WikiDiscuss

On Wed, 12 Jan 2005, Robin Lee Powell wrote:

> On Wed, Jan 12, 2005 at 06:07:36AM -0800, Jorge Llamb?as wrote:
>> --- Robin Lee Powell wrote:
>>> On Mon, Jan 10, 2005 at 10:42:51AM -0800, wikidiscuss@lojban.org
>>> wrote:
>>>> I would have SA simply ignore free modifiers and indicators.
>>>
>>> By which you mean that it ignores them looking forward for
>>> things to match?
>>
>> That's what I had in mind, yes.
>>
>>> mi viska le bruna be la djan sa sei mi nelci se'u le broda
>>>
>>> ==
>>>
>>> mi viska le bruna be le broda
>>>
>>> ?
>>>
>>> Seems that if it ignores them in searching forward for things to
>>> match is equivalent to erasing them.
>>
>> I was thinking: {mi viska le bruna be sei mi nelci se'u le broda}
>
> I don't like that so much.
>
> For one thing, it's confusing for the listener, for another, it'll
> be hell on the parser (infinite lookahead with complex matching for
> every SA it encounters).
>
> Actually, it only needs to look ahead through free* and indicators.
> That's not *too* bad.
>
> What do other people think?
>
> Would the above piss you off as a listener?

It definitely would. Whether or not it should be legal, though, I'm less
certain of. (There are a huge number of ways of pissing off one's audience,
and arbitrarily restricting them can lead to problems.) Personally, I'd
naively read that with the modifiers affecting the sa.

mi viska le bruna be la .djan. sa .u'u la .djein.

Which is more or less equivalent to the modifiers dropping out (along with the
replaced term and the sa). I think whatever gets decided about what they
actually mean, they won't get used much (but should they be banned on those
grounds, and then we lose them when we actually have a good use for them?).

> I want to point out that the main *benefit* to this approach is
> things like "mi nelca la broda sa ko'a", i.e. replacement with
> wholly different cmavo types that match the same structure.

I definitely like the more abstract bridi-tails replacing bridi-tails, sumti
replacing sumti, etc.

One question I'd have is whether there's a way to go further back.

mi viska le burne be la .djan. sa li'o

at this point, I realize that I wanted to say {bruna} instead of {bunre}, but
because I've already started another sumti, it seems I'm stuck with a bunch of
{si}s. Or maybe {sa viska le bruna be la .djan.} would be clearest anyway.

Another question: How far back into tanru does it go when replacing a bridi
tail? That is

mi mutce nelci ko'a sa xebni ko'e

Does the {mutce} remain, or not? I'd be inclined to say not (replace the
entire selbri, you can always add back the parts you need), but I haven't seen
it spelled out yet.
--
Adam Lopresto
http://cec.wustl.edu/~adam/

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