Received: from ELI.CS.YALE.EDU by NEBULA.SYSTEMSZ.CS.YALE.EDU via SMTP; Tue, 23 Nov 1993 17:32:46 -0500 Received: from YALEVM.YCC.YALE.EDU by eli.CS.YALE.EDU via SMTP; Tue, 23 Nov 1993 17:32:40 -0500 Message-Id: <199311232232.AA00236@eli.CS.YALE.EDU> Received: from CUVMB.CC.COLUMBIA.EDU by YaleVM.YCC.Yale.Edu (IBM VM SMTP V2R2) with BSMTP id 0008; Tue, 23 Nov 93 17:31:00 EST Received: from CUVMB.COLUMBIA.EDU by CUVMB.CC.COLUMBIA.EDU (Mailer R2.07) with BSMTP id 2830; Tue, 23 Nov 93 17:31:54 EDT Date: Tue, 23 Nov 1993 17:29:52 -0500 Reply-To: Logical Language Group Sender: Lojban list From: Logical Language Group Subject: Re: proposal for new member of SE X-To: lojban@cuvmb.cc.columbia.edu To: Erik Rauch In-Reply-To: <199311232002.AA07904@access.digex.net> from "ucleaar" at Nov 23, 93 08:00:26 pm Status: RO X-Status: X-From-Space-Date: Tue Nov 23 12:29:52 1993 X-From-Space-Address: @YaleVM.YCC.YALE.EDU:LOJBAN@CUVMB.BITNET la .and. cusku di'e > I see I was ignorant of the FA-suppletion rules. I assumed that FA-marked > sumti had no effect on the place number of the other sumti, except for > removing the FA-sumti from the sequence. So Fi-A B C D E F would > be 3 1 2 4 5 6. And Fi-A B C fa-D E F would (no doubt gardenpathing > the hearer) be 3 2 4 1 5 6. Here's an attempt, which may not be quite right but is the best I can do at this point, to state the full set of rules. 0) BAI-tagged and tense-tagged sumti are not relevant to any of the following rules, which act as if they were not present. 1) A FA-tagged sumti is always assigned to the place specified by the tag, even if that place is occupied (in which case there are effectively two or more claims: the sumti forced to occupy a single place are not identified). 2) If the first sumti in a bridi is not FA-tagged, it is x1 if it precedes the selbri and x2 if it follows the selbri. 3) All other sumti are assigned to the smallest unfilled place whose number is greater than that of the immediately preceding sumti. Therefore, "fi A B C D E F" has assignments "x3 [rule 1] x4 [rule 3] x5 x6 x7 x8", and "fi A B C fa D E F" has assignments "x3 [rule 1] x4 [rule 3] x5 x1 [rule 1] x2 x6 [rule 3; x3-x5 are filled]". The assignment of F to x6 would no doubt be a garden path: by this point, the listener has probably forgotten what A was! The parenthetical clause of rule 1 explains why your "le brito be fa la .and." doesn't work: the underlying bridi is "(t) cu brito fa la .and" which says that "(t)" is British and so is And, but doesn't equate them. > What is the rationale behind the FA-suppletion rules? As the textbook says: It is usually a good idea for the speaker to explicitly mark each place when he/she scrambles them this drastically; we are merely presenting a convention that allows interpretation when the speaker is inconsiderate. Most often, FA is used either for explicit VSO order, or to skip several places without explicit "zo'e" operations. It is convenient to be able to continue counting from the last explicit marker, but placing two sumti into the same place is oddball enough that it should not happen by default: only explicit FA marking can force this to happen. -- John Cowan sharing account for now e'osai ko sarji la lojban.