From nobody@digitalkingdom.org Wed Sep 21 22:24:01 2005 Received: with ECARTIS (v1.0.0; list lojban-beginners); Wed, 21 Sep 2005 22:24:01 -0700 (PDT) Received: from nobody by chain.digitalkingdom.org with local (Exim 4.52) id 1EIJYv-0001eM-9C for lojban-beginners-real@lojban.org; Wed, 21 Sep 2005 22:24:01 -0700 Received: from ms-smtp-04.texas.rr.com ([24.93.47.43]) by chain.digitalkingdom.org with esmtp (Exim 4.52) id 1EIJYr-0001eE-Sl for lojban-beginners@chain.digitalkingdom.org; Wed, 21 Sep 2005 22:24:01 -0700 Received: from hypermetrics.com (cpe-66-68-164-156.austin.res.rr.com [66.68.164.156]) by ms-smtp-04.texas.rr.com (8.12.10/8.12.7) with ESMTP id j8M5Ns9C029199 for ; Thu, 22 Sep 2005 00:23:55 -0500 (CDT) Message-ID: <43323FEA.1060704@hypermetrics.com> Date: Thu, 22 Sep 2005 00:23:54 -0500 From: Hal Fulton User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.4.1) Gecko/20031114 X-Accept-Language: en-us, en MIME-Version: 1.0 To: lojban-beginners@chain.digitalkingdom.org Subject: [lojban-beginners] Re: For those into diagramming... References: <4330E5FA.4080401@hypermetrics.com> <925d17560509210902364ffc46@mail.gmail.com> In-Reply-To: <925d17560509210902364ffc46@mail.gmail.com> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed X-Virus-Scanned: Symantec AntiVirus Scan Engine Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit X-MIME-Autoconverted: from quoted-printable to 8bit by Ecartis X-MIME-Autoconverted: from 8bit to quoted-printable by ms-smtp-04.texas.rr.com id j8M5Ns9C029199 X-Spam-Score: -2.6 (--) X-archive-position: 2233 X-Approved-By: hal9000@hypermetrics.com X-ecartis-version: Ecartis v1.0.0 Sender: lojban-beginners-bounce@chain.digitalkingdom.org Errors-to: lojban-beginners-bounce@chain.digitalkingdom.org X-original-sender: hal9000@hypermetrics.com Precedence: bulk Reply-to: lojban-beginners@chain.digitalkingdom.org X-list: lojban-beginners Jorge Llambías wrote: > > The one with {co} may need some reworking. > > For example, if you have {ko'a ko'e broda co brode ko'i ko'o} > then ko'a and ko'e fill the x1 and x2 of broda, but ko'i and > ko'o fill the x2 and x3 of brode. All the sumti that appear > before the selbri {broda co brode} will be arguments of broda, > all the sumti that appear after the selbri will be arguments of > {brode}. I'm too ignorant to understand that, but I see that this *will* need reworking. I've never used broda at all -- is something like {ko'a ko'e broda co brode ko'i ko'o} an actual complete sentence? > > Attitudinals and {xu} are all in the same selma'o UI, so they > should all be treated the same way. The meaning of the > word should not matter for structuring a sentence, only the > syntax class (selma'o) it belongs to. I'm a little uncertain about this. Bear with me here: It's a little hard (for me) to draw a firm line between "diagramming for syntax" and "diagramming for semantics." In any language, syntax and semantics are obviously related; perhaps more so in Lojban that most others. Perhaps I am wrong, but I thought that the division of selma'o was mostly 1) a convenience for the parser and the writing of the formal grammar; 2) an aid in manually checking syntax at a glance; and 3) an aid in learning grammar. Plainly, many selma'o are grouped together even though they are not strictly related semantically. But getting back to the diagramming: If a diagram doesn't (in some way) illuminate the sentence, it is useless as an analytical tool. So I would say that ideally it should help in comprehending not just syntax but also semantics. (That is why I draw a line from {ri} to the thing to which it refers -- that is not strictly a syntactic issue.) I read just today that this has been one classic criticism of Reed- Kellogg diagrams -- that they don't communicate enough of the semantics. For example, predicate nominatives and predicate adjectives are diagrammed the same way. "Bob is happy" and "Bob is a woodchuck" would be diagrammed identically but for the article. (Of course, in Lojban we don't make real distinctions between "noun-like" brivla and "adjective-like" brivla, just as we don't distinguish much between "doing" and "being.") Consider these two English sentences: Bob seems willing to help. Bob seems difficult to help. Superficially (syntactically) they are similar. But in the first, we have Bob (as subject) helping an unspecified person. In the second, we have an unspecified person (as subject) helping Bob (as object). Ideally, I would like this kind of semantic information to be captured in any diagramming technique I came up with. (RK diagrams don't capture that distinction, though.) > How about doing something like this: Instead of lines use > filled-in coloured boxes. [snip description] I like that, and it is obviously a viable alternative to what I am doing. Someone already did something of that nature in a PDF I saw -- was it you or someone else? In fact, it might be fairly easy to take jbofi'e output and HTMLize it into the colored-box form. I'm very much in favor of any kind of visual aids in describing Lojban or Lojban sentences. (I enjoyed Desquilbet's article he did for IBM.) However, I'm not going to abandon my own approach for these reasons: 1. I just like mine better. It fits my brain. 2. I learned to diagram English sentences from the age of ten. (At that time and place, it was stressed.) We didn't quit till I was 16. :) 3. Since Reed-Kellog diagrams are nearly 130 years old, and are the most popular technique ever used in the US, millions of living people have already seen it. (See disclaimer below.) 4. Nested colored boxes involve an awful lot of horizontal and vertical lines. Eventually it starts to look "busy" to me. 5. Printing colored boxes takes up my color ink. :) 6. It's hard to draw nested colored boxes on the back of a napkin in a restaurant. 7. And finally, as I said, I want to illuminate semantics to whatever extent I can, not just syntax. Disclaimer on R-K diagrams: If you're under 40, there's only a 50-50 chance you ever learned to diagram. My friend who is 26 says they did it "a little" in his English courses. Diagramming has been greatly de-emphasized in American schools in the past thirty years. Some other things have also been de-emphasized in the last thirty years, such as grammar, spelling, punctuation, pronunciation, vocabulary, etymology, and composition. :-/ Hal