From lojbab Thu Mar 24 13:50:54 1994 Subject: Re: Brainstorm! (two years too late) To: lojban@cuvmb.cc.columbia.edu From: John Cowan Date: Thu, 24 Mar 1994 13:50:54 -0500 (EST) Cc: lojbab (Logical Language Group) In-Reply-To: <199403231514.AA18025@nfs1.digex.net> from "Nick NICHOLAS" at Mar 24, 94 00:26:36 am X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4 PL23] MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Length: 4568 Status: RO Message-ID: la nitcion. cusku di'e > So it's like this. You want to append a relative clause to a conjunction of > sumti. Like, you're talking about Emma Thompson and Kenneth Branagh who are > actors. If you say > > la .ebu.ty. .e. la ky.by. noi xe draci Minor nit: either "la .ebutys." or ".ebu ty.", preferably the latter. LA+sumti is not allowed. (Nick knows this, but I want to reinforce it for others.) > you mean > > E.T., and [K.B who is an actor]. > > You want to say both are actors. > > Until now, the only real option has been to say > > lu'a la .ebu.ty. .e. la ky.by. lu'u noi xe draci. > > But you need a "lu'a" before you get started. You can't > change the scope of the following rel.clause, from the sumti it immediately > hooks on to, to the conjunction of sumti, as an *afterthought*. You can't > say the equivalent of "E.T. and K.B..... oh, yeah, who are both of them > actors", because that "who" is bound to Branagh perforce, once you neglected > to start the phrase with "lu'a". In Lojban, you're currently forced to say > the whole phrase from the start --- which doesn't match what you can usually > do in such cases in the language. [...] > [Consider a]n elidable terminator for EK-joined sumti. > > Let's call it XOI. (It could be a CVhV no problem; won't be used all that > often.) It would change the existing sumti scheme as follows: > > sumti = sumti-1 [(joik # | ek #) sumti-1 /XOI/] ... > > sumti-1 = sumti-2 [ek [stag] BO # sumti-1 /XOI/] > > You could then say: > > la .ebu.ty. .e. la ky.by. noi xe draci > ET and (KB who is an actor) > > la .ebu.ty. .e. la ky.by. xoi noi xe draci > (ET and KB) who are actors > > la .ebu.ty. .e. la ky.by. xoi noi xe draci ku'o .e. > la margrit.tatcer. xoi noi brito: > ((ET and KB) who are actors, and MT) who are British. Both lojbab and I thought this idea was indeed worth pursuing, and I've just been doing some YACCing. Well, it won't work as specified, unfortunately, but I think the basic idea is salvageable. We can indeed add an elidable terminator like XOI above, but it doesn't do the necessary, because down in sumti-4 we still have only a sumti-5, not a full sumti. And we cannot change this without multitudinous reduce-reduce errors. Without such a change, the elidable terminator is useless. I experimented a bit, and finally came up with the following idea. We demote all the existing sumti rules by one notch, and add a new top-level kind of sumti, with rule: sumti<90> = sumti-1 [XUhO relative-clauses] This cmavo XUhO is not an elidable terminator, but simply serves as glue between a full sumti and one or more relative clauses which are intended to modify the full sumti. This allows: by .e cy noi broda cu brode B and (C who is a thingummy) are whatchacallits by .e cy xu'o noi broda cu brode B and C (who are thingummies) are whatchacallits but not *by. .e cy. xu'o noi broda ku'o .e dy. xu'o noi brodi cu brode (B and C (who are thingummies) and D) (who are all furgles) are whatchacallits. because allowing this "XUhO + relative-clauses" at more than one level causes shift-reduce errors. So we can afterthought-modify a whole sumti, but not part of a sumti. I think this is an acceptable restriction. Here's the formal change proposal: CHANGE 34 CURRENT LANGUAGE: Relative clauses always attach to the simple sumti (sumti-5) immediately to the left; the only way to attach a relative clause to a larger construct, like logically or non-logically connected sumti, is to bracket the construct with LAhE...LUhU. PROPOSED CHANGE: Introduce a new cmavo "xu'o" of selma'o XUhO (note: assign non-experimental value later) which serves as glue between a full sumti and one or more relative clauses (joined with ZIhE, if there's more than one). The new construct would have lower precedence than any other sumti construction. Therefore, it would be possible to attach relative clauses to a complete sumti (with XUhO), or to a simple sumti (with no cmavo), but not to anything in between. RATIONALE: The LAhE...LUhU construction has two limitations. First, it is inherently forethought in nature, making it impossible to add long-scope relative clauses in afterthought. Second, LAhE cmavo have semantic import, so when used merely for bracketing purposes, it is important that the correct cmavo ("lu'a" for individuals, "lu'o" for masses, "lu'i" for sets) be chosen so as to have a null semantic effect; this is annoying. Comments? -- John Cowan sharing account for now e'osai ko sarji la lojban.