[lojban] Re: Is Lojban a CFG? (was Re: [lojban-beginners] Re: Enumerating in Lojban)

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

On Wed, Jul 12, 2006 at 10:43:42PM -0400, Jonathan Gibbons wrote:
> >"on the semantic side of things" is inherently bad, to my mind.
> >What comes out of the parser should be the way a human would
> >process it if at all possible; in the cases we're talking about,
> >a human would say "na'i" or "ki'a"; I expect the parser to as
> >well.
> 
> Ah, but a CFG does not define a parser. It defines a language,
> that's all. 

Yes, that's one of the reasons I don't have much attachment to them.

> And all that it would be doing is taking a set of rules to
> determine unambiguously what /meaning/ is associated with this
> string. Requiring the CFG to be unambiguous on every string in the
> language - that is, to have exactly one derivation - tends to be
> quite unweildy when all you really want to do is eliminate
> semantic ambiguity - have exactly one meaning associated with
> every string in the language.

And yet Lojban has the former property in all its current parsers,
and people are very, very happy that way as far as I can tell.

-Robin

-- 
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Reason #237 To Learn Lojban: "Homonyms: Their Grate!"
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