Re: TECH(?): can everyone write impeccably grammatical Lojban?

[And Rosta <ucleaar@UCL.AC.UK>]

Ivan:
> >  Date:        Fri, 25 Sep 1992 15:21:50 +0100
> >  From: And Rosta <ucleaar@UCL>
> >
> >  Mark:
> >  > {zoi .gy. The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dogs .gy.} is
> >  > grammatical Lojban, but then "He said, 'Ani holech l'beit ha-sefer.'" is
> >  > grammatical English, and equally unhelpful in getting accross the
> >  > import of what's quoted.
> >
> >  But "He said 'What you name is'" would all get processed by the English
> >  speaking hearer, even tho the quote needn't be grammatical or English.
> >
> >  My point is that although computers might most likely skip zoi stuff,
> >  I think people wouldn't.
>
> Ahh.  That is, there is such a thing as ungrammatical_but_meaningful
> English, but not ungrammatical_but_meaningful Lojban?
>
> That may be a point.
> >  And. Atsor
> .iVAN. .iksnajred.

This is what I was getting at. Obviously most of the Lojban written
at  the mo is in practise ungrammatical but  nevertheless communicative
but in principle I suppose the technical lojbo line is that if it's
ungrammatical then it's not Lojban.

As Ivan no doubt knows better than me, the distinction is sometimes
(usually? always?) made between a *parser*  and (don't know the
technical comput ling term) a *grammaticality tester*.

A grammaticality tester looks at a sentence & if it's grammatical
gives you its structure(s), or, if it's ungrammatical just tells
youtopiss off.

By contrast, a parser strives tocome up with ananalysis whatever the
input.

My ignorant & half-baked impression ofLojban isthat it isconstrcted
for a Grammaticality Tester & not for a Parser. So basically if you
elide one terminator  too many or whatever you've had it.

---

And