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

From: "Jorge Llambias" <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 03 Dec 2002 19:42:28 +0000

la lojbab cusku di'e

>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.

It is precisely because it is in so many rules, that it is difficult
to learn. For each rule, you have to learn whether or not it allows
NAI. Moving NAI to UI may be a major change but it would be one that
simplifies the grammar, and which is also fully backward compatible,
so the best kind of change.

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

That could be used in this context, for example:

A: pa re xu ci
B: i pa re nai ci i pa ze ja'ai ci

>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.

Why is that not correct? The parser can't tell {je} appart from {ja},
why is it such a big deal if it can't tell them appart from {jenai}
either? {naje} does not imply {na(je)}, so {najenai} will not imply
{na(jenai)} either.

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

I don't agree with that. I think Lojban has far too many selmaho
that complicate the grammar unnecessarily, and nothing is broken
by regularizing NAI.

>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.

Yes, but this is not the case for the restrictions on NAI.

>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).

Whyever not? NAI always attaches to the immediately preceding word,
doesn't it? It is hard to think of a context where {xu} is allowed
that won't admit a possible meaning for {nai}.

mu'o mi'e xorxes

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