Subject: (Technical) Problem area in v3 grammar

From: Richard Curnow <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 19 May 2000 23:39:55 +0100

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.

-- 
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Richard P. Curnow [email-masked]
Weston-super-Mare
United Kingdom http://www.rrbcurnow.freeuk.com/