2010/10/12 Jorge Llambías
<jjllambias@gmail.com>
On Tue, Oct 12, 2010 at 9:37 PM, Jonathan Jones <
eyeonus@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> I have an easy fix for that specific example. I believe I've mentioned it
> before.
>
> Preface your speech with {.i}.
utterance, you are changing the language. (And the formal grammar will
still not be able to identify where one speaker ends and another
begins, so it still cannot generate a conversation from the input.)
So? Why does the grammar need to know who the speaker is? It doesn't know now, and it doesn't seem important to me in the slightest. What matters is that the separate jufra are unambiguously separate jufra. And I don't see making {.i} "obligatory" is changing the language - in my mind, it already is, but due to the intuitiveness and laziness of humans, we are able to omit it, knowing that the audience's mental parser will insert it where needed - something a machine can't now do.
On Sun, Oct 10, 2010 at 11:12 AM, Robert LeChevalier
<lojbab@lojban.org> wrote:
"Back in the day"..., we thought that each exchange in formal Lojban
conversation would generally involve starting with .i or ni'o....
lojbab
Apparently my opinion on the matter dates back some time, as well.
If all you are saying is that using ".i" makes for a certain kind of
exchanges to be mushable into one long text and the result is most
often still grammatical and (somewhat) similar to what was intended by
the speakers, then sure, that's true.
Okay. Enough about text. Screw the whole concept of text. I am talking about individual jufra. SENTENCES. Specifically, how to unambiguously determine, without resorting to "pragmatics", whether or not {lo zarci}, to use your oft-repeated example, is a part of the jufra {do klama ma}, or if it is a new jufra.
But that has nothing to do with
the formal grammar, it's just one style that you prefer, because you
happen to like conversations that can be mushed into a single text.
The style I proposed, starting every utterance with "ni'o mi'e <name
of speaker>" is even more precise if you want that kind of precision.
Yes. It is. And it will most likely be used on those occasions that warrant it, such as when the referent of {mi} is not obvious. Although I think that it should only be {ni'o mi'e ...} when the speaker is beginning a new subject.
> Then it becomes
>
> A: .i do klama ma
> B: .i lo zarci
>
> Amazingly, this rule tells you how to separate the single input ".i do klama
> ma .i lo zarci" into the two strings produced by A and B,
No, there is no way for the formal grammar to tell it came from two
different speakers, unless you also make it a rule that a speaker can
only produce one bridi at a time.
Why does it matter how many speakers were involved? It's obviously {do klama ma} and {lo zarci}, not {do klama ma lo zarci}, which is what is important, is it not?
> isn't based on any
> heuristics or voice recognition, and is already part of the formal grammar!
> Huzzah!
>
> Which is yet another reason why I frown on the practice of /not/ beginning
> one's speech with one of {.i}, {ni'o}, or {no'i}, and .lojbab. apparently is
> in agreement with me.
But why don't you also frown on the practice of not beginning with ".i
mi'e <name>". You are not consistent in your frowning.
mu'o mi'e xorxes
On Sun, Oct 10, 2010 at 2:24 PM, Jonathan Jones
<eyeonus@gmail.com> wrote:
No,
I don't do that, and considering that {mi} means "the speaker(s)", it's
always obvious that {mi} is referring to me when I'm speaking. Whether
or not others are also being referred to with {mi}, that's something I
leave up to context. If I wish to explicitly indicate that my use of
{mi} includes others besides myself, I probably would, in that case,
begin with {.i mi'e [the referents of mi]}, and refer to myself in the
third person when I am referring to only myself during that
conversation.