[lojban] Re: gleki xisri'i

["Jorge Llambías" <jjllambias@gmail.com>]

On Fri, Dec 26, 2008 at 1:18 AM, Cyril Slobin <cyril@slobin.pp.ru> wrote:
>
> I do not suggest to change the rules, I am trying to say that we need
> a better explanation of "the innermost the longest" rule. In fact we need *some*
> explanation of this rule: it is a common lojban lore, but I haven't seen it
> written explicitly in CLL or elsewhere. And I believe that the
> explanation should
> *not* refer to YACC, LALR, and other low-level tech details. We must found a way
> to explain this in the language terms.

I think the correct statement of the elidability rule is something like this:

"An elidable terminator terminates some construct. The terminator can
be elided if and only if the construct it terminates won't be extended
in its absence."

In the case of "nu le broda KU broda", KU is terminating the construct
"le broda KU". If we elide it, that construct will be extened to "le
broda brode [KU]", and so it cannot be elided. It doesn't matter where
the construct under consideation is embedded. Or whether by inserting
a terminator in the middle of a construct we could make some
ungrammatical text grammatical or not. The only thing to consider is
the single construct that the terminator terminates and whether
anything that follows will be absorbed by that construct if the
terminator is absent.

mu'o mi'e xorxes


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