From robin@bilkent.edu.tr Mon May 05 17:21:57 2003 Received: with ECARTIS (v1.0.0; list lojban-list); Mon, 05 May 2003 17:21:58 -0700 (PDT) Received: from manyas.bcc.bilkent.edu.tr ([139.179.30.24]) by digitalkingdom.org with esmtp (Exim 4.12) id 19CqDL-0003OH-00 for lojban-list@lojban.org; Mon, 05 May 2003 17:21:48 -0700 Received: from localhost (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by manyas.bcc.bilkent.edu.tr (Postfix) with ESMTP id B61F131FE8 for ; Tue, 6 May 2003 03:21:14 +0300 (EEST) Received: from bilkent.edu.tr (ppp101.bcc.bilkent.edu.tr [139.179.111.101]) by manyas.bcc.bilkent.edu.tr (Postfix) with ESMTP id 1746426F4B for ; Tue, 6 May 2003 03:20:37 +0300 (EEST) Message-ID: <3EB7630B.1090901@bilkent.edu.tr> Date: Tue, 06 May 2003 03:23:55 -0400 From: "robin.bcc" User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.3) Gecko/20030313 X-Accept-Language: en-us, en MIME-Version: 1.0 To: lojban-list@lojban.org Subject: [lojban] Re: semantic space References: In-Reply-To: Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii; format=flowed X-Virus-Scanned: by AMaViS snapshot-20020531 X-archive-position: 5142 X-ecartis-version: Ecartis v1.0.0 Sender: lojban-list-bounce@lojban.org Errors-to: lojban-list-bounce@lojban.org X-original-sender: robin@bilkent.edu.tr Precedence: bulk Reply-to: lojban-list@lojban.org X-list: lojban-list Craig wrote: >>>>>>>>Lojban doesn't really classify relations at all: >>>>>>> >>>>>>>the gismu list is a large and disorderly bag whose merit is that it >>>>>>>blankets semantic space, >>>>>> >>>>>>has this really been demonstrated? >>>>> >>>>> >>>>>How does one demonstrate that? (Or, for starters, measure semantic >>> >>>space?) >>> >>> >>>>I would have thought one thing Lojban does very well is classifying >>>>relations. "Semantic space" is just a (sometimes) convenient metaphor. >>>>There is no real space out there to be carved up into concepts. >>> >>> >>>Well, in a sense there is. If we only had thirty-five gismu (the lowest >>>minimum I've heard claimed as necessary) then we would need them all to >>>encompass a great deal of stuff. > > >>No, we could just pick thirty-five things that we thought were worth >>talking about. > > > Seeing as the thirty-five figure is claimed for a natural language, which > can talk about everything... Why should a natural language be able to talk about everything? Can you talk about astrophysics in Hittite? robin.tr -- "A Perl script is "correct" if it gets the job done before your boss fires you." - Larry Wall Robin Turner IDMYO Bilkent Univeritesi Ankara 06533 Turkey www.bilkent.edu.tr/~robin