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John Cowan <jcowan@r...> wrote: > The grammars are not intended to produce "logical scope" parses. > Scope is defined in the prose part of the definition. This is not quite clear to me. If something is "defined in the prose part of the definition", why would it not be considered to be produced by the grammar? Would it not seem more accurate to say that the grammar produces two parses, a syntactical one and a logical one? > > In other words, the grouping and precedence of logic and > > grammar simply don't line up. What is troublesome to me is > > not working out some trivial example such as <ro nanmu cu > > prami lo ninmu>, but rather what happens when we start trying > > to represent much more complex expressions. > > In fact this parses as (ro nanmu) (cu prami (lo ninmu)), but this > does not mean that "lo ninmu" is bound more closely to the > predicate than "ro nanmu". The deductions you are trying to draw > are simply illegitimate. Well, perhaps I misunderstand something, but it appears to me that the parse you give here directly contradicts the one implicit in Chapter 2 of the RG, which is the way I had analyzed Lojban grammar up until now. Chapter 2 shows a tree in which the parse of the above example must be given as: (cu prami (lo ninmu) (ro nanmu)) if we adopt a convention that places the header first, or just as well as: ((lo ninmu) cu prami (ro nanmu)) if we opt to maintain the word order. Either way works fine. In no case can we get ((ro nanmu)(cu prami (lo ninmu))), assuming that the predicate always governs its arguments, as I understand they do in Lojban. Interesting however, if ((ro nanmu)(cu prami (lo ninmu))) *is* indeed the correct parse, I really have to wonder why you would *want* to argue that <lo ninmu> is not more closely bound to the predicate. First, such an assertion is just plain wrong, scopewise; second, insofar as it resolves the whole logic-vs.-syntax confusion nicely, why would you reject it? BTW, to be clear, I am not trying to argue *for* anything at this point. I am strictly engaged in a fact-finding mission, which means trying to understand the issues and points that And and pc and yourself are raising. This will be an ongoing process for me until I get up to their and your speed. Regards, --- Mike