[lojban-beginners] Re: nitcu le denpa lerfu fi ma

["Michael Turniansky" <mturniansky@gmail.com>]

On Dec 26, 2007 1:26 PM, Jorge Llambías <jjllambias@gmail.com> wrote:

On Dec 26, 2007 3:13 PM, Michael Turniansky <mturniansky@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>   The "fall-off" problem is presumably that AS SOON AS you hear(/see) that
> guard word/syllable, whatever, the quote is closed off, and the rest must be
> considered to be presumably valid lojban, and neither human nor computer
> parsers are expected to know it's an exception, since in a foreign quote
> there could be (as here) a pause before the word inside the quote.
> "mi djuno fi lo valsi po'u zoi jai .jai...*reicns jai"

But the exception would be to decide that you have hit the word before you
get to a pause. You can never, in a Lojban string of text or sound, be sure
that you have a word until you've reached a pause or space, because it
can always be part of a cmevla. Why would there be an exception here?

  No, no, you misunderstand me... there is no pause between "jai" and "reicnz", but there was BEFORE jai .... since lojban does not need a pause after the closing quote-word (or ANY word, except of course if it ends in a consonant (or any other spot the grammar requires it)) the pause before gyrations would be "heard" as "close quote-reicns" which would therefore be ungrammatical, since a cmevla couldn't appear in that position.  Remember.. The point of the la'o and zopi is to quote foreign things.  In those languages, the rules for pausing etc. might conceivably be different. The ONLY way for a parser (human or computer) to tell if it's over is to hear pause+guard word.  As soon as that condition is met, the quote is done, and real lojban starts once again. (similarly, in written text, spaces aren't necessary, and "." are necessary sometimes unless spaces are used.  Since the typographic conventions for the stuff inside the quotes can be different, the parser has to know by a space+word or period+word.  As soon as that's encountered, the quoting stops.)
 

The two words {jai.reicns} cannot be quoted with {jai ... jai}, but the
single cmevla {jaireicns} is not a problem for the distinct word {jai}.

mu'o mi'e xorxes

               --gejyspa