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

From: "Jorge Llambias" <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 04 Dec 2002 12:55:36 +0000

la djorden cusku di'e

>I think the first part is an overexaggeration of how difficult it
>is to learn where NAI is allowed.

It may not be very difficult, but it is an unnecessary
complication. An arbitrary restriction. There is no justification
for where it is allowed other than "that's how it is".

>Yes, it simplifies the grammar (in terms of reducing the size and
>number of rules), but is not a good idea because it's sloppy ("We
>can't exactly decide when we want to allow -nai, so lets allow it
>anywhere and decide what it means later")---giving up a piece of
>rigorousness from the grammar.

I don't see the point of rigour for the sake of rigour. Why
are we not as rigorous with the rest of UI?

> > A: pa re xu ci
> > B: i pa re nai ci i pa ze ja'ai ci
>
>I dunno what ja'ai is and don't feel like looking it up.

ja'ai:nai::ja'a:na

>This seems
>highly contrived though.

I probably would never say anything like that, but Lojbab
seemed unable to find meaning in it.

>Anyway, there's certainly tons of weird
>things which would need to be explained (ku nai, pi'e nai, la/le/etc nai,
>.inai, mi nai, la'e nai di'u, jai nai, etc etc).

I see how many of those could be quite useful.

> > Why is that not correct? The parser can't tell {je} appart from {ja},
>
>This is just false. The parser can and does know the difference
>between {je} and {ja}---that's how it prints either "and" or "or"
>as the gloss.

Then in the same way it can also see {jenai} as different from {je}.

> > 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.
>
>najenai with nai in UI *does* require na(jenai), because the free
>modifier applies to the word before the word gets reduced into
>whatever other rule.

{naje} is not the negation of {je}. Similarly, {najenai} would
not be the negation of {jenai}, which seemed to be Lojbab's
objection.

>The parser certainly *can* hack around this
>and know whether the "je" has a nai attached to it, but it's a lot
>less clean, and makes the parse tree not really reflect the grammatical
>structure.

I don't understand how that would be a hack.

>(as lojbab said, the structure of it is just "na je"
>and not "na je nai").

{je}, {na je}, {je nai} and {na je nai} all have the same structure,
they are all connectives, binary operators. That wouldn't change
if {nai} was in UI.

mu'o mi'e xorxes

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