Response to Iain on Diagrammed Summary and Colin's Proposal

[Logical Language Group <cbmvax!uunet!grebyn.com!lojbab>]

I haven't read Colin's proposal yet,a nd doubt if I'll even get to it for
a while, so Cowan is taking the first official cut at it.  It will be
 considerred
and decided prior to the book coming out.

My sentiment is against change, but from what I've gathered from comments by
John and others, much of this change is style of the grammar.  If indeed the
essence is a difference between surface structure and the grammar, my
bent would be in favor of a fix that corrected it, because JCB always had the
policy of making the YACC grammar reflect the human parse as closely as
possible.

It might be interesting to see what JCB's group feels about this issue, if it
also is true of their version of Loglan, given his predisposition in this
area.  It might be important to consult if indeed peaceful cooperation between
the two groups is the trend of the future.  Comnments on this prospect are
much welcomed, since we have to decide a policy on this type of question anyway.

Now, again, not knowing what Colin's proposal is, I do not believe that
the pg 19 quote from the grammar summary is a typo.


It doesn't mention relativew clauses, however, which are not part of a
description sumti, but rather an attachment on the end.

number  le  number  sumti  modal  selbri ku

|        |    |       |      |      |    |
|        |    |       |      |      |   terminator
|        |    |       |      |     description proper
|        |    |       |    usually a tense or location cmavo
|        |    |   pseudo-possessive
|        |   inside quantifier
|      article/descriptor
outside quantifier

e.g.  ci le vo la djan. pu jibri ku

Hmm.  Just checked the parse ,and it is missing something - the number before
the sumti isn't the inner quantifier, but a quantifier on the pseudo-possessive
sumti, and the inner quantifier would come AFTER the possessive
 so lets make the example

ci le re la djan. vo pu jibri ku  ...
Three of the 2 Johns' 4 former jobs ...

So the grammar summary is not really wrong, but not complete either.
Whether this matches what Colin would lik to see, someone else would have
to determine.

lojbab