Grammar changes zo'u

[I.Alexander.bra0122@oasis.icl.co.uk]

I lost track of which of your messages were to the list, and which
only to the baseline review committee, so I've just replied
to the latter.
This is just a quick first pass through,  to get the easy
ones out the way, and mention some of the issues arising.

1.      YESBUT.  Looks superficially OK, although your description
in the "rationale" appears to have got confused between
high and low precedence.  Although it makes sense as it
stands, there may be other considerations which make it
obsolete - see later.

2-4.    YES.  They look useful, and no apparent complications.
I second Mark's comments on 4.

5.      SHRUG.  I can't get excited about this.  I don't really
understand the LALR(1) problem, although I haven't looked
deeply into it, and my parsing theory's very rusty.
(But I guess it's not surprising if LALR(1) imposes _some_
restrictions.)

6.      YES.  A borderline "yes" on the grounds of
compatibility with {ve'o}.  (What's this "separate cmavo
for the subscript"?)

7.      SHRUG.  Mark's objection has some merit.

8-12.   YES.

13.     NO.  If it ain't broke, don't fix it.

14-19.  YES.  Like Mark, I didn't understand 15 until I
checked with the grammar.  Re 17, I never :) understood
why these three were separated in the first place.

20-21.  ABSTAIN.  I need more time on these, and it may
depend on sorting out some problems in the grammar:-

BNF

(I haven't got round to checking most of these in the YACC yet.)

sumti-5<95>:
        I notice that in getting rid of multiple quantifiers
on an indefinite description, you've ended up with multiple
quantifiers on a sumti-6 :-)
(I now see that Veijo's already pointed this out.)

sumti-tail<111>:
        There's a missing ']' in "[sumti-6".  I take it these
        [nested-relative-clauses] refer to the sumti-6.

sumti-tail<113>:
        This relic of the previous grammar appears between
relative-clause<122> and selbri<130>.
(I now see that Veijo's already pointed this out.)

selbri-1<131>:
        It seems odd putting <selbri-1> after 'CO' - this means
you can have a tag after the {co}, as long as you start with
a {na}.  If you can think of a use for the tag here, use
<selbri>, otherwise move all the tag/NA stuff up into selbri<130>,
(which'll probably cost you another YACC rule).

Rewind

sumti<90>:
        My first thought was why didn't you make "KE sumti /KEhE/"
a sumti-6, analogously to what is now tanru-unit-2.  Then I
remembered two reasons - the ambiguity with the use of {ke}
in tanru grouping, and the desire to use "ek stag ke".  Pity,
it would have been a potential solution to a lot of grouping
problems (see e.g. sumti-6 below) -
the position of 'NU' and 'NAhE' in the old selbri
grammar was awkward, but could always have been circumvented
by using {ke ... ke'e}.  I suppose you can still do the same
sort of thing with sumti in an emergency using which ever
LUhI fits, but this isn't very attractive.

sumti-6<96>:
        I wrote a whole tirade on the "gek sumti gik sumti-4"
here, but eventually I checked the YACC, where it is
absent.  It did however help to draw my attention to the
grouping problem.
        You _do_ want some way of attaching relative
clauses unambiguously to a whole "gek ... gik"
or "sumti ek sumti" (which I don't
think the old grammar could do, except using the LUhI trick
mentioned above), and I think the only way to do
that is some kind of terminator or grouping mechanism.
        Similarly we _do_ need to say things like
"Three of the people who voted", or "Three of the men who
voted".  But you can either use some sort of inside quantifier
or use "ci lu'a ... lu'u", so we're covered.
        If you come back and say LUhI is the answer, then I'll
accept that.  My main concern is that we can say what
we want to say, and that we document what the various
constructions mean, so that we can figure out how to
say it.  Fine tuning of elidable terminators is a new
problem to me, so I'll rely on your obvious experience
in this area.
        I think this means my vote on 1 becomes a YES.