Re: Veijo's 1994 proposal for nested relative clauses

[Veijo Vilva <veion@XIRON.PC.HELSINKI.FI>]

>Date:         Sun, 7 Jan 1996 04:56:40 -0500
>From: John Cowan <cowan@LOCKE.CCIL.ORG>
>Subject:      Veijo's 1994 proposal for nested relative clauses

> 1)      le (poi le (poi le tcadu cu se klama ku'o) nanmu cu se viska ku'o)
 verba
>         the (into-the-town-going man)-seeing-child

> and complained that the center-embedding was excessive, compared with the
> Finnish equivalent.  The problem is that Lojban has articles which are
> always on the left, whereas Finnish has no articles at all.  He then
> proposed a linearized version using a special marker:
>
> 2)      le poi le tcadu cu se klama xu'o nanmu cu se viska ku'o verba

[...]

> Veijo then proposed a Yacc version which (unbeknownst to him) has S/R
> errors.  I tried several more versions which also have errors, sometimes
> even more errors.

  The following version gives no errors:

sumti_tail_111          :  sumti_tail_A_112
                           /* inner-quantified sumti relative clause */
/* modified rule */     |  preposed_relative_clause_125  sumti_tail_A_112
                           /* pseudo-possessive
                              (an abbreviated inner restriction);
                              note that sumti cannot be quantified */
                        |  sumti_F_96  sumti_tail_A_112
                           /* pseudo-possessive with outer restriction */
                        |  sumti_F_96  relative_clauses_121  sumti_tail_A_112
                        ;

/* added rules */

preposed_relative_clause_125 : GOI_542  term_81  GEhU_gap_464
                        |  NOI_585  rel_chain_126 KUhO_gap_469
                        ;

rel_chain_126           :  sentence_40
                        |  rel_chain_126 XUhO_gap_xxx sentence_40
                        ;

> However, I think there is a more fundamental issue.  Veijo claimed
> that Examples 1 and 2 were equivalent to postposed relative clauses:

  Not strictly equivalent as I used sumti conversion to simplify
  the expressions, but that is quite legitimate, I'd think.

> "And what do we learn from this, comrades?"  I'm not sure, but at any
> rate some further thinking is needed.  Please comment!

  I'd like to add this feature to the language. It offers a working
  solution to a problem which people with an English background
  don't mostly even perceive. Of course, it isn't necessary to be
  able to express any conceivable thing in a simple way in Lojban,
  is it :-)


  co'o mi'e veion

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.i mi du la'o sy. Veijo Vilva sy.
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