Return-Path: Received: from SEGATE.SUNET.SE by xiron.pc.helsinki.fi with smtp (Linux Smail3.1.28.1 #1) id m0tGW6R-0000ZTC; Fri, 17 Nov 95 21:05 EET Message-Id: Received: from listmail.sunet.se by SEGATE.SUNET.SE (LSMTP for OpenVMS v1.0a) with SMTP id 851903BA ; Fri, 17 Nov 1995 20:05:35 +0100 Date: Fri, 17 Nov 1995 06:29:48 -0500 Reply-To: Logical Language Group Sender: Lojban list From: Logical Language Group Subject: Re: splitting PA into multiple selma'o X-To: ucleaar@UCL.AC.UK X-cc: lojban@cuvmb.cc.columbia.edu To: Veijo Vilva Content-Length: 1281 Lines: 26 >If you turned a grammarian loose on Lojban they'd come up with a >different grammar from the official one, because Lojban has fiddled >the initial data. The current official grammar overgenerates. And natlang "official grammars" undergenerate if they follow Jacques Guy's principle and exclude center-embedding, or overgenerate if they follow Chomsky's and include fully-recursive center-embedding. Lojban's grammar is no more overgenerating than any Chomskyan grammar that doesn't explicitly rule out center-embeddings that no one finds understandable. Yet, some people consider that Jabberwocky is fully grammatical, even though it is nonsense, so that a natlang grammar may not exist that isn't in some way undergenerating. There ARE strings of PA that are ungramamtical, but surprsingly small percentage if you venture off into the realmsof MEX-space. And part of PA and its grammar is designed to include the needs of MEX. Mathematics allows all sorts of weirdness in the name of precision and unambiguity. WhatIS the case is that there exists grammatical Lojban text using PA that has no defined and agreed-upon semantics - that does NOT mean that it is utter gobbledygook (unless, like me, you find moth mathematical expression to be utter gobbledygook %^). lojbab