From lojban+bncCMLaiI6rCBC0rY_zBBoEe3DSNg@googlegroups.com Sun Sep 04 12:51:28 2011 Received: from mail-gy0-f189.google.com ([209.85.160.189]) by chain.digitalkingdom.org with esmtp (Exim 4.72) (envelope-from ) id 1R0Iiy-0005QQ-Vv; Sun, 04 Sep 2011 12:51:28 -0700 Received: by gyc15 with SMTP id 15sf4651705gyc.16 for ; Sun, 04 Sep 2011 12:51:18 -0700 (PDT) DKIM-Signature: v=1; a=rsa-sha256; c=relaxed/relaxed; d=googlegroups.com; s=beta; h=x-beenthere:mime-version:date:in-reply-to:references:user-agent :x-http-useragent:message-id:subject:from:to:x-original-sender :x-original-authentication-results:reply-to:precedence:mailing-list :list-id:x-google-group-id:list-post:list-help:list-archive:sender :list-subscribe:list-unsubscribe:content-type :content-transfer-encoding; bh=6d13WtYxyLHzS0N5Jyfmsz7QFNzkN0WUe/bRfjgOUBI=; b=x/VYpxtXaBLQxa83mK8w1/Ua5MXhjsw9pBKlRvU7SS56SsraFZP18GzAj+3HNbTFMq pW0EjOv0rO8Qq2yyl7b4PDsqMDyPn+cGYZojnDV86kCAc3DvZ6gdjHwd8lkxrLS0oktz /phhv1yPBvlbaano1pL/49QfRwTIqjEIylr/s= Received: by 10.101.189.6 with SMTP id r6mr378361anp.15.1315165877047; Sun, 04 Sep 2011 12:51:17 -0700 (PDT) X-BeenThere: lojban@googlegroups.com Received: by 10.101.204.19 with SMTP id g19ls6834373anq.5.gmail; Sun, 04 Sep 2011 12:51:16 -0700 (PDT) MIME-Version: 1.0 Received: by 10.100.20.13 with SMTP id 13mr389357ant.19.1315165876119; Sun, 04 Sep 2011 12:51:16 -0700 (PDT) Received: by c29g2000yqd.googlegroups.com with HTTP; Sun, 4 Sep 2011 12:51:16 -0700 (PDT) Date: Sun, 4 Sep 2011 12:51:16 -0700 (PDT) In-Reply-To: <20110903200414.GM9995@digitalkingdom.org> References: <20110903200414.GM9995@digitalkingdom.org> User-Agent: G2/1.0 X-HTTP-UserAgent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux i686) AppleWebKit/534.30 (KHTML, like Gecko) Ubuntu/11.04 Chromium/12.0.742.112 Chrome/12.0.742.112 Safari/534.30,gzip(gfe) Message-ID: <8c84fa70-db6b-43a0-b307-3a1dd768c5af@c29g2000yqd.googlegroups.com> Subject: [lojban] Re: Regular Language From: ianek To: lojban X-Original-Sender: janek37@gmail.com X-Original-Authentication-Results: ls.google.com; spf=pass (google.com: domain of janek37@gmail.com designates internal as permitted sender) smtp.mail=janek37@gmail.com; dkim=pass header.i=@gmail.com Reply-To: lojban@googlegroups.com Precedence: list Mailing-list: list lojban@googlegroups.com; contact lojban+owners@googlegroups.com List-ID: X-Google-Group-Id: 1004133512417 List-Post: , List-Help: , List-Archive: Sender: lojban@googlegroups.com List-Subscribe: , List-Unsubscribe: , Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8 Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable On Sep 3, 10:04=C2=A0pm, Robin Lee Powell wrote: > Wait, what? =C2=A0No. =C2=A0No human language is context free, they are a= ll > context sensitive in the chomsky hieararchy, if not actually > unrestricted. =C2=A0Seehttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Context-free_grammar#= Linguistic_applicat... > for some citations on that issue. The article you cite says: "Gerald Gazdar and Geoffrey Pullum have argued that despite a few non-context-free constructions in natural language (such as cross-serial dependencies in Swiss German[3] and reduplication in Bambara[5]), the vast majority of forms in natural language are indeed context-free." Also it says that Chomsky's arguments were disproved. Now the only argument for non-CFG-ness of natural languages is 'cause Chomsky said so. But he's not omniscient. I personally believe that most natural languages are regular. Yes, regular. I've not seen non-regular constructs for, say, English, which don't break for nesting greater than 2. Consider this sequence: 1. The rat likes cheese. 2. The rat the cat chased likes cheese. 3. The rat the cat the dog bit chased likes cheese. 4. The rat the cat the dog the frog scared bit chased likes cheese. Sentences 3 and 4 are incomprehensible heard and hard to comprehence read. And all constructs I know allowing comprehensible sentences of arbitrary length are indeed regular. On Sep 4, 3:23 am, Stela Selckiku wrote: > On Sat, Sep 3, 2011 at 8:32 PM, Graham Morehead > > wrote: > > > No human can understand a sentence of infinite length anyway. > > I strongly disagree! Run on sentences can get somewhat confusing in > natlangs, but they're perfectly comprehensible in Lojban. There's a Polish novel "The Gates of Paradise", http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Gates_of_Paradise > The novel consists of 40,000 words written in two sentences with nearly n= o punctuation, making it an exercise in constrained writing. The second sen= tence contains only five words (I szli ca=C5=82=C4=85 noc, "And they marche= d all night"). I've seen it and it's entirely comprehensible, not confusing at all. On Sep 4, 8:39 am, Robin Lee Powell wrote: > That's fascinating, because people seem to have no problem > internalizing Lojban's elidable terminators, which as I'd said don't > seem to be CFG-able (at least in a sane number of rules). But consider that they're highly confusing at times, eg. when it comes to "kei kei kei". Personally I think that's because people are accustomed to use a constant memory (so there's no stack) for language processing, and let me remind you what class of languages is parsable in constant memory. mu'o mi'e ianek --=20 You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "= lojban" group. To post to this group, send email to lojban@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to lojban+unsubscribe@googlegrou= ps.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/lojban= ?hl=3Den.