Message-ID: <44AAEF44.4080707@hypermetrics.com>
Date: Tue, 04 Jul 2006 17:44:20 -0500
From: Hal Fulton <hal9000@hypermetrics.com>
User-Agent: Mozilla Thunderbird 1.0RC1 (X11/20041209)
MIME-Version: 1.0
To: lojban-beginners@lojban.org
Subject: [lojban-beginners] Re: RK-like diagramming: Anyone interested?
References: <44AAC810.2070300@hypermetrics.com>	 <e202d93c0607041427v23551be7me5fea344bbbb2e88@mail.gmail.com>	 <44AADE4C.3080601@hypermetrics.com>	 <e202d93c0607041449q3f5cd640rc8f8637547e035ae@mail.gmail.com>	 <44AAE516.0@hypermetrics.com> <e202d93c0607041522h65b263d0udf97e8494eb7a9b7@mail.gmail.com>
In-Reply-To: <e202d93c0607041522h65b263d0udf97e8494eb7a9b7@mail.gmail.com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
Sender: lojban-beginners-bounce@lojban.org
Errors-to: lojban-beginners-bounce@lojban.org
Precedence: bulk
Reply-to: lojban-beginners@lojban.org
Content-Length: 1603

Jonathan Gibbons wrote:
> What I am suggesting, on the other hand, is that it
> probably would be appropriate to have the majority of the diagram be
> the parse tree; given that the rules for semantic/syntactic groupings
> are already well-defined. And I wasn't suggesting generating them
> automatically - there are few better ways to understand the operation
> of a formal structure, like parsing Lojban, than by doing a manual
> trace... 

I guess where I'm coming from is: I've never seen a parse tree
that looked to me like the skeleton of the kind of diagram I
have in mind. They just look different to me.

 > I'm more saying that it's not like doing a sentence diagram
> for English, which is imposing an order onto something that does not
> neccesarily have that order, but rather is expressing an order that is
> already fully there in a more instructive way.

Well, it depends on what you mean by order. English isn't machine
parsable, but I do believe that a Lojban sentence diagram and one
for English would serve very much the same purpose.

I think at this point we understand each other, but just happen to
disagree. ;) I'm not arguing with you, of course. In a way it's
rather nonsensical to argue about "how to draw a picture." We each
see it differently because we think differently.

I've seen at least two other ways to represent Lojban visually, and
they all have their merits. I encourage you to come up with a scheme
of your own if you are interested. But any scheme I develop will not
start its life as a decorated parse tree. Not unless I'm still
misunderstanding you.


Hal