[lojban-beginners] Re: attempt at translation

[Michael Turniansky <mturniansky@gmail.com>]

On Wed, Sep 23, 2009 at 9:17 AM, Pierre Abbat <phma@phma.optus.nu> wrote:
> On Wednesday 23 September 2009 08:52:20 Michael Turniansky wrote:
>> On Thu, Sep 17, 2009 at 10:44 PM, Pierre Abbat <phma@phma.optus.nu> wrote:
>> > On Thursday 17 September 2009 14:35:55 Ryan Leach wrote:
>> > > lu mi pu tirna da'e ra'i da'e goi mi pa'upatfu .ije mi pa'upatfu go'e
>> > > .ije do'i rapli nu so'i pano nanca .i
>> >
>> > I was stumped by the first sentence, but it parses. It means "ÂI heard it
>> > (which is something I'll say later) from it (which is something I'll say
>> > later) which is IÂ is a father with a component".
>>
>> Â Actually, it doesn't parse. Â"mi pu tirna da'e ra'i da'e goi mi
>> pa'u" is fine, but "patfu" is an illegal Âsecond selbri in the main
>> sentence. Â"tirna" is the selbri.
>
> Is this a bug in jbovlaste? Jbovlaste parses it as if there were a "li'u"
> before "pa'u".
>


  Ah, that's why it parsed for you and not for me... since his
original translation had the the closing "li'u" after the second
paragraph, I naturally took out the "lu" when parsing this, since it
was intended to be a sentence within a quote.  So in answer to your
question, yeah, I'd say it's a bug.  More specifically, it's an
attempt to by jbofi'e to avoid unparseability, by backtracking, and
assuming that a li'u must have been elided.  Is that allowable in the
grammar?  Since normally it's understood (at least by me) that li'u
can't be elided, except perhaps when a speaker finishes talking, or at
the end of an entire text, I'd say no, but I could be wrong.  I'm not
a maven about the parse tree.  It seems to be a philosophical matter.
Do we interpret "lu mi klama lo zdani vau se cusku mi"  as unparsable,
or simply assume that a li'u needs to be added there?  Certainly, if
there a "li'u" at the very end of the whole thing, (like in Ryan's
example), it WOULD be imparseable.


  BTW, Ryan ".i" and ni'o is used in between sentences, not at the end
of them.  (While not *wrong*, per se, it does mean that another
sentence follows.  It usually starts a sentence, but can be elided by
convention at the beginning of text by a new speaker.)

                 --gejyspa