Date: Thu, 26 Feb 1998 13:58:53 -0500 (EST) Message-Id: <199802261858.NAA10969@locke.ccil.org> Reply-To: Lee Daniel Crocker Sender: Lojban list From: "Lee Daniel Crocker (none)" Organization: Piclab (http://www.piclab.com/) Subject: Re: Meaning of BAI tags X-To: Lojban Group To: John Cowan In-Reply-To: <199802261154.DAA26955@red.colossus.net> from "Chris Bogart" at Feb 26, 98 00:45:22 am X-UIDL: 4f3b429ca9de5c474e1b9c563f5e01ef Status: OR X-Mozilla-Status: 8011 X-From-Space-Date: Mon Mar 02 13:28:23 1998 X-From-Space-Address: - > The reason I prefer it is that I think it would make lojban text > easier to parse and logically analyze in software. I think a rule > that says: > A djuno B C D bai E > implies > A djuno B C D > > would be wicked useful, because we could apply rules concerning "djuno" > and "bapli". Without such a rule, it's hard to know how the sentence > could be analyzed. But that defeats, as I understand it, the purpose of BAI in the first place: to add places to a predication that aren't specified by its brivla. If the information in a BAI is only incidental, then it should be expressed that way--with a relative clause or a new bridi. Sentences like "I opened the door with my foot" and "I taught math in Spanish" should clearly be false if I used my hand or spoke English, but "open" has no tool place, and "teach" no language place, so we must add then with BAIs. If we don't give the BAI places full status as arguments to the predication just like the brivla places, there's no other way to form these new predications except awkward tanru. -- Lee Daniel Crocker "All inventions or works of authorship original to me, herein and past, are placed irrevocably in the public domain, and may be used or modified for any purpose, without permission, attribution, or notification."--LDC