From lojban-out@lojban.org Fri Jan 21 08:23:45 2005 Return-Path: X-Sender: lojban-out@lojban.org X-Apparently-To: lojban@yahoogroups.com Received: (qmail 2140 invoked from network); 21 Jan 2005 16:23:42 -0000 Received: from unknown (66.218.66.172) by m17.grp.scd.yahoo.com with QMQP; 21 Jan 2005 16:23:42 -0000 Received: from unknown (HELO chain.digitalkingdom.org) (64.81.49.134) by mta4.grp.scd.yahoo.com with SMTP; 21 Jan 2005 16:23:42 -0000 Received: from lojban-out by chain.digitalkingdom.org with local (Exim 4.34) id 1Cs1ZV-0002Ix-5B for lojban@yahoogroups.com; Fri, 21 Jan 2005 08:23:41 -0800 Received: from chain.digitalkingdom.org ([64.81.49.134]) by chain.digitalkingdom.org with esmtp (Exim 4.34) id 1Cs1Yx-0002Ia-15; Fri, 21 Jan 2005 08:23:07 -0800 Received: with ECARTIS (v1.0.0; list lojban-list); Fri, 21 Jan 2005 08:23:03 -0800 (PST) Received: from hive.cec.wustl.edu ([128.252.21.14]) by chain.digitalkingdom.org with esmtp (TLS-1.0:DHE_RSA_3DES_EDE_CBC_SHA:24) (Exim 4.34) id 1Cs1Ym-0002Hz-LJ for lojban-list@lojban.org; Fri, 21 Jan 2005 08:22:56 -0800 Received: from hive.cec.wustl.edu (localhost.localdomain [127.0.0.1]) by hive.cec.wustl.edu (8.12.11/8.12.11) with ESMTP id j0LGMLXW005579; Fri, 21 Jan 2005 10:22:21 -0600 Received: from localhost (adam@localhost) by hive.cec.wustl.edu (8.12.11/8.12.11/Submit) with ESMTP id j0LGMLqo005576; Fri, 21 Jan 2005 10:22:21 -0600 X-Authentication-Warning: hive.cec.wustl.edu: adam owned process doing -bs Date: Fri, 21 Jan 2005 10:22:21 -0600 (CST) Cc: llg-members@yahoogroups.com In-Reply-To: <20050114195516.GW22838@chain.digitalkingdom.org> Message-ID: References: <20050114195516.GW22838@chain.digitalkingdom.org> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII; format=flowed X-archive-position: 9299 X-ecartis-version: Ecartis v1.0.0 Sender: lojban-list-bounce@lojban.org Errors-to: lojban-list-bounce@lojban.org X-original-sender: adam@pubcrawler.org X-list: lojban-list To: lojban@yahoogroups.com X-eGroups-Remote-IP: 64.81.49.134 X-eGroups-From: "Adam D. Lopresto" From: "Adam D. Lopresto" Reply-To: adam@pubcrawler.org Subject: [lojban] Re: Opinions, please: SA by structure X-Yahoo-Group-Post: member; u=116389790 X-Yahoo-Profile: lojban_out X-Yahoo-Message-Num: 23680 On the whole, I really, really like the idea. But I think a lot of things need to be spelled out a bit more clearly. Questions I've got (there may be others later): 1) Exactly what structures do we back into? I guess that's the heart of the problem, and I know some discussion has gone on about it, but I think that would be the hardest part to learn (as far as "no, you can't use {sa li'u}, but you can use {sa lu}" (can you? Further thought seems to say "Yes, but it goes back to the last sumti in general)). 2) What happens if you use something that you can't (like {sa li'u})? Is it simply a grammatical error, does it back out the entire discourse...? 3) What happens if you try to back out a construct that hasn't actually occurred? {.i casnu sa mi}, for instance. 4) As a specific question, because my terminology isn't all that great, is a sumtcita counted as part of a term? That is, does {mi tavla fo la .lojban. sa la .gliban.} keep the {fo} or not? (I'd be inclined to say not.) Is {mi tavla la .lojban. sa fo la .lojban.} legal? 5) What happens with nested constructs? Does {mi kakne lo nu mi limna le xamsi sa le lalxu} replace the {xamsi}, or the {lo nu li'o}? Would a {sa nelci} replace from {kakne} or {limna} (I think we've established it's not {xamsi}.) What about {le bruna be la .djan. sa mi}? 6) In general, using a structural approach instead of a strictly word-form approach worries me in the presence of grammatical errors, and correcting errors is what {sa} and friends are all about. Specifically, I wonder whether you could confuse the parser enough that you couldn't get it to replace what you want. {mi nelci le .djan. sa la .djan.} But *{le .djan.} isn't grammatical, so will we be able to Do the Right Thing? And what, exactly, is the right thing to do there? (Do we back out to the last *real* sumti, {mi}, or do we understand the abortive attempt at a sumti?) I guess the last is my biggest concern. Everything else comes down to making the right choices, but shouldn't be a fundamental problem. I just worry when the way to fix grammatical errors relies on the grammar having worked correctly up to that point. Not that I'm against it, but I'd like to hear that it's being considered and that it's not really a problem because makau. On Fri, 14 Jan 2005, Robin Lee Powell wrote: > Currently, SA works by selma'o. No-one seems to like this very > much. A proposal has been put before the BPFK to have it work by > structure instead of word. So, a SA followed by a term (read > "sumti", more or less) replaces the previous term. A SA followed by > a bridi tail (a brivla plus its sumti) replaces the previous one. A > SA followed by ".i" replaces back to the beginning of the previous > sentence (or the beginning of text), and so on. > > Random example: > > mi klama zy sa lo zarci > > is read as: > > mi klama lo zarci > > whereas before it would have been an error. On the other hand, many > SA cases that worked before (such as using it with li'u to continue > a quote) no longer function. > > We've only had a few people on the BPFK express a strong opinion one > way or the other (all of them have been positive so far), so I'd > like to hear from the community at large. > > Does this make sense to you? > > Does it seem like it would be easier to use? > > Does it seem like it would be easier to learn? > > Any other comments? > > Thanks. > > -Robin > > -- Adam Lopresto http://cec.wustl.edu/~adam/ Trust the computer industry to shorten "Year 2000" to Y2K. It was this kind of thinking that caused the problem in the first place.