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 PAA21961 for ; Thu, 23 Nov 1995 15:38:29 -0500 Message-Id: <199511232038.PAA21961@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 398263A4 ; Thu, 23 Nov 1995 16:28:46 -0400 Date: Thu, 23 Nov 1995 20:25:29 +0000 Reply-To: ucleaar Sender: Lojban list From: ucleaar Subject: Re: Colourless green ideas X-To: lojban@cuvmb.cc.columbia.edu To: John Cowan Status: OR X-From-Space-Date: Thu Nov 23 15:38:33 1995 X-From-Space-Address: LOJBAN%CUVMB.BITNET@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU Jorge to Dylan: > > I'd also like to > > see a proposal for the substructure of PA, preferably one that doesn't > > rule out any current texts. > This is not a full proposal, but I posted this in March: > The parser accepts any string of PAs as a number, but not all > combinations are meaningful (at least to me). Here is an attempt > to describe which are the meaningful combinations, written in > bnf-ish notation. > Comments about all this are most welcome and solicited. I can't comment on its success, but I applaud the endeavour. For the grammar (= language rule system) to be complete we need to know the meaning of every possible sentence. At present we don't, and we can fix this by working out what some previously not understood construction means, or by rewriting the grammar to rule out the offending sentence. --- And