lojbab about the history of Lojban: Difference between revisions

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[[User:Bob LeChevalier|Lojbab]], the creator of Lojban about it's history.
{{See also|The Loglan-Lojban Dispute}}
{{See also|The Loglan-Lojban Dispute}}
{{See also|social history of Lojban}}


== In English ==
== In English ==
''[[User:Bob LeChevalier|Lojbab]], one of creators of Lojban about its history.''


TLI Loglan grammar was originally designed with no formal parser analysis at  
TLI Loglan grammar was originally designed with no formal parser analysis at  
all, and this history has driven the subsequent Lojban effort.  
all, and this history has driven the subsequent Lojban effort.  


[James Cooke Brown, the author of Loglan] discovered the works of Victor Yngve sometime in the 60s or early 70s, and therefore got the idea of codifying the grammar in a set of
rules... Around 1976-78, the effort changed to using a YACC LALR-1 grammar ... it seemed to be impossible to get the "machine grammar" to parse things quite the same as the "human grammar" did... The problem was solved around 1980... to use elidable terminators to bracket constructs... It took until around 1982-1983 to actually achieve a complete YACC grammar for the language.


a) JCB discovered the works of Victor Yngve sometime in the 60s or early
When we started redeveloping Lojban, the intent was to retain the Loglan grammar in its entirety, changing only the words. Thus we were bound by the design limitations of the original language... But we had reinvented the cmavo lexicon, and we wanted to include grammar components for tense and MEX... In 1991, Cowan took over what I had done, and cleaned it up considerably, eventually achieving the baseline grammar listed in CLL (which is still the official grammar).
70s, and therefore got the idea of codifying the grammar in a set of
rules.  He also conceived of several goals for this codified grammar
which I don't remember very well.  But he was unable to achieve these
goals, whatever they were, though they were associated with encoding
what JCB understood as the "human grammar"
 
b) Around 1976-78, the effort changed to using a YACC LALR-1 grammar as
a standard for codifying the grammar because several people knew how to
use YACC.  Much of the grammar was encoded, but it seemed to be
impossible to get the "machine grammar" to parse things quite the same
as the "human grammar" did.
 
c) The problem was solved around 1980, I believe by Jeff Prothero, then
a student at the University of Washington, to use elidable terminators
to bracket constructs, which elisions YACC would supply using its error
processing.  It took until around 1982-1983 to actually achieve a
complete YACC grammar for the language, using error correction.
 
 
When we started redeveloping Lojban, the intent was to retain the Loglan  
grammar in its entirety, changing only the words. Thus we were bound by  
the design limitations of the original language. JCB attempted to play
copyright games with the formal grammar (as he had with the words of the
language), but he was on impossible legal ground given that so much of
the work had been done by Prothero and others, along with known legal
issues in copyrighting a computer algorithm.  
 
 
But we had reinvented the cmavo lexicon, and we wanted to include  
grammar components for tense and MEX that JCB had never managed. Thus,
initially with the help of Prothero and a guy named Jeff Taylor and
others who knew YACC, I attempted to reimplement the YACC grammar from
scratch, but not really trying to reinvent any wheels. In 1991, Cowan  
took over what I had done, and cleaned it up considerably, eventually  
achieving the baseline grammar listed in CLL (which is still the  
official grammar). But the grammar was still a YACC grammar, with all
its limitations.
 
 
Attempts to create a PEG grammar remain unofficial, and frankly I've
never looked at the PEG grammar and probably wouldn't understand it if I
did.  YACC was hard enough for me, and having learned the YACC grammar
for Lojban, I never managed to fluently use the supposedly simpler E-BNF
grammar (even though I had learned a couple of computer languages using
BNF).
 
 
Thus the long answer to your question, as I understand it is that the
grammar was always intended to be as general purpose as possible.
Elidability of terminators wasn't a high priority in general, though
certain ones were desirable; there was nothing more obnoxious that
trying to figure out what was and was not terminated when you expressed
a string like kukukeiku.  (JCB's language used gu instead of ku, and
thus it sounded a lot like baby talk.  Lojban with full terminators, is
simply kuku.)
 
 
Some of the non-general purpose constructs arose because they couldn't
get YACC to work with fully general constructs, or they required too
much use of obnoxious terminators.  Hence the plethora of different
families of logical connectives, each linking a different type of
construct.  Those decisions generally dated from the JCB era, though we
added some new things that were connectable (such as relative clauses),
and hence some new families, most of which eventually went away (leaving
for example zi'e which no longer is the basis for a family of logical
connectives).  We also abandoned the effort to impose a formal grammar
on PA and UI compounds, so that there are strings of each of those cmavo
that are technically grammatical but make no sense:
pi'epaime'ipipi'e.  But for the most part, the fundamental language
grammar remains that of JCB's pre-formal language, with elidable
terminator constructs added where they could enable useful and yet
syntactically unambigious constructs.
 
