From lojbab@xxxxxx.xxxx Wed Oct 27 12:06:36 1999 X-Digest-Num: 268 Message-ID: <44114.268.1457.959273825@eGroups.com> Date: Wed, 27 Oct 1999 14:06:36 -0500 From: "Bob LeChevalier (lojbab)" > First of all, the written materials. As far as I can tell, > >www.lojban.org hasn't been updated in about a year. Should I trust > >it? I mean, the textbook is on hold until the dictionary comes > >out.. But the dictionary is expected in late 1997! Was the dictionary > >ever finished? If not, who's working on it? > >Yeah, ahem, this is why I have been agitating to make www.lojban.org >reflect what is NEW in Lojban! (Where is Veijo's new and improved >version??) I asked you and a couple people to review his trial site. If no one sends him comments, he may never do anything. >We also have a lojban webring that I have been pressuring people to join! >(Robin and John: add those HTML fragments to your pages!) I host its main >page at http://www.decadezero.org/lojban_webring.html but my sites are >suffering growing pains this week. Maybe when Cowan is here, we can get the archive site onto this. >In my opinion, most lujvo should be field-specific. So, a given lujvo might >have one meaning with respect to automobiles, and another with respect to >spaceflight. This is my own idea of the best solution to your above dilemma. That is contrary to the design philosophy. A field specific lujvo, just like a field specific fu'ivla borrowing, should have a field-tag on it. A given lujvo should have only one meaning and only one place structure. If this fails, much of the rudimentary semantic theory that has slowly been built into the language could disintegrate. >You see, a lujvo selects one of the many, many interpretations of a tanru. Correct. So a tanru on the other hand can have many field specific meanings. >Hence, I feel a general dictionary is a bad idea. Instead, specific >glossaries should be created (grown and evolved, rather than written at one >sitting). A document would refer to a glossary sort of the way source code >might import macros, or an XML file refers to a DTD. No problem with this, except that the community WANTS a general dictionary and has been expecting one Real Soon Now for 11 years. > > What work has been done in mechanically translating lojban into > >english? I found one article on the .org site, and of course the > >glossary generator. But does anyone actually have code to suck up > >lojban and spit out English? > >I've seen parsers, but they all seem to barf incomprehensible diagrams >instead of sentences, even crappy sentences like babelfish. The parser/glosser does produce English glosses in addition to the incomprehensible diagrams %^) >You know, a CD rom sounds like a dandy idea. > >Although, if we had a decent Lojban --> English parser, which output on the >level of babelfish, I think that would be even dandier. However, I >personally know almost nothing about all that parsing stuff. I don't know how the parser/glosser compares to babelfish, but the main lack is that general dictionary of words and place structures that you said above that we don't need. You can't gloss it if the computer cannot look it up. The lack of a good dictionary is probably the next most serious lack in the glosser capability (though prettier English would be nice). lojbab ---- lojbab ***NOTE NEW ADDRESS*** lojbab@lojban.org Bob LeChevalier, President, The Logical Language Group, Inc. 2904 Beau Lane, Fairfax VA 22031-1303 USA 703-385-0273 Artificial language Loglan/Lojban: see Lojban WWW Server: href=" http://xiron.pc.helsinki.fi/lojban/ " Order _The Complete Lojban Language_ - see our Web pages or ask me.