[lojban-beginners] Re: UI + UI

[Jorge Llambías <jjllambias@gmail.com>]

On Thu, Apr 30, 2009 at 12:11 PM, tijlan <jbotijlan@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> CLL 13:8
>>
> Thus, the complete internal grammar of UI is as follows, with each
> listed part optionally present or absent without affecting
> grammaticality, though it obviously would affect meaning.
>
>    attitudinal ``nai'' intensity-word ``nai'' modifier ``nai''
> intensity-word ``nai'' (possibly repeated)
> <

In the notation used by CLL for the formal EBNF, that would be:

 ((UI1 | UI2 | UI3) & NAI & CAI & NAI & (UI4 | UI5) & NAI & CAI & NAI) ...

But CLL is wrong about one thing: "with each listed part optionally
present or absent without affecting grammaticality" is not correct.
You can't have NAI by itself, NAI needs something (other than another
NAI) in front of it. "nai nai" for example is ungrammatical. (I think
NAI should be merged with CAI, but that's another story.)

The actual "internal grammar" intended would have to be something like:

 ((UI1 | UI2 | UI3) [NAI] & CAI [NAI] & (UI4 | UI5) [NAI] & CAI [NAI]) ...

but as you noted it would still have some ambiguities. In the official
grammar there is no internal grouping at all, other than for the NAIs.

mu'o mi'e xorxes