[Date Prev][Date Next][Thread Prev][Thread Next][Date Index][Thread Index]
Re: [bpfk] BPFK work
Jorge Llambías wrote:
On Sun, Oct 10, 2010 at 2:12 PM, Robert LeChevalier <lojbab@lojban.org> wrote:
Actually, it would have to be fa'o lo zarci to be sure to end any prior text
before starting the new one.
This is the first time I hear about that. I'm pretty sure that the
standard line until now was that anything after fa'o was to be
ignored.
It is ignored. It is not part of the same text.
It may be part of a different text, though. The parser doesn't care
about any texts other than the one it is parsing.
But then for most practical purposes, .i or
ni'o are good enough.
But they are not. The two texts ".i mi gleki" and ".i go'i ra'o"
cannot be concatenated into one text without loss of meaning. The
single text ".i mi gleki .i go'i ra'o" does not have the same meaning
as the exchange of texts ".i mi gleki", ".i go'i ra'o".
That is because the word ra'o has metalinguistic effect that overrides
the textual concatenation.
"Back in the day" (makes me feel elderly to use that
phrase), we thought that each exchange in formal Lojban conversation would
generally involve starting with .i or ni'o (recognizing that informally it
would usually be left out).
The use of initial .i/ni'o makes little difference to this issue.
It does when the people conversing are using sentence fragments.
If I ask "ma klama"
and you answer "mi", then we need at least a convention/protocol to know
whether that means the unbroken text "ma klama mi" or "ma klama [.i] mi
[go'i]". If the default is endless unbroken text (until an explicit
fa'o, .i, or ni'o), then in most actual Lojban usage, the sumti that
occur before a selbri would be understood as appending onto the end of
the last bridi spoken by the prior speaker.
We probably don't want that because in actual usage, people have NOT
typically started their conversation turns with .i or ni'o. The
solution has to be metalinguistic; generally an implicit default
protocol with explicit ways to override that default, which is why I
suggested using either SEI or COI constructs.
lojbab
--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "BPFK" group.
To post to this group, send email to bpfk-list@googlegroups.com.
To unsubscribe from this group, send email to bpfk-list+unsubscribe@googlegroups.com.
For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/bpfk-list?hl=en.