Re: [lojban] Re: Official parser problem?

[John Cowan <cowan@ccil.org>]

Robin Lee Powell scripsit:

> John is saying one of two things:
>
> 1.  You are wrong in your reading of the grammar.  That sentence
> definately fails because [explanation].

That's the idea.  A parser that gets this wrong is wrong, as the
language is currently specified.

> 2.  You are wrong in your reading of the grammar.  That sentence
> definately fails because [explanation].  This is a good thing.

I hadn't gotten that far.  I agree that it's damned unintuitive --
people internalize the grammar of "si" based on words, not tokens.
I don't know if you were there when I kept trying to quote something with
zo, and kept saying zoi -- this is a disaster in the current language.

"zoi si" doesn't work: you need to complete the zoi-quote and then
use "si si si si" to remove its four tokens (zoi_627, any_word_698,
anything_699, any_word_698).  Anything less than four "si"s and your
sentence is incurably ungrammatical; of course, it does not matter how
many words appear to be inside the quote.

I ended up saying "zoi si. sy .si si si si si" just to scrub a single
"zoi".  Do that more than once, and you turn into Foghorn Leghorn.

> It may be that John was just describing the current reality, and not
> assigning a value judgement at all, in which case I hope he will accept
> my apology for freaking out.

No problem.

The current situation is at least consistent even if stupid.  I'd be
open to other ideas that would be less so.

-- 
With techies, I've generally found              John Cowan
If your arguments lose the first round          http://www.reutershealth.com
    Make it rhyme, make it scan                 http://www.ccil.org/~cowan
    Then you generally can                      jcowan@reutershealth.com
Make the same stupid point seem profound!           --Jonathan Robie