Re: [bpfk] BPFK work

[Jorge Llambías <jjllambias@gmail.com>]

On Tue, Oct 12, 2010 at 3:22 PM, Robert LeChevalier <lojbab@lojban.org> wrote:
>
>  If the
> language is defined to extend into multiple units called "text", the
> boundaries between "text"s need to be unambiguous, and only a parser that
> accurate reflects those boundaries is "correct".

The language is not the texts, the language (or the grammar rather) is
the generator of the texts. It can generate infinitely many different
texts. The idea that it can only generate one text just doesn't make
any sense. I don't even know what you mean by it.

> Right now, there are no formal rules governing multiple texts and their
> possible interactions.

And that's just as it should be. There are also no rules in Lojban
about how many bananas you can eat every day, or at what time you
should take a shower, so why should there be any rules about how many
texts you can produce, or when? It has nothing to do with the formal
grammar. All the formal grammar does is tell you how to generate a
correct Lojban text, not when to generate it, who you give it to,
under what circumstances, and so on.

> Perhaps there should be, but I am inclined to think
> we should wait till the BYFY finishes the simpler "single text" problem
> we've been stuck on for years before making the job harder.

Indeed. And we should avoid legislating on things that don't really
have anything to do with what a grammar is supposed to do.

> In such a case,
> discussing this problem at all right now is out of order.

It's not even a problem, as far as I can see.

> That being said, a new speaker may wish to explicitly append onto another
> speaker's text.

And who is going to stop them? Or a group of people may decide to play
a game where each takes turns to say one word at a time and together
they generate one valid Lojban text. You know that game, right? Who is
going to stop them from doing that? Whether the result is a valid
Lojban text or not won't depend on how it was generated.

A normal conversation is a different game: one person generates a
valid Lojban text, then a second person generates another valid Lojban
text, and so on. And the meanings of the texts must have a certain
coherence with each other for the conversation to be interesting. The
only relevance of the formal grammar in this "conversation game" is to
validate the text generated by each person. That's all.

mu'o mi'e xorxes

-- 
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.