Decades long indeed (I don't remember the first time I go= t into this, but it was in Loglan, so before 1984). On the other hand= , what you suggest is something that should follow immediately from Lojban = being a spoken form of FOL++, for which a (indeed, this) semantics already = exists. That it doesn't work that way casts some doubts on the claime= d relation to FOL++ and also means we haven't done a bit of local scut work= (like the truth conditions for most of the predicates). The problem = is -- and always has been -- the temptation to take ordinary expressions fo= r things and turn them into expressions about unthings: kinds, masses, char= acteristics, and the like -- for all of which Lojban also has separate expr= essions, more or less. Every time something comes along that gets us back to basics (as plural reference did a few years ago), someone (mayb= e even me) goes haring off after some intensional reference for some expres= sion ({lo} in particular). And then the argument goes around again, a= little clearer (eventually) each time but still leaving some people thinki= ng there must be more to the simple expressions than meets the eye. I= don't think there is. But until we all agree on that, the semantics = remains in flux.

From: mai= kxlx <maikxlx@gmail.com>
To:= lojban@googlegroups.com
Subject: [lojban] Lojban and Truth= -Conditional Semantics

coi rodo,

This xorlo/Mr. broda/kinds/intension/etc/(now recently: "l= evels") thing goes back and forth and never ends and, I fear, never gets an= ywhere. As a longtime lurker and sporadic Lojban learner admittedly n= ot necessarily fully up to snuff on these highly technical topics, I'm goin= g to go out on a limb here and take a pop shot in this interminal conversat= ion, which I have long been observing with interest, and sometimes even amu= sement, for years (I'm guessing that I have read thousands upon thousands o= f posts on these issues). The only way, I suspect, that jbo(ske)pre a= re ever going to sort out some of these sticky issues involving gadri and r= elated stuff is by adopting a much stronger and more rigorous formalism tha= n has been adopted up to now. Ultimately it would require a very good= mathematician/logician to work out the whole system and then break it down= for others (in English or Spanish or whatever metalanguage). There are many ways to go, but I think what might best serve a logical lan= guage is a formalism focused on model-theoretical, truth-conditional semant= ics. In other words, from any given Lojan sentence S, e.g. "su'o lo c= tuca cu tavla ro le tadni", one ought to be able to work out, in a straight= forward manner, every truth condition that would make S true with respect t= o an interpretation of basic terms (e.g. descriptions & predicates) and= a given model (universe of discourse). If the truth conditions hinge= on context (and such hinging might be universal in human languages; I just= don't know), then the formalism should specify how to interpret S against = any context -- you might want to check into discourse representation theory= (DRT) for ideas on how to handle this. But I think the goal should b= e an algorithm like this: given any Lojban sentence S, enumerate the = conditions that are true exactly if S is true. (After that, make sure that any of the various propositions that humans want to say are= sayable. And if you really want to get fancy, explain what and how v= arious logical entailments can be inferred from any Lojban sentence S. But = for right now, interpreting Lojban as it stands should be the goal.) = To give a trivial example of how truth-conditions might be specified very, = very informally using English as the metalanguage:

S =3D "la meris prami la djan."

The truth conditions of S are (t= entatively) as follows:

- There is an individual entity M whom Speak= er denotes as "meris"
- There is an individual entity J whom Speaker den= otes as "djan"
- There is a predicate relationship (x1, x2) denoted as "prami", interprete= d as the set of all ordered pairs of individuals such that x1 loves x2 (ful= l encyclopedia definition of a predicate can be cited as needed).
- prami'(M, J) is true. In other words, M loves J.

These condi= tions could and probably should be given more formally than this, but as gi= ven, they at least suggest the idea. Deriving these conditions can be= tedious, and if the system is mathematically/logically formalized, it will= get even more tedious -- much more so. It will be immensely more com= plicated by adding kinds, quantification, masses, plurals, tenses, modaliti= es, worlds, intensional constructs, and so on. But quite a bit of res= earch along these lines have been done in natlangs, and ultimately I think = this is the approach that is needed for Lojban. By some method, every= S has to be broken down into a finite set of basic truth conditions, and t= hose truth conditions should be expressible both formally in a mathematical= metalanguage, and informally in plain English or other natlang. Alon= g these lines, eventually I think someone has to go to the trouble of working out a complete, systematic formalization of Lojban semantics. P= erhaps one could start with simple things and add one language feature at a= time, and then periodically go back and organize and straighten everything= out, until everything works together. For example, one could:

1. Give the truth conditions for "lo broda cu brode" (possibly under DR= T context)
2. Give the truth conditions for "su'o broda cu brode" (possi= bly under DRT context)
3. Give the truth conditions for "ro broda cu brode" (possibly under DRT co= ntext)
...
101. Give the truth conditions for "lo broda cu brode lo brodi" (possibly u= nder DRT context)
102. Give the truth conditions for "su'o broda cu brode lo brodi" (possibly= under DRT context)
...
1001
etc.

