From lojban+bncCK30vq5WENC4j_MEGgTlECv1@googlegroups.com Sun Sep 04 13:15:22 2011 Received: from mail-pz0-f56.google.com ([209.85.210.56]) by chain.digitalkingdom.org with esmtp (Exim 4.72) (envelope-from ) id 1R0J67-0006Z8-UE; Sun, 04 Sep 2011 13:15:22 -0700 Received: by pzk33 with SMTP id 33sf10477803pzk.1 for ; Sun, 04 Sep 2011 13:15:13 -0700 (PDT) DKIM-Signature: v=1; a=rsa-sha256; c=relaxed/relaxed; d=googlegroups.com; s=beta; h=x-beenthere:received-spf:date:from:to:subject:message-id:references :mime-version:in-reply-to:user-agent: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-disposition :content-transfer-encoding; bh=G56lYL8U54B+Xz9eLOj8D5bW3/mNY8xNL3awmsbqcFo=; b=nMcMk/JoQKTxV++LT65G+5a1hY/GwXrQMm4tD8qQ+rBFyndUo/kPo1ULV/CTEBG+gZ 6oYvkUz57UZaPESQZ9we/hvMBrUok/1I6HD173qVYg3vvQXPYTsOWz2SZPq3VHIbY9iH rPVcg0TH42T7EWKsOkEoyVFLLDkvAbIBiRZpw= Received: by 10.68.17.161 with SMTP id p1mr1161967pbd.47.1315167312221; Sun, 04 Sep 2011 13:15:12 -0700 (PDT) X-BeenThere: lojban@googlegroups.com Received: by 10.68.38.201 with SMTP id i9ls18932245pbk.3.gmail; Sun, 04 Sep 2011 13:15:11 -0700 (PDT) Received: by 10.68.11.4 with SMTP id m4mr2509937pbb.31.1315167311023; Sun, 04 Sep 2011 13:15:11 -0700 (PDT) Received: by 10.68.11.4 with SMTP id m4mr2509936pbb.31.1315167311011; Sun, 04 Sep 2011 13:15:11 -0700 (PDT) Received: from chain.digitalkingdom.org (digitalkingdom.org. [173.13.139.234]) by gmr-mx.google.com with ESMTPS id j4si7708808pbi.2.2011.09.04.13.15.10 (version=TLSv1/SSLv3 cipher=OTHER); Sun, 04 Sep 2011 13:15:10 -0700 (PDT) Received-SPF: pass (google.com: best guess record for domain of rlpowell@digitalkingdom.org designates 173.13.139.234 as permitted sender) client-ip=173.13.139.234; Received: from rlpowell by chain.digitalkingdom.org with local (Exim 4.72) (envelope-from ) id 1R0J5x-0006Yx-89 for lojban@googlegroups.com; Sun, 04 Sep 2011 13:15:09 -0700 Date: Sun, 4 Sep 2011 13:15:09 -0700 From: Robin Lee Powell To: lojban@googlegroups.com Subject: Re: [lojban] Re: Regular Language Message-ID: <20110904201509.GQ9995@digitalkingdom.org> References: <20110903200414.GM9995@digitalkingdom.org> <8c84fa70-db6b-43a0-b307-3a1dd768c5af@c29g2000yqd.googlegroups.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 In-Reply-To: <8c84fa70-db6b-43a0-b307-3a1dd768c5af@c29g2000yqd.googlegroups.com> User-Agent: Mutt/1.5.21 (2010-09-15) X-Original-Sender: rlpowell@digitalkingdom.org X-Original-Authentication-Results: gmr-mx.google.com; spf=pass (google.com: best guess record for domain of rlpowell@digitalkingdom.org designates 173.13.139.234 as permitted sender) smtp.mail=rlpowell@digitalkingdom.org 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=ISO-8859-1 Content-Disposition: inline Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable On Sun, Sep 04, 2011 at 12:51:16PM -0700, ianek wrote: >=20 >=20 > On Sep 3, 10:04=A0pm, Robin Lee Powell > wrote: > > > > Wait, what? =A0No. =A0No human language is context free, they are > > all context sensitive in the chomsky hieararchy, if not actually > > unrestricted. > > =A0Seehttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Context-free_grammar#Linguistic_appl= icat... > > for some citations on that issue. >=20 > 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. OK, umm, I think we're all talking about something very different. Lojban parsing *includes part of speech information*. When I say that "Lojban is PEG parseable", I mean that I can parse a sentence and give you complete information about the role of each word in the sentence, unambigiously. You can even do that with a CFG on subsets of Lojban. This is *obviously* not the case with English; "time flies like an arrow" cannot *remotely* be parsed down to the part-of-speech level with anything short of a CSG that has access to the entire conversation, and maybe not even then. If what you and Graham are talking about is "I can create a CFG that will generate that English sentence structure", then sure, I can accept that English is generatively a CFG in that sense. It's just that I don't care, at all. :D I'm interested meaningful parsing; formal generative grammar work has never been interesting or relevant to me, even when I was taking it in school. So, if I hijacked the conversation, as I now think I probably did, than I apologize. Lojban probably is generatively a CFG, but since the resulting parses would be completely ambiguous in the presence of any terminator elision, I don't think that's something anyone has actually tried or tested. If someone wants to demonstrate, I'd be vaguely curious. > 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). >=20 > 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. I don't have any reason to believe that limiting the depth would change the problem; you're welcome to attempt to produce a non-ambiguous CFG with that limitation, though. -Robin --=20 http://singinst.org/ : Our last, best hope for a fantastic future. Lojban (http://www.lojban.org/): The language in which "this parrot is dead" is "ti poi spitaki cu morsi", but "this sentence is false" is "na nei". My personal page: http://www.digitalkingdom.org/rlp/ --=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.