From cbmvax!uunet!PRC.Unisys.COM!dave Wed Jan 9 12:39:30 1991 Return-Path: From: cbmvax!uunet!PRC.Unisys.COM!dave Message-Id: <9101091715.AA00266@gem.PRC.Unisys.COM> Date: Wed, 9 Jan 91 12:15:06 EST To: cbmvax!snark.thyrsus.com!cowan Cc: lojban-list@snark.thyrsus.com In-Reply-To: John Cowan's message of Mon, 7 Jan 91 12:07:19 EST Subject: Re: Is this right? Not yet, but keep trying! Status: RO I've been making a (not very determined) effort to learn a bit of Lojban, but this message is certainly off-putting. If you have to express that "This is not a home for Brad" from winter 91 until spring 91 as ca le temci be le dunra be li 91 bei le vensa be li 91 then this is ridiculously long (at least, for native English speakers), and is going to get contracted. You can be sufficiently precise in any language if you just use enough words. Since the whole point of Lojban is to be precise and unambiguous, something is wrong if description of a simple time interval requires this many words. I have no doubt that anyone "really" speaking Lojban would find a shorter, if less precise, way of expressing this idea. BTW, I have done some work in the use of time intervals in artifical intelligence, and might be able to help some if you want precise ways of describing relationships between intervals (e.g. the interval that Brad is not here and the interval of winter to spring). Someone else would have to supply the Lojban words, though. The most widely used scheme for describing the relationship of two intervals is James Allen's. He defines the 13 possible exact relationships of two intervals. I've invented some schemes that are simpler when the relationship of the intervals is incompletely known, e.g. if you know one interval overlaps the other, but you don't know which interval started first or which ended first. I'd use the above sentence fragment as an example, but I don't know what it means; the translation back into English was given as during the time-interval from the winter of year 91 to the spring of year 91 which sounds to me like a zero-length interval, since spring begins when winter ends. Which of these is the intent? How much is known? |--------winter--------|--------spring--------| 1. |---------------------------------------------| (all winter and all spring) 2. |---------------------| (sometime in winter to sometime in spring) 3. |----------------------| (exactly during the winter) 4. |---------------------------------| (all winter and part of spring) Or something else? Perhaps the Lojban is precise on this, and it is simply the translation back into English that is ambiguous; I don't know enough Lojban to tell. All the English tells me is that Brad will not be here at some point during the winter. If the Lojban is equally ambiguous, then it seems to me that it fails in its primary goal, in addition to being too wordy. BTW, a distinction should be made between a statement that is ambiguous because it's intent cannot be discerned (as above), and one that is merely incomplete, because it deliberately conveys partial knowledge (e.g. "sometime in winter to sometime in spring"). Anyone? -- Dave Matuszek (dave@prc.unisys.com) -- Unisys Corp. / Paoli Research Center / PO Box 517 / Paoli PA 19301 -- Any resemblance between my opinions and those of my employer is improbable. < You can put a mouse on an IBM. And you can put a radio on a motorcycle. >