The idea here is to describe the semantics of th= e most primitive formulas, and then systematically build up the framework t= o describe ever more complex formulas. Taking into account recursion,= scope, interactions, etc. eventually every sentence in the whole language = should be reducible to enumerable truth conditions. Also, and this wo= uld follow from the principle of compositionality and and from Lojban's alr= eady existing syntactic non-ambiguity, semantics would parallel syntax and = every constituent of Lojban would have one meaning -- and ideally transpare= ntly so.

There are other formalisms out there (which I am less familiar with), b= esides the truth-conditional and model-theoretic thing I've very, very crud= ely outlined, but I suspect that something like what I am trying to describ= e would be advantageous. Montague had a very similar approach to Engl= ish, and his program is generally acknowledged to be a promising system.&nb= sp; At the very least, it seems to me the best hope to underpin any "logica= l language".

With all due respect to interlocutors, and despite all the best intenti= ons, there seems to have been a good deal of handwaving and wheel-spinning = in these years-long, possibly decades-long conversations. Can we yet = describe what every Lojban sentence means? It seems not. And th= e discussions go on and on. And on. And on and on and on. = (And frankly I still don't know what "Mr. Broda" means.) I suggest t= hat mapping words to meanings expressible both formally and informally in m= etalanguage might be a fresh approach. I suspect that even an informa= lly specified program intent on producing truth conditions from ordinary Lo= jban sentences might be a constructive approach towards grappling with thes= e thorny issues. I mean this all quite respectfully, words to the wis= e. It's just my 2c on a late Saturday night.

Best
mu'o mi'e .maik.

On S= at, Nov 12, 2011 at 7:50 PM, John E. Clifford <kali9putra@yahoo.com> wrote= :

OK. To start wit= h, I have to rewrite your example so that it makes a potential problem for = me (& and x might insist there was the same possibility for {su'o cinfo= cu broda} but I do disagree with them there). So, if someone says {s= u'o lo ctuca cu tavla ro le tadni}, and they mean a certain kind -- or some= certain kinds -- of teachers talk to all the students, what can we infer a= bout individual students and teachers? Surely that every student has = been talked to by at least one teacher {ro le tadni cu se tavla su'o ctuci}= and probably that each has been talked to by at least one kind of teacher = (which follows from the first, assuming each teacher is of some kind or oth= er). Actually, that listing is backwards, since the second conclusion= follows from the start just by FLO. The first conclusion involves some assumption about how a kind of teacher talks to students;pre= sumably collectively but possibly conjunctively Or even distributively. &nb= sp;In the latter two cases, we get at least one teacher who talks to all st= udents and, surely every student is talked to by some teacher. In the= collective case, there may not be one teacher who talks to every student, = but they divvy up the task so that every student gets a talking to and the = result is still achieved.
Now, I agree that I escape some problems here by taking kinds to be bunches= . On the other hand, if they are not bunches, I have trouble working = out what {su'o lo cinfo} means when it refers to a kind (rather than a bunc= h of kinds, say). Of course, it is always safer to specify you level = and Lojban has at least a few devices for doing that. But it is also = often long-winded to do that when it is "perfectly clear" from context. &nb= sp;Whether either of these will help with whatever xorxes is now about rema= ins to be seen. Past xorxes segments have been given to finding inten= sional content or mass content in {lo} expression (for each of which there = are, alas, historical precedents). I also am a little worried about a= pparently focusing on the most general uses of {lo} exressions and coming u= p with claims that do not fit the more restricted uses.

