[lojban] Re: Error in bnf.300

[Robin Lee Powell <lojban-out@lojban.org>]

On Sun, Mar 21, 2004 at 05:30:01PM -0800, Robin Lee Powell wrote:
> On Sun, Mar 21, 2004 at 07:52:40PM -0500, Bob LeChevalier wrote:
> > At 11:54 AM 3/21/04 -0800, Robin Lee Powell wrote:
> > >But the "I jek" has already been eaten, so the appropriate parte of
> > >paragraph can't match.  Oops, nowhere to go.  Oh well.
> > >
> > >(I know this occurs because I just watched my PEG parser do it
> > >several times until I changed the ordering; it's fixed now, and is
> > >the only Lojban parser I'm aware of that can parse "mi broda .i je
> > >bo no da zo'u broda").
> > 
> > It prescriptively shouldn't be able to.  Under TECHFIX 45, the
> > ability to put an unmarked prenex after an IJEK was specifically and
> > intentionally removed.  
> 
> <blink>
> 
> Ummm, *OK*.  It's an example from the Reference Grammar.
> 
>     roda zo'u mi prami da .ije naku zo'u do prami da
> 
> Chapter 16, example 10.5.
> 
> I haven't easily been able to find Techfix 45.  Can you point me to
> it?

Nevermind, I found it:


    CHANGE 45

    CURRENT LANGUAGE:

    Grammatically, I and ijek are treated identically, although in the
    semantics, I constitutes a stronger boundary. Prenexes can be
    attached only to sentences or to TUhE...TUhU groups, although
    logically a prenex can persist across several sentences connected by
    ijeks.

    PROPOSED CHANGE:

    Treat I as a higher-priority break than ijek (which is higher than
    I+BO or ijek+BO; no distinction is made between I+BO and ijek+BO).
    Shift all the sentence fragments (the forms of utterance_20 which
    are not sentence_40) to a higher level; they can only be connected
    by I, not by any lower-level form. Attach prenexes to the new level
    "statement_11"; statements contain ijeks and I+BOs, but not bare Is.

    RATIONALE:

    1) It has always been a rule that I and ijek have different semantic
    implications: I is a pure separator, whereas ijek connects as well
    as separating.  In particular, logical variables persist across ijek
    boundaries always, but (by default) not across I boundaries.  This
    change makes the grammar reflect the semantics.

*That*, by the by, is incredibly useful, and solves a number of
arguments I've had.

    2) Logically connecting sentence fragments never did make very much
    sense, but was allowed because of the lack of distinction between I
    and ijek.

In which case, it's just the Reference Grammar and the official parser's
lexer that are broken.  Which, I suppose, is better.

-Robin

-- 
Me: http://www.digitalkingdom.org/~rlpowell/  ***   I'm a *male* Robin.
"Constant neocortex override is the only thing that stops us all
from running out and eating all the cookies."  -- Eliezer Yudkowsky
http://www.lojban.org/             ***              .i cimo'o prali .ui