[lojban] Re: Opinions, please: SA by structure

["Adam D. Lopresto" <lojban-out@lojban.org>]

On the whole, I really, really like the idea.  But I think a lot of things
need to be spelled out a bit more clearly.  Questions I've got (there may be
others later):

1) Exactly what structures do we back into?  I guess that's the heart of the
problem, and I know some discussion has gone on about it, but I think that
would be the hardest part to learn (as far as "no, you can't use {sa li'u},
but you can use {sa lu}" (can you? Further thought seems to say "Yes, but it
goes back to the last sumti in general)).

2) What happens if you use something that you can't (like {sa li'u})?  Is it
simply a grammatical error, does it back out the entire discourse...?

3) What happens if you try to back out a construct that hasn't actually
occurred?  {.i casnu sa mi}, for instance.

4) As a specific question, because my terminology isn't all that great, is a
sumtcita counted as part of a term?  That is, does {mi tavla fo la .lojban. sa
la .gliban.} keep the {fo} or not?  (I'd be inclined to say not.)  Is {mi
tavla la .lojban. sa fo la .lojban.} legal?

5) What happens with nested constructs?  Does {mi kakne lo nu mi limna le
xamsi sa le lalxu} replace the {xamsi}, or the {lo nu li'o}?  Would a {sa
nelci} replace from {kakne} or {limna} (I think we've established it's not
{xamsi}.)  What about {le bruna be la .djan. sa mi}?

6) In general, using a structural approach instead of a strictly word-form
approach worries me in the presence of grammatical errors, and correcting
errors is what {sa} and friends are all about.  Specifically, I wonder whether
you could confuse the parser enough that you couldn't get it to replace what
you want.  {mi nelci le .djan. sa la .djan.}  But *{le .djan.} isn't
grammatical, so will we be able to Do the Right Thing?  And what, exactly, is
the right thing to do there?  (Do we back out to the last *real* sumti, {mi},
or do we understand the abortive attempt at a sumti?)

I guess the last is my biggest concern.  Everything else comes down to making
the right choices, but shouldn't be a fundamental problem.  I just worry when
the way to fix grammatical errors relies on the grammar having worked
correctly up to that point.  Not that I'm against it, but I'd like to hear
that it's being considered and that it's not really a problem because makau.

On Fri, 14 Jan 2005, Robin Lee Powell wrote:

> Currently, SA works by selma'o.  No-one seems to like this very
> much.  A proposal has been put before the BPFK to have it work by
> structure instead of word.  So, a SA followed by a term (read
> "sumti", more or less) replaces the previous term.  A SA followed by
> a bridi tail (a brivla plus its sumti) replaces the previous one.  A
> SA followed by ".i" replaces back to the beginning of the previous
> sentence (or the beginning of text), and so on.
>
> Random example:
>
>    mi klama zy sa lo zarci
>
> is read as:
>
>    mi klama lo zarci
>
> whereas before it would have been an error.  On the other hand, many
> SA cases that worked before (such as using it with li'u to continue
> a quote) no longer function.
>
> We've only had a few people on the BPFK express a strong opinion one
> way or the other (all of them have been positive so far), so I'd
> like to hear from the community at large.
>
> Does this make sense to you?
>
> Does it seem like it would be easier to use?
>
> Does it seem like it would be easier to learn?
>
> Any other comments?
>
> Thanks.
>
> -Robin

--
Adam Lopresto
http://cec.wustl.edu/~adam/

Trust the computer industry to shorten "Year 2000" to Y2K.  It
was this kind of thinking that caused the problem in the first
place.