the lexer component of the Lojban parser and
}sometimes I expand those

That's your right, Lojbab; we do have different ideas on what consitutes
a word... I certainly don't believe everything occuring between two spaces
in lojban text can be a dictionary, which I think means we have a different
view on productiveness and lexicalisation in the language.

}(Sometimes Nick's compounds actually grossly misrepresented the
}underlying grammar, at least one of the compounds he wrote,
}"na'igo'i", consisted of an attitudinal followed by a selbri.
}Attitudinals always modify leftwards, instead of rightwards, so I had
}to spend some time trying to figure out if this was a mismade lujvo.)

Actually, I'm unrepentant. na'i go'i, constructed by analogy to na go'i
rather than the more correct but less instinctive go'i na'i, *is* a
gestalt to me...

}=.i la lizbet. na'e go'i cadykei be le
}xekri tedykre1 be la paul. kalsa be'o se mlifanza cisma no'e zanru le
}xajmi   

To resolve that long-standing aenigma :) , that should be sedykre --- head
hair. If you don't think {sedykre be la paul.} kalsa would be helpful, well,
fine, but not everyone is as familiar with the tighter binding of cmene...

}vlipa joi vlile joi ke daspo joi finti vau .!u'e   =.i ki vive'i
}kamjikca simsa go'i .!i'unai no'i la liz. dasni lo grusi notcreka (to

You don't think that no'i deserves a paragraph of its own? It is a para
marker...

}RUSpre ce RUSta'u ce rusxirXEMkla li'u

I had longer lujvo in my text to maintain a certain meter (iambic heptameter,
and, like most stuff in this story, it really exists, and the Greek original
is: "Ma'vros i'tan, ma'vra forei', ma'vra kai t' a'logo' tou".) Quite simply,
I misquote the verse as talking of Hero as a grey rider, then correct myself:
replace "grey" with "black". As you can see, the first part is a study in
grey and black.

}=.ita'ocu'i su'u xekri kei vi le kafybarja
}          ni'oremo'o su'o bevri cu .!a'acu'i masno kasydzu zo'i loi ve

I'd put a couple of blank lines between each section.

}barja   =.i la paul. cu tavla (to le no'a mebri cu jurja'o   =.i le
}laurxampre pu'i vlipa .!i'e.i'onai cei bu'a3 toi) fi leli'i gletro

The upshot of your footnote is that {broda} should replace {bu'a} --- and
it's only by you telling us these things that we'll learn them.

}cando gi'e kurfa kei ki'u lepu'u re ru vi ri zdidabysnu (to lu   =.i

I had a line break before the start of this rather long parenthetical
digression, and algorithmic or not, I think it essential it get put in.

}     I (Lojbab) don't have many complaints about Nick's work in the
}following two stories.  
}Alas, he
}had not checked the text with a parser (only some minor errors), 

I strongly recommend against saying I hadn't checked the texts in JL, because
I *do* parse all my texts. The text parses in my two year old copy of the 
parser; it's in the new parser that it doesn't parse. You need only mention
that grammar changes made you retune a couple of phrases.

}klama le cange po ko'a gi'e se mipstu loi stani   =.i le kakpa cu
}!ba'e sutra klama gi'enai kruce jdaxanmu'u gi'e lasna le bakni le te
}plixa gi'e co'a renro lei tsiju

A question that hasn't been answered is: does (.abu .enai by .e cy) mean
A and not (B and C), or, as I've assumed here, A and (not B) and C? The former
seems the one intended, but I think you'll have a hard time enforcing it
over the latter. Mention this in a footnote.

}II. (untitled)

I don't remember the title given the story in the collection I was using,
but I think it was "The Cardplayer" (or "Christ and the Cardplayer".

---
'Dera me xhama t"e larm"e,            T  Nick Nicholas, CgS & CS, Melbourne Uni
 Dera mbas blerimit                   |  nsn@munagin.ee.mu.oz.au (IRC: nicxjo)
 Me xhama t"e larm"e!                 |  Milaw ki ellhnika/Esperanto parolata/
 Lumtunia nuk ka ngjyra tjera.'       |  mi ka'e tavla bau la lojban. je'uru'e
 - Martin Camaj, _Nj"e Shp'i e Vetme_ |                *d'oh!*