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Re: [lojban] Quoting with ZOI can be ambigious




On Fri, Jan 10, 2014 at 2:58 PM, Wuzzy <almikes@aol.com> wrote:
What does “zoi gy..gy” quote?
I could think of these answers:
(1) “” (empty string (string = sequence of characters))
(2) “..” (two periods)
(3) “.” (one period)

(1) would be true if both periods are considered to be part of the
delimeter, therefore, they are part of the Lojban text and not of the
quoted text.

Right.
 
(2) would be true if the “pause periods” of Lojban have
been ommitted. Therefore, the periods must be part of the quoted text. 
(3) is a weird case which could be true if one of the “pause periods”
has been ommited, but not the other one. Therefore, there is one period
left which is therefore part of the quoted text.

(2) and (3) are not possible interpretations, because the initial delimiter word must be followed by a pause (represented either by a space or by a dot) and the final delimiter word must be preceded by a pause (represented by either a space or a dot). So the character immediately after the initial delimiter word (which has to be either a period or a space) is not part of the quote, and the same applies to the character right in front of the final delimiter word.

You don't really need to make the dot mandatory, you can just say that the character immediately following the initial delimiter and the one immediately preceding the final delimiter are not part of the quote. That character must always be either a space or a dot. It is also not necessary to require that the character be repeated when you want to quote the empty string.

mu'o mi'e xorxes

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