To: cowan@marob.masa.com, foote@cs.berkeley.edu
Subject: time flies
Date: 25 Oct 90 03:34:53 EDT (Thu)
From: uunet!cbmvax!snark.thyrsus.com!lojbab
Message-Id: <9010250334.AA01368@snark.thyrsus.com>
Status: RO

re yours:
>I sincerely doubt that I could have had this much fun in Logban.

That's Lojban, and you could have had much more fun.  I'll stay away from
'time flies', though, which relies more on grammatical ambiguity than
semantic (we could play with it too, but it would take me too long to 
explain).  Instead, take the "plastic cat food can cover" that was
discussed a feww weeks ago during the Lojban discussion.  My math is
kinda hazy at this time of nite but I think there are some 120 interpretations
using just the grammatical elements mentioned by John Cowan in his response
(logical and and simple left- or right- grouping).  The poser of the problem
posted just 9 English samples as his appraent guess as to the range of
English interpretations.  Care to try for the other 111, (and explanations
thereof).  

For a (MUCH) simpler example that is important to the history of Loglan/Lojban
try "pretty little girls school".  James Cooke Brown, inventor of Loglan
posited 17 meanings in his 1975 >Loglan 1<, claiming that English could render
only about a half-dozen different ones easily, and perhaps 10 with great
strain.  The Loglan community increased this to 18 within a year or two, and
by the time thorough analysis was completed about another 5 years later, the
{
I am not posting this to sci.lang directly, since I don't know how, and the
point is of course rather too minor to bother my circuitous relay for posting
since I didn't read your message till a week too late as it was.

--lojbab = Bob LeChevalier President, The Logical Language Group, Inc.
lojbab@snark.thyrsus.com