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[lojban-beginners] Re: interrelated vocab word length Re: Re: Hello list [introduction]

--On Monday, March 28, 2005 11:20 AM -0500 Matt Arnold <mattarn@123.net> wrote:

If you take all the spaces out of a Lojban text, does it change or lose
information? Can they be put back in by a computer? For that matter, what
if you change every consonant to 1 and every vowel to 0? Can the spaces
still be put back in? - epkat

lojban-beginners@chain.digitalkingdom.org wrote: 
A Lojban speech stream, with emphasis and a few required pauses, can
only be decoded in to words in one way.  No natural language, that I
am aware of, has this feature.  No homonyms, nor groups of words
that can be interpreted different ways.  A famous English example
being "ice cream" versus "I scream".

-Robin

[snip]

I believe as long as you indicate the stress somehow (lojban words are stressed on the penultimate (second to last) syllable) and the required pauses, you can remove the spaces and the information will not change. This makes it possible for lojban to be syntactically unambiguous as both a written and spoken language.

In some cases the inclusion of spaces is optional. Between cmavo they can be left out. I common example is <lenu> which consists of <le> and <nu>. So the operation of putting the spaces back in may not result in the same text; but the meaning would not change.

I don't believe replacing consonants and vowels with 1s and 0s would change this equivalence relation, as long as the stress and pauses are there.

I'm a lojban beginner, so accept the above information accordingly. :)

--
Bruce