Message-Id: <199308161436.AA03350@eli.CS.YALE.EDU>
Date:         Tue, 17 Aug 1993 00:34:56 +1000
Reply-To: Nick Nicholas <nsn@MULLIAN.EE.MU.OZ.AU>
Sender: Lojban list <LOJBAN%CUVMB.bitnet@YaleVM.YCC.YALE.EDU>
From: Nick Nicholas <nsn@MULLIAN.EE.MU.OZ.AU>
Subject:      Re: TEXT: xislu mu'ucutci  (roller skating)
To: Erik Rauch <rauch>
In-Reply-To:  <no.id> from "Rob Brady" at Aug 15, 93 05:03:24 pm
Status: O

To Rob Brady respond I thus:

#Nick Nicholas says

#[skates]

I'll go along with what Lojbab and Colin have had to say about these.

#> I wish the gi'uste was more sensitive to non-USA: it took me two years to
#> realise that zarci corresponds to what I call a shop! {be} fills in an
#> argument of {zarci}, so you've actually said: a shop selling 64th streets
#> and 3rd streets. Also (typical Lojban pedantry) the shop isn't who is
#> doing the selling, but where the selling takes place.
#According to my gismu list zarci is as "... market at ... operated by ...
#selling ..."

It sounds like you've got the old gismu list. Pity we forgot to propose a
keyword change for 'zarci' for Logfest, but at least we're on to it now...

#> (Btw, if you don't yet have the BNF grammar, get it. You'll find it extremely
#> helpful.)
#I do have the BNF grammar, and despite the fact that I've written parsers
#myself I find this quite incomprehensible. I find that reading it, running
#examples through it, so on, does very little for my understanding of the
#grammar. Has anyone  else noticed that?

I presume that's because of the jargon in the nonterminal names? Granted,
you do need a lot of exposure to walk-throughs of texts to understand why
what is grammatical; and there hasn't yet been written much official
exegesis of it. Maybe we should do a syntactic commentary on a couple of
brief pieces?

#.i zoi by. verve by. mo

.i .u'i le danfu be la'edi'u cu .e'u cilre nabmi zo'o le tcidu

*******************************************************************************
 A freshman once observed to me:         Nick Nicholas am I, of Melbourne, Oz.
 On the edge of the Rubicon,             nsn@munagin.ee.mu.oz.au (IRC: nicxjo)
 men don't go fishing.                   CogSci and CompSci & wannabe Linguist.
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