From lojban-out@lojban.org Thu May 13 12:40:27 2004 Return-Path: X-Sender: lojban-out@lojban.org X-Apparently-To: lojban@yahoogroups.com Received: (qmail 10883 invoked from network); 13 May 2004 19:40:26 -0000 Received: from unknown (66.218.66.167) by m20.grp.scd.yahoo.com with QMQP; 13 May 2004 19:40:26 -0000 Received: from unknown (HELO chain.digitalkingdom.org) (64.81.49.134) by mta6.grp.scd.yahoo.com with SMTP; 13 May 2004 19:40:26 -0000 Received: from lojban-out by chain.digitalkingdom.org with local (Exim 4.32) id 1BOM45-0001B9-99 for lojban@yahoogroups.com; Thu, 13 May 2004 12:40:21 -0700 Received: from dsl081-049-134.sfo1.dsl.speakeasy.net ([64.81.49.134] helo=chain.digitalkingdom.org) by chain.digitalkingdom.org with esmtp (Exim 4.32) id 1BOM3L-000198-Bo; Thu, 13 May 2004 12:39:35 -0700 Received: with ECARTIS (v1.0.0; list lojban-list); Thu, 13 May 2004 12:39:32 -0700 (PDT) Received: from [195.167.170.152] (helo=bowl.fysh.org ident=mail) by chain.digitalkingdom.org with esmtp (TLS-1.0:DHE_RSA_3DES_EDE_CBC_SHA:24) (Exim 4.32) id 1BOM38-00018P-R1 for lojban-list@lojban.org; Thu, 13 May 2004 12:39:23 -0700 Received: from zefram by bowl.fysh.org with local (Exim 3.35 #1 (Debian)) id 1BOM33-0008NR-00; Thu, 13 May 2004 20:39:17 +0100 Date: Thu, 13 May 2004 20:39:17 +0100 Message-ID: <20040513193917.GC16333@fysh.org> References: <20040513183600.GJ4461@digitalkingdom.org> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline In-Reply-To: <20040513183600.GJ4461@digitalkingdom.org> User-Agent: Mutt/1.3.28i X-archive-position: 7794 X-ecartis-version: Ecartis v1.0.0 Sender: lojban-list-bounce@lojban.org Errors-to: lojban-list-bounce@lojban.org X-original-sender: zefram@fysh.org X-list: lojban-list To: lojban@yahoogroups.com X-eGroups-Remote-IP: 64.81.49.134 X-eGroups-From: Zefram From: Zefram Reply-To: zefram@fysh.org Subject: [lojban] Re: y: what is it good for? X-Yahoo-Group-Post: member; u=116389790 X-Yahoo-Profile: lojban_out X-Yahoo-Message-Num: 22257 I'm following these grammar debates with considerable interest. I've studied programming language design a great deal, and so I'm finding some of these design issues quite familiar. I'm looking forward to knowing Lojban well enough to make a thorough analysis of the grammar. I think the cleanest way to handle "y" is to treat it as an erase word that erases nothing. This means that: * it is not necessary to explicitly erase a pause: "le y si lo broda" preprocesses to "lo broda" * it can be quoted with "zo"; if you want to pause before a quoted word, develop the habit of pausing *before* the "zo", as in "y y y zo nalselmorjyvalsi" * it can be used as a "zoi" delimiter (though I think the ability to use erase words here is bad design; I'd prefer "zoi si zo" to preprocess to "zo") * more generally, it's not a special case, making learning easier How does this interact with "bu" and "zei"? Is "si bu" valid? If not then "ybu" might have to be an exception to the above. Incidentally, why was this "bu" system devised? Why not use, for example, "a'y" to "u'y" for the vowels? -zefram