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--- In engelang@y..., "And Rosta" <a-rosta@a...> wrote: > Mike: > > I will have to give this more thought -- to think about how my > own goals compare to the ones you list. But in the meantime > I will add one less personal one, parsability. That is, > whether an explicit parsing algorithm can be stated, and > if so, how simple is it. I did not name parsability as a goal, but if I had, I would have included it under syntactic non-ambiguity. I also forgot to mention morphological self-segregation. This too falls under the non-ambiguity category. At least, this is how I would have seen things before you posted this message. > A goal of Livagian is that the output of the parser is an > explicit logically unambiguous representation. Furthermore, > the parser cannot look ahead beyond the current word, and > nor can it backtrack and alter structure it has already > built. (I am slightly simplifying the lookahead contraint, > but not misrepresenting the essential principle.) These > principles usefully constrain the range of possible syntactic > structures, and they also constrain the incidence of > phonologically null words. Further, they act as the guarantor > of nonambiguity and also of simplicity. You raise a few issues, some of which I believe I am clear on, and others of which I am afraid I am not. What I am clear on is that languages can indeed be designed with differing levels of complexity with regards to parsibility. The necessity to look ahead, the necessity to backtrack, and the overall number of parsing rules can certainly vary wildly, with strict head- initial grammars generally yielding the simplest parsing algorithms. > A related issue is whether parsing the syntax gives you the > logical structure. For example, although Lojban claims to > have an explicit and unambiguous grammar, this claim is > tantamount to being bogus, or at least fatuous, since all > the grammar does is generate the set of well-formed word > strings; the structure imposed by the grammar on the word > strings does not give you the logical structure of the > sentence. The rules for getting from the lexicosyntactic > structure to the logical structure have not been created > yet. (I exaggerate slightly: the grammar does yield predicate- > argument structure, but not much beyond that.) It is here that I am a little cloudy. Can you elaborate a bit more on the distinction between the logical structure of the language and the lexicosyntactic structure as you see it? Since you mentioned Lojban, would it be possible for you to give an illustration in that language, assuming time permits? I am studying Lojban off and on, and I can't say that I like all its features, but the one thing I was willing to concede to it was that it was unambiguous (other than a few minor quirks, such as the fact that some of the attitudinals are in effect mood markers). It would be quite interesting to discover if this were not the case. Regards --- Mike