From richard@rrbcurnow.freeuk.com Fri May 19 15:40:44 2000 Return-Path: Received: (qmail 30584 invoked from network); 19 May 2000 22:40:43 -0000 Received: from unknown (10.1.10.26) by m3.onelist.org with QMQP; 19 May 2000 22:40:43 -0000 Received: from unknown (HELO latimer.mail.easynet.net) (195.40.1.40) by mta1 with SMTP; 19 May 2000 22:40:43 -0000 Received: from rrbcurnow.freeuk.com (tnt-9-182.easynet.co.uk [195.40.198.182]) by latimer.mail.easynet.net (Postfix) with ESMTP id 55AE0536AD for ; Fri, 19 May 2000 23:40:40 +0100 (BST) Received: from richard by rrbcurnow.freeuk.com with local (Exim 2.02 #2) id 12svQx-00010G-00 for lojban@onelist.com; Fri, 19 May 2000 23:39:56 +0100 Date: Fri, 19 May 2000 23:39:55 +0100 To: Lojban List Subject: (Technical) Problem area in v3 grammar Message-ID: <20000519233955.A3843@rrbcurnow.freeuk.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline User-Agent: Mutt/1.2i From: Richard Curnow coi rodo Consider the following (contrived) example : "Before the month in the springtime, I went to the house" Possible translations : pu le masti pe zi le vensa mi klama le zdani or maybe if we paraphrase a bit pu le masti ezibo le vensa mi klama le zdani or perhaps if we paraphrase a bit more ... pu zi gi le masti gi le vensa mi klama le zdani Unfortunately not! The pu is 'absorbed' into the tense associated with the 'gi' construct, so the whole pu..vensa phrase becomes the x1 of klama, instead of 'mi', which becomes x2. In my makefile for jbofi'e, I have a target where all the grammar rules with optional terminators are removed, leaving only those with the terminators in. This sumti-tcita + tag/gi/gi sumti forethought connective case turns out to be the only remaining shift-reduce conflict in the grammar after the pruning : there is no way to terminate the 'pu' tense before starting the tense that is the connective associated with the gi/gi pair. BTW, is anyone taking ideas yet for things to look at after the 5 year freeze is up? What is the methodology for proposing, debating and selecting potential changes? [I don't expect there will be many significant ones, I'm just wondering what happens if there are any at all.] Following a thread a week or so back, the only other topic I've thought about (besides the problem earlier) is to start using the CV'VV cmavo space to build abbreviations for frequently occuring strings of cmavo, e.g. ca'ai for 'ca le nu' and so on. co'o mi'e ritcyd. -- ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Richard P. Curnow rpc@myself.com Weston-super-Mare United Kingdom http://www.rrbcurnow.freeuk.com/