[Date Prev][Date Next][Thread Prev][Thread Next][Date Index][Thread Index]

Re: [lojban] The efficacy of Lojban's grammar.



On Mon, 12 Apr 2010, Robin Lee Powell wrote:

On Sat, Apr 10, 2010 at 06:53:53AM -0400, Stela Selckiku wrote:
On Fri, Apr 9, 2010 at 11:59 PM, Robin Lee Powell
<rlpowell@digitalkingdom.org> wrote:

When I'm in practice, my statements pass the formal parser
(mine, not the official on) on the order of 95 times out of a
hundred.  I'd wager real money on that.

Certainly 8 or 9 out of 10 is true for all the serious speakers
on IRC.


Agreed!

It's quite easy actually to speak properly parsing Lojban.  Most
of the time it's entirely habitual, not so much using your
understanding of the grammar directly, but rather
pattern-recognizing a wide variety of familiar conventional forms.
It's only rarely that you produce or encounter a sentence shape
that dips into the complexities of the grammar to find something
new.

Just for the record, you just agreed with *arosta*, not with me.  :)

I was asserting that people actually *do* use the formal grammar
internally, and you're asserting you don't.

I'm OK with being an exception on this, though, as long as what
people say still parses.  :)

I can't speak for whether you're an outlier or not, but I feel as though I
work from an internal grammar as well.  It is *certainly* not as detailed as
the actual grammar (with all of its empty nodes and such), but it is very
similar in its structure (and it is my intent to make it even closer).

For instance I'm reminded of my recent joy at the phrase "lo melbi
ko li'i cerni" (have a beautiful morning, or literally, be the
experiencer of a beautiful experience of a morning).

Oh, that *is* quite neat.

Thanks!

mu'i mi'e la xalbo ku noi finti de'u
--
Adam Lopresto
http://cec.wustl.edu/~adam/

By relieving the brain of all unnecessary work, a good notation sets it
free to concentrate on more advanced problems, and in effect increases the
mental power of the race.  Before the introduction of the Arabic notation,
multiplication was difficult, and the division even of integers called
into play the highest mathematical faculties.  Probably nothing in the
modern world would have more astonished a Greek mathematician than to
learn that...a large proportion of the population of Western Europe could
perform the operation of division for the largest numbers.  This fact
would have seemed to him a sheer impossibility...our modern power of easy
reckoning with decimal fractions is the almost miraculous result of
gradual discovery of a perfect notation.

--Alfred North Whitehead

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "lojban" group.
To post to this group, send email to lojban@googlegroups.com.
To unsubscribe from this group, send email to lojban+unsubscribe@googlegroups.com.
For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/lojban?hl=en.