Re: veridicality in grammar

[bob@GNU.AI.MIT.EDU]

ucleaar@ucl.ac.uk said:

   Your hunch, I think will prove right. But your notion of what is and
   isn't grammatical is wrong. Maybe this is just a matter of terminology:

Yes.

If you define as grammatical only that which goes into a computer
program, then what I am talking about is not grammar.  But then, this
English I am writing has no grammar for it either.

I am using `grammatical' in a middling old sense, that of `what people
speak effortlessly and feel is correct is grammatical'.  I use this
definition for two reasons: it provides a powerful research tool; and,
it focuses attention on a glory of language, that we are able to
categorize some aspects of understanding continually and nearly
unconsciously, such as number and tense among English speakers.

If Lojban is spoken fluently as a natural language, then Lojban
speakers will categorize sumti_tails with {lo} and {le} as readily and
with as little conscious effort as you or I do time and number in
English.

Perhaps I should put this a different way: if Lojban speakers turn out
to be *unable* to categorize sumti_tails with {lo} and {le} with as
little effort as I am categorizing the utterances of these paragraphs
for time and number, then the Lojban project will have failed to
develop a language (although it won't have failed as an experiment).

    Robert J. Chassell               bob@gnu.ai.mit.edu
    25 Rattlesnake Mountain Road     bob@grackle.stockbridge.ma.us
    Stockbridge, MA 01262-0693 USA   (413) 298-4725