Re: TECH: PROPOSED GRAMMAR CHANGE X3: Extension of JA

[Jorge Llambias <jorge@PHYAST.PITT.EDU>]

Chris:
> One measure of difficulty is the number of selma'o; another might be the
> number of situations where terminators are needed.  Selma'o are for parsers;
> for learners, the choice is between explaining "use .e for sumti, je for
> selbri" or "put terminator before je when connecting sumti".  Neither seems
> particularly easier to me.

Well, what is easier: "The logical connectors appear in four series:
JA, A, GIhA and GA, here is how you use each series..." or
"The logical connectors are ja, je, jo, ju, here is how you use them
in each situation...".

By now I know how to use them all and they don't cause any difficulty,
but when I first had to learn them I would have much preferred that
they were not spread into so many selmaho. Why have to learn four
words for what is essentially the same concept?

Besides, the rule is not "put terminator before je when connecting sumti".
There is simply a different answer to "is {ku} elidable here?". In the
case of {.e} the answer is yes, in the case of {joi} the answer is no,
but the question must be answered in both cases.

lojbab:
> JCB had only one non-logical connector, which he used in a trivial way in
> tanru and nowhere else.  We have ce and ce'o at minimum that have seen wide
> and necessary use,

Wide and necessary? I never use them, since I don't use sets in normal
talk. I don't see others using them very often either.

> in addition to joi - which encompasses JCB's connective
> but may be being overstretched in current usage.

{joi} is extremely useful. In fact, it should be used much more often
where people tend to use {.e}. The collective plural is more basic than
the distributive one. (And I'm happy to have found a statement in
McCawley's book agreeing with that.)

> Adding to JOI is NOT something I would consider propsing before the 5 year
> baseline ends, but it is an area that I expect will need looking at, even
> if experimtnal xVV cmavo haven't already sprung up by then.

Subtracting from JOI is something I would seriously consider.

> of the language as it has become.  You can ALMOST justify a little sloppiness
> when you are being non-logical in your connectives, was my reasoning.  But
> the logical connectives are part of the "core" of the language, and ambiguity
> even in a minimal sense, glares very severely in such a role.

I certainly don't want any ambiguity. My proposal doesn't introduce any.

> Actually, though, since you ask, I suspect that the LE for jo'u would have
> many similarities to lo'e/le'e which focus on the commonalities in a
> disparate set, which is what I THINK jo'u does.

I don't really see it. Are you saying that I could use {le'e re broda}
instead of {le vi broda ku jo'u le va broda}?

{fa'u} on the other hand is very useful, it's a pity that there isn't a
corresponding LE, which would also be useful. (Much more so than {le'i}
for example.)

> > You don't have
> >to use {je} instead of {.e} if you don't want to.
>
> Yes, but you are asking for errors and noisy-environment ambiguity, which we
> can tolerate minimally in joi connection, but not in logical connection.

Have you done any research to support that statement? Nothing would stop
you from using {.e} in noisy environments, but I don't see why errors with
{joi} are any more tolerable than errors with {je}. I don't agree that
a noisy environment would tend to produce this kind of error either,
even when you don't hear the {ku}. Can you give a sentence that you think
could be misunderstood?

> Pragmatics can usually clarify an error in JOI connection; I doubt that
> it will be a srobust for logical connection.

Why? I don't see any possible reason to support that. Why would one be
easier to clarify than the other? The labels "logical" and "non-logical"
are purely Lojbanic conventions. There is nothing more logical about one
type of connection than the other. It's more a matter of distributiveness
than anything else.

Jorge