Subject: Re: [lojban] Re: ka'enai (was: Re: A question on the new baseline policy)

From: Robert LeChevalier <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 03 Dec 2002 01:36:51 -0500

At 01:22 AM 12/3/02 +0000, And Rosta wrote:
>Jordan:
> > On Mon, Dec 02, 2002 at 12:51:52PM -0000, And Rosta wrote:
> > > Jordan to Craig:
> > > > Why aren't you complaining that you can't say "za'onai"?
> > > He well could be. In a former discussion about how to translate
> > > English "still" and "already", {ba'o nai} emerged as the best
> > > candidate for rendering "still" (as I recall). I guess {na'e
> > > ba'o} would do the job too, but it is certainly not true that
> > > nobody has hitherto supposed ZAhO+NAI useful
> >
> > I meant to say ze'u nai. There's a *bunch* of tenses you can't put
> > nai on. People presenting the 'case' for ka'e+nai generally claim
> > that it improves "consistency", when it does the opposite
>
>You're right in one sense, but I think the underlying idea is that
>if there were a grammar change it would be to give NAI the distribution
>of UI, so that its distribution would be overall less arbitrary and
>more learnable.

I think that NAI treated as a UI would cause more (semantics) problems than 
you can imagine (and we did consider it, albeit VERY briefly). You are the 
one who wants better semantics definition. Grammatically it would be a 
major change because NAI is in so many rules.

pa re nai ci?
(pa re .uinai ci passes the parser)

It would mean that the logical connectives are handled by hodgepodge: je 
and naje would be lexer tokens, but najenai would grammatically be naje 
with an absorbed nai as part of the je hence implying "na (je nai)" which 
is not correct.

You would fix something by breaking other things, and raise far more 
questions that you would answer.

> > > The general thrust of the pro CAhA+NAI camp is that the unofficial
> > > rule "NAI has the distribution of UI" is what many people have
> > > internalized, through naturalistic inductive methods of learning
> > > the grammar. The argument is therefore that the unofficial rule
> > > has proved itself to be more natural, and since it is harmless
> > > and has the added virtue of simplifying the grammar a little, it
> > > is a candidate for being officially formalized
> >
> > This "unofficial rule" is simply an error. NAI is not a UI. It
> > is not a CAI either. I *highly* doubt the BF even has the authority
> > to change a cmavo to a different selma'o, so if they were to accept
> > ka'enai it would likely be done by hacking the tense grammar to
> > allow NAI after CAhA, and not by changing NAI to UI
>
>Do you understand that I am trying to explain to how how the opposing
>side sees things? The actual debate should go to the BF. I was just
>trying to point out to you that everybody else isn't as stupid as
>you think they are.

Just the "opposing side" that sees things that way %^)

> > I am confident that the more ka'enai users who give a bit of effort
> > to understand why it is not allowed, the more of them that will
> > abandon ka'e+nai of their own accord. I've not seen a single
> > argument for CAhA+NAI that didn't consist of "It's more consistent",
> > which is completely false, so I believe people can be convinced on
> > this issue
>
>Is "It's more consistent that NAI be in UI rather than be able to
>cooccur with an apparently arbitrary and deductively unpredictable
>subset of selmaho" completely false?

Yes.

nai is far less arbitrary and difficult to learn than the elidability 
terminators, or the places where free modifiers are and are not 
allowed. There are some things is the language that are restricted by the 
need to have LALR1. Resorting to UI is a copout since UI has no 
grammatical interaction OTHER THAN with the prior word (and the prior word 
determines its scope which I don't think would be true with nai).

lojbab

-- 
lojbab [email-masked]
Bob LeChevalier, President, The Logical Language Group, Inc.
2904 Beau Lane, Fairfax VA 22031-1303 USA 703-385-0273
Artificial language Loglan/Lojban: http://www.lojban.org