From sabren@manifestation.com Sun Jul 08 09:46:39 2001 Return-Path: X-Sender: sabren@manifestation.com X-Apparently-To: lojban@yahoogroups.com Received: (EGP: mail-7_2_0); 8 Jul 2001 16:46:39 -0000 Received: (qmail 6977 invoked from network); 8 Jul 2001 16:46:38 -0000 Received: from unknown (10.1.10.26) by l8.egroups.com with QMQP; 8 Jul 2001 16:46:38 -0000 Received: from unknown (HELO mercury.sabren.com) (209.61.186.253) by mta1 with SMTP; 8 Jul 2001 16:46:38 -0000 Received: from localhost (sabren@localhost) by mercury.sabren.com (8.9.3/8.9.3) with ESMTP id MAA07301 for ; Sun, 8 Jul 2001 12:54:25 -0500 Date: Sun, 8 Jul 2001 12:54:25 -0500 (CDT) X-Sender: sabren@mercury.sabren.com To: lojban@yahoogroups.com Subject: Re: [lojban] optional punctuation In-Reply-To: <86.c3cc1ce.2879bd9f@aol.com> Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII From: Michal Wallace X-Yahoo-Message-Num: 8470 co'i rodo I have some thoughts about all this punctuation business... There are already quoting words and so forth.. if we replace them with punctuation, are the punctuation marks pronounced like the word, or is it represented by inflection? I'm interested in lojban from a computer perspective.. I want to learn to speak it, but I also want to be able to parse it.. I don't see any problem lexing/pronouncing "123" as "pareci" or "<<" and ">>" as "li" and "li'u".. but I think if you allow it, you should define it specifically. For example, perhaps a name followed by a ":" should always indicate a speaker and what they say, as in a play, and it should be read as if it were the words "(li'u) .i XYZ cusku li .. " The symbol ( " ) is awful hard to parse in its english meaning because of nesting issues. You'd basically have to disallow (alice said, "betty said, 'xxx'") .. (you can't even use alternating "/' because ' is so common) maybe "[ .. ]" would work though, but if you're going to use a 2 chars, you might as well stick with chevrons ("<<" and ">>") --- For questions and so forth, sticking a ? at the end (with or without an upside down ? at the front).. what is that supposed to indicate? A change in inflection? That seems awfully culture-specific to me. .. I guess I see two ways of doing this that make sense. Scheme A is to let you put as much punctuation as you like in a sentence just for visual markup, but you still have to have all the right words. This might also include *bold* or LARGE or _italic_ text for emphasis.. but then again, you shouldn't need to emphasize one word over another because what your saying should be clear already. Then again, it's helpful for the eyes.. In programming languages, the following is unambiguous: 1 + 2 * 3 + 8 / 4 It might mean different things depeneding on the language, but the order of opeations is set in stone. However, the best practice would be to mark it up so that i's clear to anyone reading it, whether they know the language or not: 1 + (2 * 3) + (8 / 4) In lojban, we might "mark up" special words: fred cusku li" co'i "li'u xu go'i? but: fred cusku? would still NOT be a question... The ? would just be a mistake, ignored by a parser and not pronounced out loud. The idea is to only use punctuation for redundancy. That means less work on the reader, without changing the meaning. Using punctuation like this can also CHANGE the meaning, which would defeat the point of scheme A. Scheme B is to define symbols for certain selma'o.. For example: --- => ni'o :) => ui :/ => oi :( => :| => :O => = => du 1 => pa + => su'i ?: => xu ? => ma ?? => mo (or vice versa, as long as it's specific..) So when you see: ?: la fred. cu cusku it's read: xu la fred. cu cusku It doesn't change anything.. Just adds a visual cue that you're asking a question, much like two people who share the same native language might use an auditory cue.. Another varition along these lines might be a prolog style syntax: ?: cusku(la fred) which could be read exactly the same as above, whereas: cusku(la fred., _, la .uilmas.) would be read as: la fred. cu cusku fi la .uilmas. or any other sentence that represents the same surface structure. --- I don't really have an opinion on the particular introductory text in question: http://ptolemy.tlg.uci.edu/~opoudjis/lojbanbrochure/lessons/intro.html I don't know enough lojban to understand what it's saying.. I mean, when I first saw it, I realized it's repeating the english words above (the address gives it away), but since I didn't know how to pronounce lojban words or know anything about the syntax, it all looked like gibberish to me, and I skipped it. I didn't even notice the punctuation.. Looking at it now, I still don't know enough to understand what it's saying without comparing the words above.. It doesn't look like the punctuation is marking out the same things at all. The parentheses seem to be in different places. I don't get it. Maybe if the two were side by side.. ? Cheers, - Michal --------------------------------------------------------------------------- let me host you! http://www.sabren.com/ my page: http://www.sabren.net/ ---------------------------------------------------------------------------