[lojban] Re: Official parser and "lo ni'a zu crino"

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

On Fri, Apr 09, 2004 at 01:32:26PM -0700, Jorge Llamb?as wrote:
> 
> --- Robin Lee Powell <rlpowell@digitalkingdom.org> wrote:
> > On Fri, Apr 09, 2004 at 10:48:46AM -0700, Jorge Llamb?as wrote:
> > > --- jcowan@reutershealth.com wrote:
> > > > 
> > > > I will not support, however, any structural changes that *could*
> > > > be made as a result of going to infinite-lookahead grammar: no
> > > > A/JA merger, e.g. For one thing, human beings don't support
> > > > infinite lookahead.  But I am okay with accepting things like
> > > > "le broda joi le brodi", since that is not truly an ambiguity
> > > > but just the result of smarter resolution of elidable
> > > > terminators than Yacc allows.
> > > 
> > > Isn't that self-contradictory? Why is infinite-lookahead
> > > acceptable for JOI but not for JE? 
> > 
> > Because JA/A is formalized in the grammar; elidable terminators are
> > not.
> 
> Is JOI formalized in the grammar? 

Absolutely.  That's not relevant.

> If yes, how does {lo broda je lo brode} require infinite-lookahead but
> {lo broda joi lo brode} does not? I'm afraid I don't understand what
> the problem would be.

lo broda joi lo brode *does* require infinite lookahead.

The point that you seem to be missing is that "lo broda joi lo brode"
requires infinite lookahead only to insert the elidable terminators,
i.e. to read it as "lo broda ku joi lo brode ku".  The function of
elidable terminators has (until now) never been formalized.  It was
never part of the official grammar (grammar.300) because it is
(probably) no possible to make a CFG that encodes that sort of thing.

The difference between "lo broda joi lo brode" and "lo broda je lo
brode" is that the latter is an actual change to the language, as
defined by grammar.300, grammar.bnf, and the reference grammar.  The
former contradicts none of those documents (as far as I know; if I'm
wrong, show me where).  The former is a distinction that makes no
difference, the latter is not.

I'll grant you that neither change invalidates past usage (at least, the
JA change can be made to not do so), but one is obviously more extreme
than the other.

Last I checked, the LLG was still trying to maintain some form of
constancy to the language so that people could actually learn it.  I
still consider this worthwhile.  You obviously don't.  So we're kind of
stuck with agreeing to disagree, AFAICT.

-Robin

-- 
http://www.digitalkingdom.org/~rlpowell/  ***  I'm a *male* Robin.
"Many philosophical problems are caused by such things as the simple
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