Re: [lojban-beginners] Allowing empty {soi}

[Luke Bergen <lukeabergen@gmail.com>]

ahh, yeah I can see how that would work.

As it is now, I don't like how {soi} works when only one sumti is specified e.g. "mi prami do soi mi" = "mi prami do .ijebo do prami mi".

I think it's in need of a rethinking or a scrapping.  In the re-thinking I think it should be possible for it to take 0 to n arguments (where 3 or more arguments means that all 3 arguments can be switched around in any order and the bridi still holds true).  e.g. {mi nelci do .e la .bab. .e la .pam. soi mi do by py} = .... well I'm not going to say that all out in lojban, but basically me, you, pam, and bob all like each other.  And as you say, when 0 or 1 arguments are given the missing arguments are {zo'e}.

The whole "if only one argument is given then take the last sumti to be the second argument" thing kind of creeps me out (though I can't say why).

On Tue, Jul 12, 2011 at 1:04 PM, Miles Forster <m3o@plasmatix.com> wrote:

Am 12.07.2011 18:57, schrieb Luke Bergen:

ok, so my question is, what are the specific rules that make it such that in "soi broda fa ko'a ko'e ko'i" "ko'e" and "ko'i" are the ones that are reciprocal and not "ko'a" and one of the other two?

No rules, just context. The other possibilities there just didn't make sense. The point of empty {soi} is to save time in obvious situations, but when confusion is feared, you can still fill one or both sumti in as usual.

As in, could you describe how you think {soi} should work in terms like "when soi is encountered, take the first sumti and the last sumti of the current level bridi and make them reciprocal" or some such?

Again, there is no rule here. If context doesn't make it clear, don't use empty {soi}.

Something human readable but which seems like it could be described to a parser.

This is easy I believe. {soi} *always* eats exactly two sumti. This won't change, and so
{soi ko'a se'u} == {soi ko'a zo'e se'u}
and
{soi se'u} == {soi zo'e zo'e se'u}
which means also that
{soi broda} == {soi zo'e zo'e se'u broda}
({soi} being a free modifier.)

--
/p4a ja ma%sam ni"dZwanja-\e ta %bja Z mu "karu/
/bja "dZi:wan i kwa "ZwEja ta Z mu "karu/

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Lojban Beginners" group.
To post to this group, send email to lojban-beginners@googlegroups.com.
To unsubscribe from this group, send email to lojban-beginners+unsubscribe@googlegroups.com.
For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/lojban-beginners?hl=en.

-- 
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Lojban Beginners" group.
To post to this group, send email to lojban-beginners@googlegroups.com.
To unsubscribe from this group, send email to lojban-beginners+unsubscribe@googlegroups.com.

For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/lojban-beginners?hl=en.