From nobody@digitalkingdom.org Mon Aug 15 12:27:29 2005 Received: with ECARTIS (v1.0.0; list lojban-list); Mon, 15 Aug 2005 12:27:30 -0700 (PDT) Received: from nobody by chain.digitalkingdom.org with local (Exim 4.52) id 1E4kcC-0002mM-Ub for lojban-list-real@lojban.org; Mon, 15 Aug 2005 12:27:21 -0700 Received: from web81306.mail.yahoo.com ([206.190.37.81]) by chain.digitalkingdom.org with smtp (Exim 4.52) id 1E4kc8-0002mB-72 for lojban-list@lojban.org; Mon, 15 Aug 2005 12:27:20 -0700 Received: (qmail 98632 invoked by uid 60001); 15 Aug 2005 19:27:14 -0000 Message-ID: <20050815192714.98630.qmail@web81306.mail.yahoo.com> Received: from [68.88.33.134] by web81306.mail.yahoo.com via HTTP; Mon, 15 Aug 2005 12:27:14 PDT Date: Mon, 15 Aug 2005 12:27:14 -0700 (PDT) From: John E Clifford Subject: [lojban] Re: Loglish: A Modest Proposal To: lojban-list@lojban.org In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1 X-Spam-Score: -1.6 (-) X-archive-position: 10372 X-ecartis-version: Ecartis v1.0.0 Sender: lojban-list-bounce@lojban.org Errors-to: lojban-list-bounce@lojban.org X-original-sender: clifford-j@sbcglobal.net Precedence: bulk Reply-to: lojban-list@lojban.org X-list: lojban-list --- Ben Goertzel wrote: > > > This is definitional, of course, but, since, > for > > the most part, Loglan syntax is a subset of > > English syntax (formally speaking, of > course), > > the name seems to fit. The point is that > > keeping people to that subset is very > difficult > > if they are native speakers (or even very > fluent) > > in the full set. > > I'm not sure.. > > In a sentence like > > "la Ben cu murder lo chicken lo pliers quu > weapon" > > half the words are Lojban/Loglish cmavo and > half are English, and if you > take out the cmavo you certainly don't have > syntactical English... As I noted, I was talking grammar, not surface structure, so we have agent-action-patient-means in all the various cases (not some other order, for example); only slightly up from a totally fundamental sentence. But I assume (indeed, you more or less say) that there are eatterns that you will not use. Just what these are remmains to be seen, of course, but -- even after they are specified -- how do you keep native speakers from using them? > I don't really think that sticking to Loglish > syntax instead of English > syntax would be a major problem, but as I said > before, trying to learn to > speak Loglish fluently is really the only way > to resolve this issue. > > Unfortunately I've forgotten most of the > smattering of Lojban I learned 6 > months ago, so for me becoming fluent in > Loglish will require some effort... > > > It is not clear what percentage of ambiguity > is > > which, especially since they often go > together > > (different syntactical structures often rely > on > > different readings of the same word -- or > > conversely). But English words are > generrally > > very ambiguous (even when we stick to a > single > > etymology for a phonemic sequence) and this > will > > carry over into Loglish to its disadvantage > > (relative to Lojban at least). > > I suspect that the need to specify word-sense > using qui would push Loglish > speakers to habitually use less ambiguous > English words. > > For instance > > "ko get lo tape" > > is ambiguous because "tape" could be the sticky > kind or the music kinds, so > one could specify it using > > "ko get lo tape qui music" > > but it's easier to just say > > "ko get lo cassette" Yes that seems likely to happen -- if folks remember the ambiguity in crucial cases (usually the "tape" ambiguity won't be activated, for example). Let me see if I understand what would be the point of all this. We can train a machine up in Loglish and then we can talk to it -- feed it information orask it question or program it or... . Clearly we can do the same in Lojban and rather more easily, since Lojban is already open to unique parsing and decomposition, whiles Loglish needs to have it grammar specified to reach that point (and then people need to be trained to stick to that grammar). Now one of the thngs we want the machine in question to do is process masses of linguistic data in English (I gather). But these processes -- other than perhaps actual translation -- have nothing to do with Loglish, so, assuming the processing can be done, asking for it, directing it, and the like can be done as well in Lojban as in Loglish. Ah, but Lojban has a limited vocabulary whereas Loglish has all of English (with some restrictions imposed by decomposition processes and parsing and perhaps other things (which restrictions people have to learn and abide by). But Lojban can grow immediately as needed and, for the most part, the new words will come with their associations in place from the get-go, making expanding to deal with them a direct matter, without consulting WordNet (though it will help to have a WordNet- like dictionary for Lojban). Lojban also has no ambiguity of the sort that will send Loglish readers to WordNet to work out what this word means here -- even when it is "qui" flagged. So, the machine ill probably be able (given the paradise that it can do it at all) to deal with Lojban more rapidly and accurately (with lkess pre- and post-editing) than Loglish. Note that these features of Lojban are in place, not promissory notes as with Loglish. I suppose that it is more likely that Loglish will be developed for these purposes than that programs will be developed to deal with Lojban, but that is an economic accident, quite separate from the merits of the project from the point of view of complexity (not factoring the learning curve, ovbviously). To unsubscribe from this list, send mail to lojban-list-request@lojban.org with the subject unsubscribe, or go to http://www.lojban.org/lsg2/, or if you're really stuck, send mail to secretary@lojban.org for help.