From LOJBAN%CUVMB.BITNET@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU Wed Nov 29 04:04:38 1995 Received: from VMS.DC.LSOFT.COM (vms.dc.lsoft.com [205.186.43.2]) by locke.ccil.org (8.6.9/8.6.10) with ESMTP id EAA22268 for ; Wed, 29 Nov 1995 04:04:36 -0500 Message-Id: <199511290904.EAA22268@locke.ccil.org> Received: from PEACH.EASE.LSOFT.COM (205.186.43.4) by VMS.DC.LSOFT.COM (LSMTP for OpenVMS v1.0a) with SMTP id 00027280 ; Wed, 29 Nov 1995 3:55:35 -0500 Date: Wed, 29 Nov 1995 03:54:38 -0500 Reply-To: Logical Language Group Sender: Lojban list From: Logical Language Group Subject: Re: TECH: PROPOSED GRAMMAR CHANGE X3: Extension of JA To: jorge@PHYAST.PITT.EDU Cc: lojban@cuvmb.cc.columbia.edu Status: OR >> Were it not for the possibility that JOI is a >> relatively open-ended set of connectives, > >What do you mean open-ended? Are there plans to add more? No plans - no. But it is rather obvious that the number of ways two things can be non-logically connected a) has never been well-analyzed semantically b) well, the current set was discovered and not planned, and hence cannot be said to neatly encompass the possibilities. JCB had only one non-logical connector, which he used in a trivial way in tanru and nowhere else. We have ce and ce'o at minimum that have seen wide and necessary use, in addition to joi - which encompasses JCB's connective but may be being overstretched in current usage. Adding to JOI is NOT something I would consider propsing before the 5 year baseline ends, but it is an area that I expect will need looking at, even if experimtnal xVV cmavo haven't already sprung up by then. >> (even if it could YACC which I doubt). > >How could it possibly not YACC? If JOI YACCs, then JA doing the same >that JOI does would have no other choice but to YACC. It probably would work, but I am never sure till I try it. And dual purpose JOI strained the LR(1)-ness of the language beyond limits and we had to do speciall fiddling to get it to work. I don't think I could have justified this if at the time I thought JOI was going to be even as important a part of the language as it has become. You can ALMOST justify a little sloppiness when you are being non-logical in your connectives, was my reasoning. But the logical connectives are part of the "core" of the language, and ambiguity even in a minimal sense, glares very severely in such a role. >Some of them don't seem to make any sense. What is the difference >between {jo'u} and {joi}? If there is a difference worth having, >how come there isn't a corresponding LE? Because as I said the semantics of the connectives has never been analyzed. Actually, though, since you ask, I suspect that the LE for jo'u would have many similarities to lo'e/le'e which focus on the commonalities in a disparate set, which is what I THINK jo'u does. > >> Nick for one has always >> found this to be a pain. > >So do I, but this change does not aggravate the problem. You don't have >to use {je} instead of {.e} if you don't want to. Yes, but you are asking for errors and noisy-environment ambiguity, which we can tolerate minimally in joi connection, but not in logical connection. Pragmatics can usually clarify an error in JOI connection; I doubt that it will be a srobust for logical connection. >> I would have proposed long ago to make multiple non-logical >> selma'o with different cmavo assigned to each - the exact oopposite of your >> proposal. %^) (WE never seriously considered that one either.) > >Why would you like to make the grammar more complicated? But it wouldn't. We could then move the respective sets of non-logical connectives into JE and E, and eliminate JOI. lojbab