Indo European Origins

[Steve Furlong]

On Tuesday 14 January 2003 15:23, Bill Stewart wrote:

> ...You might as well argue that Esperanto** is just
> a rapidly evolved Indo-European.

> ** You probably _can't_ argue that about Logban; hacking the grammar
>          to make it yacc-parseable is pretty radical surgery.

Allow me to introduce myself: coi rodo mi'e stivn. (Lojban: Hey, all, 
I'm Steve.) I might have something to contribute to this subthread.

Lojban (not Logban; that's a conflation of the names Loglan and Lojban) 
isn't LALR-1. The grammar can be parsed by yacc only through creative 
use of the error-catching mechanism. It's a very impressive feat of 
yacc-hacking, don't get me wrong, but it's a hack nonetheless. And the 
grammar was indeed crafted to fit in a hacked yacc parser. A real 
parser which can properly handle grammatical errors in a chunk of 
Lojban text needs a more powerful language.

Given that, Bill's point is correct: Lojban's gammar has practically 
nothing in common with any natural language.

co'o rodo
stivn.

-- 
Steve Furlong    Computer Condottiere   Have GNU, Will Travel

You don't expect governments to obey the law because of some higher
moral development. You expect them to obey the law because they know
that if they don't, those who aren't shot will be hanged.
    --Michael Shirley