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Re: [engelang] Xorban: Termsets

On Thu, Oct 4, 2012 at 9:32 PM, Jorge Llambías <jjllambias@hidden.email> wrote: 

What if... instead of introducing foretrees and aftertrees, we were to
make he and hi full-fledged formulas (somewhat like Lojban's selma'o
GOhA)? Something like:

sentence := formula | CA # formula | WA

formula := HA | CCA | NA # formula | LA # formula # formula

# := (CA # formula | WA)*

As a side note, I admit that notation is nice and easy to read when you're used to it.  My concern is whether something so cryptic is the best way to present the grammar to the world.
 

Full-fledged he/hi would not be exactly equivalent to fore/after-tree
he/hi, but for basic cases they would work in the same way. The
formula they stand for would have to be the one from the
following/preceding sentence (not including the illocutionary
operator), so we could say things like:

cu xgja'a? ci hi!
Am I hungry? I am!

as well as things like:

je la mlta he la grka na he le fnpe nlcake
The cat does and the dog doesn't, like fish.

(?): "The cat does and the dog doesn't [like fish]; [ci] [la R?a] likes fish."  Or, does "he" consume the following sentence?  If so, is that sentence semantically a sentence?  Is the he-_expression_?  The he-_expression_ would still be grammatical if the following sentence were a WA, or absent for that matter, but what meaning would be assigned?   I don't see any way to deny here that a logically whole sentence is getting broken into more than one syntactic sentence.

And perhaps:

mlta je sa hi he na ra hi he xkra
Cats, some are but not all are, black.

That's interesting, but ideally what we'd want to do here is just coordinate the binders, not insert four placeholders for a common restriction & predication, and then front the restriction.

he'e sa na ra mlta xkra

or

je sa ha na ra ha mlta xkra

versus

mlta je sa hi he na ra hi he xkra


Thoughts?

co ma'a xrxe


Another example:

la je vrba ( je le brneka li cdri hiki ju xndake dndakike le mnseka li ckti hiki ju xndake dndakike ) li hika tcmi tvla'akaki
"The child who to his brother a radio kindly gave and to his sister a book kindly gave, about the current weather I'm talking to."

The same-formula solution handles this effortlessly:

la je pra ( [je] le brneka li cdri _he_ le mnseka li ckti _he_ hiki ju xndake dndakike ) li hika tcmi tvla'akaki


The multiple-sentence solution doesn't hold up so well:

la je pra ( je le brneka li cdri _he_ le mnseka li ckti _he_  ) li hika tcmi tvla'akaki; ( hiki ju xndake dndakike )
?la pra ( je le brneka li cdri _he_ le mnseka li ckti _he_  ); _je_ ( hiki ju xndake dndakike ) li hika tcmi tvla'akaki


So the second issue here is that any nested core formula has to move to another sentence, which aside from being sometimes a tricky and inconvenient transformation, can motivate suspect changes to the logical formula (as in the ?-labeled option here).  There is also an arbitrary limit of two movings per sentence, one of which would relocate a formula to a preceding sentence and the other to a following sentence.  Also, initial coordinators are required for the branches; that requirement may be felt when we have more than three conjoined branches.

We could probably use something analogous to GOhA to say things like "yes".  Whether that class should be implicitly restricted sentential variables or pro-formula particles I have given no thought to. But I do think that that class is unsuited for doing what the trees that we have been developing do.

--
co ma'a mke

Xorban blog: Xorban.wordpress.com
My LL blog: Loglang.wordpress.com