From cbmvax!uunet!math.ucla.edu!jimc Tue Apr 30 15:24:58 1991 Return-Path: From: cbmvax!uunet!math.ucla.edu!jimc Return-Path: Message-Id: <9104301542.AA14086@euphemia.math.ucla.edu> To: lojban-list@snark.thyrsus.com Subject: Re: anaphor means what? (was: oops! correction) In-Reply-To: Your message of "Mon, 29 Apr 91 11:43:05 EDT." Date: Tue, 30 Apr 91 08:42:39 +0100 Status: RO > Date: Mon, 29 Apr 91 11:43:05 EDT > To: lojban-list@snark.thyrsus.com > From: cbmvax!snark.thyrsus.com!cowan@uunet.UU.NET (John Cowan) > Subject: Re: anaphor means what? (was: oops! correction) > kartr. jim. writes: > > Do I interpret you right that the official Lojban doctrine is [already] > > that anaphora copy words, not referents? > > Only in the presence of "ra'o". Let's see now... (Pardon sloppy lujvo) (1) moi djim (Jim speaking: -- Note, antecedent of "mi" is here) (2) .i mi zbacinpilka lemi zdani (I'm painting my house [assemble a skin of paint]) (3) (Parser churns invisibly here) (4) .i moi djan (John speaking -- new antecedent of "mi") (5) .i dua (supposed to be previous sentence anaphor, antecedent = (2)) (6) .ije ra'o due (I'm sure that's the wrong anaphor, but again antecedent is supposed to be (2) but under the influence of ra'o) Sorry if I've got the wrong cmavo; I left my list home again. Anyway, what pops out from (5) and (6)? Let's symbolize the referent of "la djim" by [la djim]. In step 3, the referent from (1) would be plugged into sentence (2), which would become (2r) [la djim] zbacinpilka le [la djim] zdani Then (5) would pick up a copy of (2r) so the English equivalent would be "yep, that's what you're doing". On the other hand, (6) grabs (2) with the original anaphora and resets them with local antecedents: (6r) [la djan] zbacinpilka le [la djan] zdani So am I. Now the same exercise with copying words. In step 3 the WORDS of the antecedent (1) would be inserted into (2): (2w) la djim zbacinpilka le la djim ku zdani and (5) would copy that. Semantically, the result is virtually indistinguishable from the result of referent substitution (and similarly under the influence of ra'o). I think people get confused when they hear "copy words" because it means to them "copy the original anaphora then rebind them". Clearly to make copying work the copy source has to already have all anaphora replaced by antecedent words, carrying with them sufficient context (tenses etc.) in word form so the copy will have the same referents as the original. Why bother? Being oriented to actually producing results from a parser, I see the process of converting words to referents as requiring practically an act of God. Thus I do not want to mess with referents until the last possible moment, and similarly, I want the referent resolver to have to deal with the simplest possible input, namely selbri, and particularly not anaphora. If I copy words I triple or quadruple the number of sumti and selbri I have to resolve (you've seen some -gua!spi examples with copied tense info), but it's all repetitive and I'd rather quadruple the run time and get the program written, than fail to finish a version that was supposed to be more efficient. Stated another way, if you do philosophical theory about anaphora separately from theory about referents, both jobs are easier. True, you probably can't do this successfully with English because it's too tangled, but you can set up a language artifact to ease your work. Also, I think that once you get over the "copy original anaphora" error, students can unambiguously understand what they're supposed to do with anaphora under the copying interpretation, whereas the idea of referents is new to many people. Thus the copying interpretation should be easier to teach. -- jimc