* Saturday, 2011-11-26 at 13:26 -0300 - Jorge Llambías <jjllambias@gmail.com>:
> On Sat, Nov 26, 2011 at 12:09 PM, Martin Bays <mbays@sdf.org> wrote:
> >
> > How can the syntax be suggesting that linkargs but not selbri tags get
> > tighter scope than tailterms?
>
> Because linkargs aredefinitely internal to the selbri, while selbri
> tags are for all intents and purposes external to the selbri (weird
> guhek cases aside
(would you agree that "guhek selbri-3 gik selbri-6" is a more sensible
grammar of guheks than the official one, by the way? I spent some time
trying to make sense of the official "guhek selbri gik selbri-6", but
failed - mostly because of the weird interactions with {co})
> ). Consider "na'e ke broda be na ku (ke'e)" for example.
That's a very good point.
I actually was, until I changed it a few days ago, handling selbri3
after tailterms. What made me change was {broda be da brode ro da} - it
seems counterintuitive to have the first {da} in the scope of the
second, which is what I seemed to be forced to do when handling
tailterms first.
Do you see another way to avoid that? Or do you consider it correct?
> >> Yes, but I'm just parsing gi'e, na and selbri tags before tail terms
> >> rather than leaving them for last. That's what the syntax suggests,
> >> and I just don't see the advantage of doing otherwise.
> >
> > For giheks and ijeks, an argument might be that they are afterthought
> > connectives, so should be usable in situations where you had not
> > considered when starting the sentence that you were going to want to add
> > the connective. If you introduce a quantifier (or sumti connective)
> > during the first connectant, you may want it to scope over the second
> > connectant - and since you hadn't planned on expressing the second
> > connectant at all, you won't have had the foresight to put the
> > quantifier in a prenex.
>
> But by the same token you may not have had the foresight that you
> would want a qantifier or sumti connective that does not scope over
> the gihek. Either way you'd have to start over, so we need to compare
> which situation is more normal/frequent, and which structure is more
> natural.
Fair. But I'm afraid I do intend to let conservatism take priority in
this case, at least for now.
> > As for having {na broda da} work differently from {na ku broda da}...
> > one argument would simply be that it allows you to efficiently get at
> > meanings which would otherwise be complicated to express.
>
> You can use "na'e (ke)" instead of "na" to get your meaning easily,
You have {na'e} giving logical negation?
> but I suppose you could make your argument with tags rather than with
> "na".
>
> > e.g. suppose
> > we want to add negations to modify
> > {broda da gi'e brode vau de}
> > to have the first conjunct be
> > EX x1. EX x2. !broda( ,x1,x2) .
>
> Are you using your gi'e-rule, or mine?
It shouldn't matter for the purposes of this example.
> With your gi'e-rule, my na-rule makes little sense. We both agree that
> na is subordinate to gi'e, so if gi'e has tight scope, na must too.
Hold on. I understand your gi'e rule as giving e.g.
na broda gi'e na brode da
-> ge na broda da gi na brode da ,
so there's still the issue of whether those {na}s scope over the {da}s.
> > With your {na} rule, it seems you would have to make it
> > {broda da gi'e nai brode vau de na ku} .
> > With mine, it's just
> > {na broda da gi'e brode vau de} .
>
> It's clear that one rule will allow some things being shorter, and
> another rule will allow other things being shorter. I don't think a
> single example with no semantic content will be convincing either way.
Sure. But note that I can get your rule by replacing the {na} with
a {na ku} after the selbri, so just one syllable extra. Going the other
way seems harder in some cases - e.g. the example I just gave.
> > Another argument would involve your agreeing with me that
> >
> > broda je brode da
> > Prop: EX x1. (broda( ,x1) /\ brode( ,x1))
> >
> > is correct... do you?
>
> I agree it's EX x1 brodi(x1), and what you offer for brodi is probably
> the obvious choice. But tanru are weird, so I won't commit to it. In
> any case, I suppose you don't need the exact form of "brodi" for your
> argument, but I don't consider na and tag to be part of the tanru, so
> selbri attached "na" is different from tanru-making "je".
Hmm. Why do you call this a tanru? The relevant grammar for
selbri connection is selbri-4 through selbri-6. It's true that the usual
use (and the only documented use, to my knowledge) of selbri connection
is in a seltau, but I don't see why we should consider the connectives
themselves as anything more complicated than boolean operators.
Martin
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