Re: [lojban] other parsable languages

[Robin Lee Powell <rlpowell@digitalkingdom.org>]

On Fri, Sep 30, 2005 at 02:26:04PM -0400, Matt Arnold wrote:
> I know that Lojban is hailed as "parsable" by a computer, but does
> this mean that it is merely parsed more easily? Or that no other
> language has a complete YACC grammar? 

No spoken language has anything even vaguely approximating a
complete YACC grammar.

This, unfortunately, includes Lojban; however, the reasons for that
are well-understood, and Lojban does, in fact, have various complete
computer-based parsers.

So far as I am aware, Lojban is the only spoken language on the
planet that does.

> Can someone offer a little more detail to someone who is not a
> specialist?

The issue is that spoken languages are ambiguous in ways
unresolvable without context.  "Time flies like an arrow" has three
possible verbs, and forming a parse tree is impossible without
knowing which one is the verb.

-Robin

-- 
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