From cowan@ccil.org Mon Mar 29 21:57:08 2004 Return-Path: X-Sender: cowan@ccil.org X-Apparently-To: lojban@yahoogroups.com Received: (qmail 75096 invoked from network); 30 Mar 2004 05:57:06 -0000 Received: from unknown (66.218.66.216) by m20.grp.scd.yahoo.com with QMQP; 30 Mar 2004 05:57:06 -0000 Received: from unknown (HELO mercury.ccil.org) (192.190.237.100) by mta1.grp.scd.yahoo.com with SMTP; 30 Mar 2004 05:57:06 -0000 Received: from cowan by mercury.ccil.org with local (Exim 3.35 #1 (Debian)) id 1B8CCg-0007qs-00; Tue, 30 Mar 2004 00:54:26 -0500 Date: Tue, 30 Mar 2004 00:54:26 -0500 To: rlpowell@digitalkingdom.org Cc: lojban@yahoogroups.com Message-ID: <20040330055426.GD27631@ccil.org> References: <20040329070110.GO6569@digitalkingdom.org> <20040329120955.GB16482@ccil.org> <20040329231516.GU6569@digitalkingdom.org> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline In-Reply-To: <20040329231516.GU6569@digitalkingdom.org> User-Agent: Mutt/1.3.28i X-eGroups-Remote-IP: 192.190.237.100 From: John Cowan Subject: Re: [lojban] Robin Confused (was Re: Re: "pu" versus "pu ku" and LR(1)) X-Yahoo-Group-Post: member; u=212516 X-Yahoo-Profile: johnwcowan X-Yahoo-Message-Num: 21872 Robin Lee Powell scripsit: > I'm sorry, I must be missing something. In the last two cases, unless > I'm seriously confused, that's just a tense binding to a selbri. Let me try to straighten this out. You asked if it was okay to extend a tense before a gek-sentence to allow not only tense+KU but also bare tense, on the assumption that the distinction between bare tense and tense+KU is purely syntactic (tense+KU can wander about the bridi, bare tense is only permitted in a few places). I was concerned to point out that I thought it probably *was* syntactic, but I wasn't 100% sure because of the question of ordering -- is it strictly leftmost-outermost to rightmost-innermost, or do bare tenses have different rules from tense+KU in the way that bare NA is different from NA+KU? I think it's the former, and so does xorxes, and so does the Red Book -- so what it boils down to is, go ahead and allow tense with or without KU. The only point of my examples was to give a concrete case where ordering of tense instances can change the meaning. This, however, leads to a more fundamental point that xorxes has pointed out before. In Loglan, tense cmavo can appear in any order with no grammatical rules. Lojban has an intricate tense grammar with strong restrictions, but in most contexts if you break the restriction the parser will just supply appropriate ku's and it becomes grammatical anyhow. So nobody will be able to learn those rules except in restricted contexts like I+tense+BO, where no KU is allowed. That makes me wonder if the byfy shouldn't just jettison the rules, or transform them into something other than syntactic rules -- conventions of interpretation instead. -- John Cowan jcowan@reutershealth.com http://www.reutershealth.com "Not to know The Smiths is not to know K.X.U." --K.X.U.