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On Oct 4, 2012 5:21 PM, "Mike S." <maikxlx@gmail.com> wrote:
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> On Thu, Oct 4, 2012 at 11:38 AM, And Rosta <and.rosta@hidden.email> wrote:
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>> On Thu, Oct 4, 2012 at 4:10 PM, Mike S. <maikxlx@gmail.com> wrote:
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>> Some initial comments.
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>> 1. I don't see a good rationale for having a load of special rules to accommodate parentheticals -- at least not when Xorban is trying not to be more complicated than it needs to be.
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> Do you prefer that parentheticals be removed from the grammar, or handled another way?
It depends what we require of them and how simply that can be accommodated. For the time being, I'd suggest leaving them out. That doesn't preclude restoring them later.
>> 2. It would be good to adopt a sounder less improvised formalism, separating syntax from phonology, and able to accommodate phonologically-null and semantically-interpreted syntax. What we have at present is a constituent structure imposed on a phonological string -- everything wrong with Lojban pseudogrammar is wrong with this, albeit to a far lesser degree.
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> I am not sure how separating phonology (which is really just the segment-terminals in these rules) from syntax would help anything,
It would remove cruft and avoid the delusion that syntactic terminal nodes consist of phonological material. If there happened to be perfect homomorphism between syntax and phonology, the annoyance would be purely conceptual, but given the goal of usability and brevity, there will not be this homomorphism; & we already are in agreement about this.
> but I would like to point out that unlike Lojban's production rules, Xorban's are 100% vanilla BNF, and have been from Jorge's first draft onwards. My hypothetical rules are also vanilla BNF.
That's hardly a recommendation, tho. There's no virtue in vanilla BNF.
>> 3. It would be helpful for the rules for binding to be made explicit. Do the rules for binding remain the same as they are for basic Xorban?
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>> --And.
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> To date there have been no binding rules in the formal grammar.
To date there has been no codified formal grammar. There exists an ad hoc sketch by Jorge of some bits of grammar. But we can't intelligently use that as the basis for serious discussion. Jorge's sketch is innocuous because the rules of syntax are so simple that one grocks them quite independently of the BNF stuff. But for more complicated proposals it simply won't do. As formulated, these termset rules merely impose pointless patterns on phonological strings, & it's somewhat shameful that we are so blithely recapitulating the inanities of Lojban. If the syntactic rules don't generate logical formulas then throw them away; they're junk.
The termset proposals themselves seem to me to be essentially a good idea - a useful abbreviatory device. I mean not to criticize the attempt to find workable abbreviatory devices, but only to criticize the idea that these BNF rules have merit. The ideas that the BNF rules are a misguided attempt to formalize surely do have merit, tho until I understand them I can't comment on their adequacy.
,, And.