Subject: [lojban] Re: nai in UI (was: BPFK phpbb)

From: Jim Carter <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 30 Apr 2003 09:52:25 -0700 (PDT)

On Wed, 30 Apr 2003, And Rosta wrote:
> I have no problem with the Formal Grammar or Official Parser passing
> nonsense. But any truly well-formed sentence of Lojban must be meaningful,
> however silly or surreal that meaning is. A true parser will recognize
> which strings are and aren't meaningful. A parser that ignores meaning
> is nonsense, in the sense that it produces nothing useful.

Hey, wait a minute! Think modularity. There are morpheme streams that can
or can't be split into valid Lojban words. There are word streams that can
or can't be parsed into valid syntax trees. And there are semantic
constructs that are or aren't Carroll-esque. The phrase "meaningful
concept" is too vague to be a meaningful concept. I would like to amend
your pronouncement to say, a valid parser passes all valid word streams
(putting out a correct syntax tree) and rejects all invalid word streams,
where validity is judged from the grammar. In other words, the parser does
or doesn't truly realize that grammar. (I.e. makes it real.) (And as a
separate module, the semantic analyser may have an opinion about
jabberwockishness.)

I'm sure we can come up with natlang examples where the parsing depends in
an essential way on the meaning of the words (not just their syntactic
category), but I can't think of one so early in the morning. But that kind
of a pain in the butt doesn't belong in Lojban. Think modularity!

James F. Carter Voice 310 825 2897 FAX 310 206 6673
UCLA-Mathnet; 6115 MSA; 405 Hilgard Ave.; Los Angeles, CA, USA 90095-1555
Email: [email-masked] http://www.math.ucla.edu/~jimc (q.v. for PGP key)