From richard@rrbcurnow.freeuk.com Sat Feb 5 15:14:56 2000 X-Digest-Num: 355 Message-ID: <44114.355.1934.959273826@eGroups.com> Date: Sat, 5 Feb 2000 23:14:56 +0000 (GMT) From: Richard Curnow Subject: Re: 'nai' and .UI and ambiguity de'i li 5:2 vecu'u le notci neme'e la'o xy. <94981535401@out.newmail.net> xy. la'o xy. Adam Raizen xy. pu ciska di'e la jbomriste : On Sat, 5 Feb 2000, Adam Raizen wrote: > From: "Adam Raizen" > > Since 'nai' has more uses than just within an indicator phrase, > allowing it anywhere would cause ambiguity, since in some cases > we wouldn't know whether it's negating an unspecified .UI or serving > some other role. > > Speaking of which, how are we to interpret the pattern > > broda je ge'e nai brode > > Does the 'nai' polarly negate the indicator, or does it pick up after > the indicator ends and contradictorily negate brode? The parser > doesn't answer this by fiat, since it doesn't seem to analyze within > the "je ge'e nai" phrase. I think the nai binds as closely as possible, in this case to the UI indicator. If you need to force the end of a UI so that nai binds to the thing the UI qualifies, you can stick "y" after the UI, e.g broda je ge'e y nai brode I don't know whether this is the 'official' solution though! Cheers Richard -- ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Richard P. Curnow rpc@myself.com Weston-super-Mare Network time sync for Linux/Solaris/Dial-up at United Kingdom http://www.rrbcurnow.freeuk.com/chrony/