Sent from my iPad

On Nov 12, 2011, at 11:39 AM, Martin Bays <m= bays@sdf.org> wrote:

> * Wednesday, 2011-11-09 at 10:22 -0600 - John E. Clifford <kali9putra@yahoo.com>:
>
>> [...]
>>
>> The point is that the word "lion" (and "lions") can indicate a num= ber
>> of different ontological levels, from the narrowest to the broades= t
>> and most abstract. There is is, though, a default level that= turns up
>> in the absence of contrary contextual clues, even though it may be=
>> easily overridden by those clues. We have words for the vari= ous
>> levels, which we can use to explicitly set the level or change in = mid
>> discussion ("kind", "segment", "meat", "typically" and "species" >> roughly for the examples above). Shifting without making not= e of the
>> shift or starting off at the non-default level without a flag, is<= br> >> a Gricean misdemeanor.
>>
>> What the default level is for a given word varies from word to wor= d:
>> "lion" takes sort of midlevel gross physical objects, "letter" tak= es
>> a highly abstracted level (there are twenty-six letters in the Eng= lish
>> alphabet). Other words probably take lower levels, Buddhist = technical
>> terms for components of a person probably somewhere around the bot= tom.
>> And, as the last example indicates, each level can be expressed in=
>> a number of ways.
>>
>> As far as I can figure out, the recent discussion on the {zo'e} th= read
>> (or at least one or two of those discussions) hinges on whether we=
>> have the same fluidity of levels in Lojban and whether certain mov= es
>> constitute misdemeanor violation level shifting. That is, wh= at
>> brodas? Or, perhaps more precisely, what brodas in what way?=
>> A single thing may broda individually; a bunch may do so collectiv= ely,
>> or conjunctively, or disjunctively, or statistically, or in many m= ore
>> complex ways. Also involved is the nature of some levels: ar= e kinds
>> just bunches of things or are the intensional objects of some sort= ?
>> Are segments parts of objects or independent things to which objec= ts
>> may be related in a way analogous to the way kinds are related to<= br> >> objects? In general, no side has been very clear (at least i= n
>> a single continuous statement) on any of these issues, making the<= br> >> whole rather difficult to follow, let alone to critique. Hop= efully,
>> this will change.
>
> OK then. I'll reiterate, with all the clarity I can muster.
>
> Short version: {su'o cinfo cu broda} has to mean that some actual lion=
> brodas. Otherwise we have problems. This is largely independent of the=
> meaning of {lo cinfo cu broda}, but not of the explanation of that
> meaning.
>
> Long version:
>
> The basic problem as I'm seeing it: if we don't specify levels, then w= e
> don't really specify quantifier scope.
>
> What I mean by this (i.e. by "really"): if B hears A say {su'o ctuca c= u
> tavla ro le tadni}, and B wants to understand what A means to say abou= t
> actual teachers and actual students, and if {ctuca} and {tadni} do not=
> specify levels, then B has to guess which levels A intends them to ref= er
> to. If, for example, B guesses that A is talking about kinds of teache= r
> and about actual students, all B can deduce about actual teachers and<= br> > students is that every student was talked to by some teacher.
>
> (Here I'm using 'actual' in opposition to 'kind' - I wish we had
> a better word for it)
>
> (I should also clarify that when I say "{ctuca} does not specify
> a level", I mean that there are *individuals* which are e.g. kinds of<= br> > teachers and which ctuca; if a kind were implemented as being merely > a bunch of actual teachers, we wouldn't have the problems I'm talking<= br> > about.)
>
> So I conclude that it is not befitting of a logical language for it to=
> have no means to specify level - where 'level' refers to whatever it i= s
> that crossing causes these quantifier scope shifts.
>
> This does not mean that I think lojban should only be able to discuss<= br> > actual teachers and not kinds of teachers - merely that we need to be<= br> > able to distinguish between the two.
>
> I further note that xorlo - or rather, my understanding of xorxes'
> understanding of xorlo - makes this issue less academic than it might<= br> > otherwise be. That's because it has descriptions, e.g. {lo ctuca},
> habitually (though not always) referring to (bunches of) corresponding=
> kinds, e.g. to the kind Teacher.
>
> So under xorxes' xorlo, kinds are not rare things summoned up only whe= n
> we specifically want to talk about them - you have to deal with them i= f
> you want to understand any sentence using a gadri.
>
> (Here I'm using "the kind Teacher" to refer to the whatever-it-is that=
> xorxes habitually refers to with {lo ctuca}; I have so far failed to > understand what this is, but it seems that whatever it is is a level u= p
> from actual teachers as regards quantifier scope ambiguities, and that= 's
> all we need to know about it for the present discussion)
>
>
> This leaves the question of how to deal with this problem; we have
> various partial answers, but perhaps I shouldn't complicate this threa= d
> by discussing them here.
>
> Martin

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