''[Bob LeChevalier, the founder of Lojban, 2013]''


==По-русски ==
==По-русски ==

Latest revision as of 15:09, 6 October 2017

In English

Lojbab, one of creators of Lojban about its history.

TLI Loglan grammar was originally designed with no formal parser analysis at all, and this history has driven the subsequent Lojban effort.

[James Cooke Brown, the author of Loglan] discovered the works of Victor Yngve sometime in the 60s or early 70s, and therefore got the idea of codifying the grammar in a set of rules... Around 1976-78, the effort changed to using a YACC LALR-1 grammar ... it seemed to be impossible to get the "machine grammar" to parse things quite the same as the "human grammar" did... The problem was solved around 1980... to use elidable terminators to bracket constructs... It took until around 1982-1983 to actually achieve a complete YACC grammar for the language.

When we started redeveloping Lojban, the intent was to retain the Loglan grammar in its entirety, changing only the words. Thus we were bound by the design limitations of the original language... But we had reinvented the cmavo lexicon, and we wanted to include grammar components for tense and MEX... In 1991, Cowan took over what I had done, and cleaned it up considerably, eventually achieving the baseline grammar listed in CLL (which is still the official grammar).

По-русски

[перевод la gleki]

Грамматика Логлана вообще не предполагала изначально никакого грамматического парсера. И история с парсером фактически продвинула вперёд идею создания Ложбана.


a) Джеймс Кук Браун открыл работы Виктора Yngve где-то в 60-х или 70-х годах и отсюда вывел идею кодифицировать всю грамматику в заданном наборе правил. Он также обозначил несколько целей для такой кодифицированной грамматики, которую он назвал “человеческой”. Но он не смог достичь этих целей.

b) В районе 1976-1978 годов усилия были направлены на грамматику, описываемую через YACC LALR-1 как стандарт для кодификации грамматики. Это было связано с тем, что несколько человек знали, как использовать YACC. Б`ольшая часть грамматики был закодирована, но казалось невозможным заставить “машинную грамматику” анализировать текст так же, как это бы делала “человеческая грамматика”.

c) Проблема была решена в районе 1980 года Джеффом Prothero, тогда ещё студентом Университета Вашингтон. Он стал использовать опускаемые слова-завершители (правые скобки) для скобочных конструкций. Такое опускание YACC обеспечивал благодаря встроенному механизму обработки ошибок. Вплоть до 1982-1983 года велась работа по достижению полной YACC-грамматики с таким механизмом учёта ошибок.


Когда мы начали создавать Ложбан, у нас было только одно желание: полностью сохранить грамматику Логлана, изменив только звучание слов. Таким образом, мы были связаны ограничениями в дизайне самого языка. Кук Браун попытался поиграть с авторскими правами на формальную грамматику (так же, как он это ранее делал со словами языка), но это было невозможно с точки зрения закона, так как основная работа была выполнена Prothero и другими.

Мы пересобрали лексикон для служебных слов (cmavo) и далее начали добавлять компоненты для системы грамматических времён и математической нотации (MEX), чем Кук Браун никогда не занимался. С помощью Prothero, Джеффа Тэйлора и другими знатоками YACC, я предпринял попытку заново собрать язык на основе YACC, но без изобретения новых структур в языке. В 1991 году Джон Cowan почистил результаты моих трудов от лишних структур, фактически создав грамматику, позже описанную в Эталонной Грамматике 1997 года. Но это всё ещё была YACC-грамматика со всеми её ограничениями.


Попытки создать PEG-грамматику были неофициальными, и, честно говоря, я никогда не изучал PEG. Даже YACC был тяжёл для моего восприятия.


Подведём итоги. Опускание слов-завершителей не было основным приоритетом в языке, хотя и рассматривалось как желательное. Ведь это так сложно иной раз запомнить, какие конструкции предложения необходимо завершить. Иначе язык превращается в сплошное kukukeiku. (Язык Кука Брауна даже называли “детским лепетом” из-за такого kuku).


Некоторые конструкции языка возникли потому, что без них невозможно было заставить YACC работать, или же они требовали использовать слишком много завершителей.


Отсюда столько семейств логических союзов, каждый из которых работает со своим типом кострукций. Эти решения идут ещё из эры Кука Брауна, хотя мы и добавили несколько структур (таких как придаточные предложения) и несколько семейств, б`ольшая часть из которых была позже удалена (но, к примеру, осталась zi’e, которая больше уже не является основой семейства логических союзов). Мы также оставили попытку применить формальную грамматику к компонентам PA и UI, так что некоторые комбинации грамматически корректны, но бессмысленны, например: pi'epaime'ipipi'e. Но большей частью основная грамматика языка остаётся такой же, как и у языка Кука Брауна до его формализации с добавлением возможности опускать завершители там, где они не разрушают синтактическую неоднозначность.


[Боб ЛеШевальер, основоположник языка Ложбан, 2013]