From lojban-out@lojban.org Thu Jul 13 10:29:00 2006 Return-Path: X-Sender: lojban-out@lojban.org X-Apparently-To: lojban@yahoogroups.com Received: (qmail 9813 invoked from network); 13 Jul 2006 17:28:59 -0000 Received: from unknown (66.218.67.35) by m41.grp.scd.yahoo.com with QMQP; 13 Jul 2006 17:28:59 -0000 Received: from unknown (HELO chain.digitalkingdom.org) (64.81.49.134) by mta9.grp.scd.yahoo.com with SMTP; 13 Jul 2006 17:28:59 -0000 Received: from lojban-out by chain.digitalkingdom.org with local (Exim 4.62) (envelope-from ) id 1G14zY-0006IB-1G for lojban@yahoogroups.com; Thu, 13 Jul 2006 10:28:48 -0700 Received: from chain.digitalkingdom.org ([64.81.49.134]) by chain.digitalkingdom.org with esmtp (Exim 4.62) (envelope-from ) id 1G14yY-0006HQ-F7; Thu, 13 Jul 2006 10:27:47 -0700 Received: with ECARTIS (v1.0.0; list lojban-list); Thu, 13 Jul 2006 10:27:38 -0700 (PDT) Received: from nobody by chain.digitalkingdom.org with local (Exim 4.62) (envelope-from ) id 1G14y8-0006HH-EN for lojban-list-real@lojban.org; Thu, 13 Jul 2006 10:27:20 -0700 Received: from nf-out-0910.google.com ([64.233.182.188]) by chain.digitalkingdom.org with esmtp (Exim 4.62) (envelope-from ) id 1G14y7-0006H6-HI for lojban-list@lojban.org; Thu, 13 Jul 2006 10:27:20 -0700 Received: by nf-out-0910.google.com with SMTP id q29so262411nfc for ; Thu, 13 Jul 2006 10:27:17 -0700 (PDT) Received: by 10.49.75.2 with SMTP id c2mr1125245nfl; Thu, 13 Jul 2006 10:27:17 -0700 (PDT) Received: by 10.49.57.4 with HTTP; Thu, 13 Jul 2006 10:27:17 -0700 (PDT) Message-ID: <737b61f30607131027l1306b033qd32a1ecd2f51281d@mail.gmail.com> Date: Thu, 13 Jul 2006 12:27:17 -0500 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Disposition: inline X-Spam-Score: -2.4 (--) X-archive-position: 12179 X-ecartis-version: Ecartis v1.0.0 Errors-to: lojban-list-bounce@lojban.org X-original-sender: pdf23ds@gmail.com X-list: lojban-list X-Spam-Score: -2.4 (--) To: lojban@yahoogroups.com X-Originating-IP: 64.81.49.134 X-eGroups-Msg-Info: 1:0:0:0 X-eGroups-From: "Chris Capel" From: "Chris Capel" Reply-To: pdf23ds@gmail.com Subject: [lojban] Do jbopre use terminators? (was: Is Lojban a CFG?) X-Yahoo-Group-Post: member; u=116389790; y=OA4IYEJEVIjyRNC3xk69vlHmOZfql-612nUwUw9cY_DAHf_BIA X-Yahoo-Profile: lojban_out X-Yahoo-Message-Num: 26606 On 7/12/06, Robin Lee Powell wrote: > I find the general idea interesting; I'm going to have to ponder it > a bit. I think, though, that most people would rather the parser > reject a sentence like: > > le nu le gleki prenu klama cinri > > rather than turn it into the equivalent of: > > le nu le gleki ku prenu ku klama cinri > > when the user obviously intended: > > le nu le gleki prenu ku klama ku cinri > > This (the current behaviour) seems to me to reduce the chances for > confusion *substantially*. But then I haven't thought about it much > yet. That's an interesting example, because it really *is* obvious what the speaker intended. I wonder: Let's say Lojban came to be used by a sizable number of people for everyday communication. People would probably sometimes mistakenly leave out terminators like that, especially when the listener can easily fill them back in. Most times they would be understood, and the error might even go unnoticed. Because strictly unnecessary grammar tends to evolve out of a language, this tendency would probably increase over time. So would these required elidable terminators (is that the right term?) eventually come to be used only in contexts where the listener would have trouble semantically "fixing" the statement (probably still much of the time), and left out when the meaning is obvious (perhaps only occasionally)? If this happened, would speakers retain the ability to include them all easily, if needed? I think this is pretty much the way English works, except that when there really is ambiguity you don't have any handy terminators to use, lamentably, and have to resort to various forms of emphasis and phrase markers, or even rewording. This can really get in the way when I start wanting to write extremely long sentences (minus parenthetical remarks, which don't pose a problem for parsing (except for complexity) unless the sentence is spoken). Which is probably good for my writing style, for the most part. (When I'm trying to write really well I don't allow myself as many parentheses.) If English *did* have Lojban-style phrase terminators, how often would they be required? Less than Lojban, because English has more parts of speech, and less nesting? Or is this just an illusion based on my being a native speaker of English? Incidentally, computer translation programs often don't need to figure out phrase grouping if the target language has the same associational ambiguity (and among western European languages it seems like they usually do), because the ambiguity is resolved by the listener in the same way in both languages. Chris Capel -- "What is it like to be a bat? What is it like to bat a bee? What is it like to be a bee being batted? What is it like to be a batted bee?" -- The Mind's I (Hofstadter, Dennet) To unsubscribe from this list, send mail to lojban-list-request@lojban.org with the subject unsubscribe, or go to http://www.lojban.org/lsg2/, or if you're really stuck, send mail to secretary@lojban.org for help.