From cbmvax!uunet!CUVMA.BITNET!LOJBAN Thu Oct 10 18:44:40 1991 Return-Path: Date: Thu Oct 10 18:44:40 1991 Message-Id: <9110102244.AA26049@relay1.UU.NET> Reply-To: cbmvax!uunet!MATH.UCLA.EDU!pucc.PRINCETON.EDU!jimc Sender: Lojban list From: cbmvax!uunet!MATH.UCLA.EDU!pucc.PRINCETON.EDU!jimc Subject: Re: Miscellanea X-To: nsn@MULLIAN.EE.MU.OZ.AU X-Cc: lojban@cuvmb.columbia.edu To: John Cowan , Eric Raymond , Eric Tiedemann In-Reply-To: Your message of "Thu, 10 Oct 91 11:56:59 +1000." <9110100159.AA05877@julia.math.ucla.edu> Status: RO nsn@MULLIAN.EE.MU.OZ.AU sends a portmanteau: > You know, I was waiting for jimc to come up with dikni cmavo. I formulated th > above rule in May, but abandoned it because it doesn't work with most BAI. > For example, {bau}. {mi sanga bau la lojban} is not: {la lojban cu bangu lenu > mi sanga}, because that's not the interpretation of the x2 of {bangu}. (Alleged Rule: in a phrase the tagged sumti is interpreted in x1 of the gismu associated with the BAI, and the main bridi is in x2, and analogously (point of confusion) for sentence connectives.) I would call it a blemish in the places of bangu, or maybe better, the BAI for saying what language a phrase is in should not be "bau" but something else derived from a gismu with the right places. Like jufra, "x1 is a sentence about x2 in language x3", and you have to say teju'a (I suppose ju'a is already assigned to something else), and you need a heuristic rule a' la -gua!spi to guide the main bridi anaphor into the place expecting a sentence. Or you have to redefine "jufra" with x2 and x3 swapped, and say seju'a. What a mess! But I value consistent rules and would put up with this particular mess. > basri'a: x1 causes that x2 replaces x3. Again pushdown. > basri'a is a translation of (animate agent) replaces (something1) by (some- > thing2). But something1 corresponds to x3 above, and something2 to x2. The > places come out jumbled. Not if you interpret the English as "x1 substitutes x2 for x3". It's a simple :-) conversion problem, more in the English than in the Lojban. > But there are no transitives in lojban; and a uniform > interpretation of such compounds is not logical perversion, it is internal > consistency. Why should we have one rule for zmadu and another for basti? Hear, hear! > But when the crunch comes to the bite (or whatever), you can't be dikni all > the time. But it's surprising how much you can be dikni, particularly if you have full power to adjust gismu places to work well with the adopted dikyjvo rules. > mi djuno ledu'u do klama dakau... (+alternatives and translation) > where the sentence might be said to be seen in some absolute form, a phrase > in a PROLOG program. All three refer to an instantiation of X in GOES(you,X). > Let the instantiation of X be y. Then > GOES(you,y) is in your databank... (etc.) > > The UI-ist interpretation Mark uses has > > GOES(you,X) is in your databank; GOES(you,y) is in my databank (etc.) I am VERY happy to see this kind of analysis of the Lojban sentences and would like to see a lot more of it. In a logical language it's very important to nail down the semantics of what is said. This is why I emphasize so much the algorithmic and mechanistic procedures for analysing the referents of a sumti or bridi -- as a supplementary issue to just what the individual gismu "really" mean. I know I give a headache to many people. I regret that, but I think it's a very important issue. -- jimc