From jcowan@reutershealth.com Thu Apr 08 20:23:13 2004 Return-Path: X-Sender: jcowan@reutershealth.com X-Apparently-To: lojban@yahoogroups.com Received: (qmail 31226 invoked from network); 9 Apr 2004 02:38:39 -0000 Received: from unknown (66.218.66.218) by m7.grp.scd.yahoo.com with QMQP; 9 Apr 2004 02:38:39 -0000 Received: from unknown (HELO mail.reutershealth.com) (65.246.141.36) by mta3.grp.scd.yahoo.com with SMTP; 9 Apr 2004 02:38:39 -0000 Received: from skunk.reutershealth.com (mail [65.246.141.36]) by mail.reutershealth.com (Pro-8.9.3/Pro-8.9.3) with SMTP id WAA01850; Thu, 8 Apr 2004 22:32:15 -0400 (EDT) Received: by skunk.reutershealth.com (sSMTP sendmail emulation); Thu, 8 Apr 2004 22:38:22 -0400 Date: Thu, 8 Apr 2004 22:38:22 -0400 To: rspeer@MIT.EDU Cc: lojban@yahoogroups.com Message-ID: <20040409023822.GD13184@skunk.reutershealth.com> References: <20040409002858.GH14789@digitalkingdom.org> <20040409015132.GA28275@mit.edu> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline In-Reply-To: <20040409015132.GA28275@mit.edu> User-Agent: Mutt/1.4.1i X-eGroups-Remote-IP: 65.246.141.36 From: jcowan@reutershealth.com Subject: Re: [lojban] Re: Beta Release of PEG-based Lojban parser. X-Yahoo-Group-Post: member; u=8122456 X-Yahoo-Message-Num: 21984 Rob Speer scripsit: > The reason I ask is that this summer, I've got a research job in > semantic interpretation of natural languages. I've gotten permission > from my advisor to apply my research to Lojban. Hurrah! The PEG parser can indeed be used to make parse trees; it's just that Robin, who's doing the work, doesn't have sufficient Java chops at present. But I can't believe it's a big deal. > This technique of semantic interpretation involves taking a CFG and > assigning a lambda expression to every rule. You then apply these lambda > expressions up a parse tree, and at the top you end up with an > expression encoding the meaning of the sentence. Very cool. We may not be smart enough to do this yet in full generality, but look at Nick's Prolog version. > > So this should apply to Lojban very well. Now, I also think that the PEG > is very cool and is fixing some of the most blatant things wrong with > Lojban, and I'd like to be able to use it. So that requires being able > to retrieve parse trees. We'll make it happen. -- John Cowan jcowan@reutershealth.com www.ccil.org/~cowan www.reutershealth.com "In computer science, we stand on each other's feet." --Brian K. Reid