Message-Id: <199510252135.RAA21111@locke.ccil.org>
Date:         Wed, 25 Oct 1995 21:26:24 +0000
Reply-To: ucleaar <ucleaar@UCL.AC.UK>
Sender: Lojban list <LOJBAN@CUVMB.BITNET>
From: ucleaar <ucleaar@UCL.AC.UK>
Subject:      Re: NAI
To: John Cowan <cowan@LOCKE.CCIL.ORG>
Status: OR

la djan. cusku di'e
> > Lojban in general has no idioms - the sense of a phrase is fully
> > predictable from the meaning of its parts[.]
> This is not really true:  the sense of "skami pilno" may be "user of
> computers", or "computer which is a user", or other more exotic
> possibilities.

The sense of {skami pilno} - the semantic meaning, constant across
contexts - is "user associated with computer". That is fully predictable.

> > Second, and more interestingly, UI are in general invisible
> > to other words, but they appear to be visible to NAI. How so? This
> > is accounted for if the bond between UI and following NAI is
> > morphological.
> I would hesitate to say that UI are "invisible"; they have a syntactic
> bond to the previous item:  thus
>        skami a'o pilno
> groups as
>        (skami a'o) pilno
> although it is true that "(skami a'o)" has the same grammatical
> properties as "skami".  This is in fact how the parser implements
> attitudinals: it binds them to the preceding word, returning a new
> node of the same selma'o as the preceding word.

Well, UI may go looking for the preceding word, but does anything
go looking for an UI? Apart from NAI.

How does {skami ao ao} group? As [[skami ao] ao], or as [skami [ao ao]]?
What about {ta bae ao skami}? Is {bae} emphasizing {skami} and commented
on by {ao}, or is {bae} emphasizing {ao} which is commenting on {ta}?
---
And