History: joiku

Source of version: 1 (current)

!!Why doesn't "le broda joi le brode" parse? ((joiks)) are both ((sumti)) and ((tanru)) connectives. Thus, the parser gets to broda joi and expects another ((brivla)) afterwards, and when it encounters le, reports an error. The solution is to explicitly terminate "le broda" with "ku", which in this case is not elidable. ---- do skudji '''lu le broda ku joi le brode li'u''' .e '''lu le broda joi brode li'u''' ---- The longer answer to this is that Lojban is defined by a ((LALR(1))) grammar, so that any ambiguities have to be resolved with at most one token of lookahead. ''le broda joi le brode'' has to be disambiguated as early as ''broda'': it has to know whether the ((selbri)) is over by the time it hits ''joi'', or will be continued through ''joi''. To resolve this, though, it would have to look past ''joi'', at ''le''. This means two tokens of lookahead, which is thus disallowed. (Yes, it's counterintuitive, but that's what you get for using ((YACC)) to define a human language.) For further discussion, see: * [http://wiw.org/~jkominek/lojban/9511/msg00535.html''''''; *] http://wiw.org/~jkominek/lojban/9104/msg00011.html (where Guy Steele points out issues with ((YACC))); * and for amusement value, [http://wiw.org/~jkominek/lojban/9110/msg00033.html] (where ((Nick Nicholas)) first discovered this issue to his acute indignation.) ---- ''Yes, it's counterintuitive, but that's what you get for using ((YACC)) to define a human language.'' Well, it's counterintuitive to English speakers, but someone with a lot of practice in Lojban (a native speaker?) might find it clearer. For example, take a phrase like: ;:le broda nu brode joi le brodi It starts to get a little tricky even for a human to quickly pick out whether the joi attaches to the "brode", the "nu brode" or the whole "le"-sumti when there's no "ku" before the "joi". Lojban ''really'' likes terminators, and so if you find adding an extra one or two to be counterintuitive, you're probably going to have a hard time. :-) ''(I also had a hard time accepting this, until I came across something like the above example, which made me do a double-take and rethink how counterintuitive this situation really is.)'' -- ((Adam Raizen)) Lojban does __not__ like terminators, it only puts up with them when they are necessary. One mark of good style is phrasing your sentences in such a way that the use of terminators in minimized. Unfortunately, this ''kujoi'' case is one of the unavoidables. It is about the only time that the terminator ''ku'' needs to be used. Terminators are such an integral part of Lojban that it shouldn't seem counterintuitive to a good speaker to add them. If the ''ku'' of "le broda ku joi le brode" is counterintuitive, what makes the ''ku'o'' in "mi viska le nanmu poi slabu mi ku'o bu'u le panka" any more intuitive? Personally, I think that having to rearrange a sentence in order to be able to elide terminators is at least as counterintuitive as saying the terminators themselves. -- Adam '' *shrug* Adding ku before joi in this context has become a reflex action for me anyway. Just because I think something's wrong doesn't mean I won't do it :-) . Very good example, btw. '' -- Nick Nicholas So what ''would'' that parse as? I assume, since the second argument of joi is clearly a sumti, then the 1st one must be too, which means the proper interpretation should be le broda nu brode '''keiku''' joi le brodi -- xod ''You're doing more than one token of lookahead, I'm afraid. There is no reason for ''broda nu brode joi le brodi'' to be any more grammatical than ''le brode joi le brodi''; the parser still doesn't know whether the ((selbri)) (now embedded in a ''nu''-clause) is over by the time it hits ''joi''. '' -- ((nitcion))