Subject: Re: [lojban] da ce de ce di

From: And Rosta <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 15 Oct 2001 14:06:39 +0100

>>> John Cowan <[email-masked]> 10/15/01 03:16am >>>
#cmeclax po'u le cmevi'u ke'umri scripsit:
#> jbofi'e interprets "da ce de ce di" as {{da, de}, di}, which seems to meto 
#> leave no way to say {da, de, di}.
#The *parse* of da ce de ce di is (da ce de) ce di, but that is not the
#set-theoretic interpretation, which is {da, de, di}. To say anything
#else, you have to use explicit set-forming selbri.

This is a particularly clear example of the way official parses are 'bogus',
in the sense that if a syntactician was faced with having to induce a
grammar of lojban from the set of well-formed sentences, they would
be most unlikely to come up with a grammar that yields parses at all
like official ones. 

It's useful to bear this in mind for a couple of reasons. First, when enquiring about the meaning of a construction, the official parse can't be takeninto evidence. Second, the official grammar is not the true one; that has not yet been discovered and indeed does not exist yet.

--And.