[lojban-beginners] Re: For those into diagramming...

[Jorge Llambías <jjllambias@gmail.com>]

On 9/22/05, Hal Fulton <hal9000@hypermetrics.com> wrote:
> I've never used broda at all -- is something like {ko'a ko'e
> broda co brode ko'i ko'o} an actual complete sentence?

Yes, but a meaningless one. {broda} and {brode} are just
dummy predicates, if you replace them with something
meaningful you get a meaningful sentence.

Let's try a meaningful example:

  ti fo lo nixli cu ckule co cmalu lo canlu
  This for girls is a school small in space/volume.

{ti} fills the x1 of {ckule}
{lo nixli} fills the x4 of {ckule}
{lo canlu} fills the x2 of {cmalu}.

The sumti that appear in front of {ckule co cmalu} fill the
places of {ckule}, the sumti that appear after the selbri
{ckule co cmalu} fill the places of {cmalu}.

So in your diagram you would need to present two
separate argument lists for selbri with {co}.

> Perhaps I am wrong, but I thought that the division of selma'o was
> mostly 1) a convenience for the parser and the writing of the formal
> grammar;

Not so much a convenience as a necessity. Or, if you prefer,
the definition of a selma'o is the set of all words that have
identical syntax.

> 2) an aid in manually checking syntax at a glance; and 3)
> an aid in learning grammar.

Those are consequences, at least for those who care for
the formal grammar.


> But getting back to the diagramming: If a diagram doesn't (in some
> way) illuminate the sentence, it is useless as an analytical tool.
> So I would say that ideally it should help in comprehending not
> just syntax but also semantics. (That is why I draw a line from {ri}
> to the thing to which it refers -- that is not strictly a syntactic
> issue.)

Ok, I suppose different people have different preferences about
this. For my taste, a diagram should first and foremost show
the syntactic structure of the sentence, and then you could add
on top of it things like the arrow from {ri} to its antecedent.
For me, a diagram that presented things in the same selma'o
differently would be misleading, but obviously you should do
whatever works best for you.


> > How about doing something like this: Instead of lines use
> > filled-in coloured boxes.
>
> [snip description]
>
> I like that, and it is obviously a viable alternative to what I am
> doing. Someone already did something of that nature in a PDF I saw --
> was it you or someone else?

Someone else, but it was not Lojban sentences but some
programming language, if I recall correctly.

mu'o mi'e xorxes