Changes to grammar: 11-20

[cowan (John Cowan)]

Change 11:

CURRENT LANGUAGE:

The grouping of PU_mods means that a free modifier at the end of a
PU_mod applies to the whole PU_mod rather than just to the tense_modal
at the end, whereas free modifiers embedded within the PU_mod refer
only to the tense_modals they follow.  So "puxipa je puxire", which
should mean "past-time t1 or past-time-t2" means "(past-time t1 or
some-past-time)-sub-2".  As a result, there is no way to subscript
a conjoint tense, but it is not clear what such subscripts would mean
anyhow.

PROPOSED CHANGE:

Move the free modifier to tense_modal.

RATIONALE:

See CURRENT LANGUAGE section.


Change 12:

CURRENT LANGUAGE:

An initial FAhA cannot be followed by space offsets, but only by a space
interval (or by nothing at all).  Analogously for a ZI in the time system.

PROPOSED CHANGE:

Allow FAhA followed by space-time-offsets and ZI followed by time offsets.

RATIONALE:

This allows the currently ungrammatical "vizu'a" in the sense of "to the
left of a nearby point".  "Zu'avi" on the other hand means "a point not
far to the left of here".  This distinction is subtle, but real.  The
change to the time system follows by symmetry, although initial ZI is
probably not of much use, since it means "a short/medium/long time distance
from now" without specifying either past or future.


Change 13:

CURRENT LANGUAGE:

Utterance ordinals using MAI are currently considered indicators, and
can appear after any word and get absorbed.

PROPOSED CHANGE:

Shift MAI constructs to the more restrictive free modifier group.

RATIONALE:

The absorber routines in the parsing program which need to remove
non-initial utterance ordinals before YACC sees them have to read an
arbitrary number of PA or BY tokens, determine whether the next token
is a MAI, and if so absorb, but if not push back all the PA/BY stuff.
This requires unbounded pushback capability in the absorber, which is
to be avoided.

This change was proposed earlier but never consummated.  A side effect
of this change is that lexer_A now flags utterance ordinals
only, and the regular indicators (UI, CAI, Y) no longer need lexer
flagging.  Another side effect is that FUhO, DAhO, and POhA
can now be treated as indicators (and PEhA as a forethought indicator
like BAhE) rather than with special magic.

Change 14:

CURRENT LANGUAGE:

A tense can be prefixed with arbitrary numbers of NAhE tokens.

PROPOSED CHANGE:

Allow only one NAhE token at most.

RATIONALE:

The compounder needs to read past a potentially infinite
number of NAhEs to decide whether what follows is a selbri (which is
not compounded) or a tense.  If this change is made, the compounder
will always be able to decide within 2 tokens whether it has a
compound or not.  If multiple NAhEs are really needed, the tense
can be expanded to use the predicate grammar instead.


Change 15:

*ANNULLED*


Change 16:

*ANNULLED*


Change 17:

CURRENT LANGUAGE:

Logical operators can be represented in either forethought or afterthought
(except for tenses and abstractors), as can aspectual (BAI) operators,
but the non-logical operators of JOI and BIhI have no forethought versions.

PROPOSED CHANGE:

Allow "[SE] JOI GI [NAI]" and "[SE] BIhI GI [NAI]" as new kinds of geks,
analogous to the existing "stag GI [NAI]".  Forethought would still be
disallowed in tanru (no GUhEK equivalent of this) and where the GAhO
endpoint markers are required.

RATIONALE:

Completeness, plus the fact that natural languages such as English
usually represent joiks with forethought constructs ("the union of...and...",
"from...to...", etc.)  Institute Loglan had only one joik, "ze" (the
equivalent of "joi"), so a forethought construction was not felt
necessary.  The far more elaborate joiks of Lojban can easily be
extended to forethought.


Change 18:

CURRENT LANGUAGE:

"bu", selma'o BU, has a very restricted use.  It can only appear after
bare vowels (selma'o A, I, and Y) to create the lerfu for those vowels.

PROPOSED CHANGE:

Allow "bu" after any (lexable) word whatever, to create something
equivalent to selma'o BY.  Remove the ZAI...FOI construct for change
of character set, as well as the TEI construct.  LAU is kept and extended to
hold all lerfu prefixes, including "zai" to specify character set
and "tau" to force a next-lerfu shift.

Composite symbols are now represented by TEI letteral ... FOI, which has
the grammar of a single letteral.

All the various kinds of letterals are now also allowed in numbers
(although not initially).

RATIONALE:

This allows the creation of a bunch of new lerfu.  The Latin and Greek
alphabets can be more readily accomodated; for example, "q" could have
"kybu" as its lerfu.  Lerfu for the digits become possible; for example
"pabu" would be the digit 1, as opposed to the number 1.

The ZAI...FOI construct is meant to specify new character sets, but
requires spelling out the name of the character set in lerfu, for
example "zai dy ebu vy abu ny abu gy abu ry ibu foi" to enable
Devanagari mode.  This is ugly.  Using the new flexibility of "bu",
we can say "zai .devanagar. bu" instead.  (The pauses are needed
for morphological reasons.)


Change 19:

CURRENT LANGUAGE:

There is a special category of predicates called "MEX relations" which
have special grammar; they represent mathematical relations.

MEX relations are also used to specify the precedence of mekso operators
using a free-modifier construct starting with TIhO.

PROPOSED CHANGE:

Assimilate mekso relations to ordinary predicates.  Eliminate the special
TIhO grammar, and move "ti'o" itself to selma'o SEI.

RATIONALE:

mekso relations as defined cannot be logically connected and overlap ordinary
predicates.  The only mekso relation cmavo defensible on Zipfean grounds is
"du", which is moved to selma'o GOhA.

The grammar of TIhO was an attempt to allow a "smart" parser to understand
mekso operator precedence declarations, since they override the default
grammar of mekso.  This grammar was not well thought out, and it seems better
to allow any selbri after "ti'o", the same grammar as for SEI.  Smart
parsers will just have to do the best they can.


Change 20:

CURRENT LANGUAGE:

ZAhOs cannot stand alone in interval modifiers in tenses.  An interval
modifier currently consists of ROI/TAhE constructs with interspersed
ZAhOs.

PROPOSED CHANGE:

Allow ZAhOs to stand alone or to come first in complex interval modifiers.

RATIONALE:

Stand-alone ZAhO has a clear meaning and should be allowed.  The only
remaining restriction is that consecutive ROI/TAhE options are not permitted
without at least one intervening ZAhO.