From cbmvax!uunet!cuvma.bitnet!LOJBAN Sat Dec 7 00:12:15 1991 Return-Path: Date: Sat Dec 7 00:12:15 1991 Message-Id: <9112062356.AA13297@relay1.UU.NET> Reply-To: cbmvax!uunet!pucc.princeton.edu!jimc Sender: Lojban list From: cbmvax!uunet!pucc.princeton.edu!jimc Subject: Re: place structure of lujvo X-To: lojban@cuvmb.columbia.edu To: John Cowan , Ken Taylor In-Reply-To: Your message of "Fri, 06 Dec 91 14:32:03 PST." <9112062249.AA05284@julia.math.ucla.edu> Status: RO Godzilla strikes! Run for the hills! The dikyjvo are on the loose! David Cortesi writes: > ... > Nick: The x1 of sudga becomes the x2 of sudri'a...[further explanation, > leading to]...sudga means is-dry; > sudri'a is a single word meaning to dry: x1 dries x2 of x3 > ... > What I guess I don't understand is the range of possible differences. > In particular, I am (like the 4-year-old) desperately looking for rules > that I can apply. When I meet a strange lujvo, like Nick's "sudri'a," > under what rules do I translate it? If I cannot simply unpack it to > make a tanru and translate that, what am I supposed to do? Right on! What are we supposed to do with a lujvo (or a tanru, for that matter)? In JCB's anciently made lujvo there were very definite patterns such as the one Nick used in sudri'a. They were never officially written down and may have been unconscious. In any case, many years ago when rafsi were first invented by JCB I needed exactly the rules that David Cortesi again asks for. I wrote down what JCB was doing, and those were the first dikyjvo rules. They have gone through many revisions and improvements since then, though there has been a certain lack of acceptance by the powers that be. Lojbab has asserted that sometime in the future he will issue "guidelines" (not rules) for lujvo interpretation, but he thinks that algorithmically analysing a lujvo to extract a unique meaning from it is impossible in Lojban's present state, and unwise even if it were possible. He sees the following problems with dikyjvo: 1. In a steady-state natural language the speaker community by consensus of usage determines the meaning of each word. The linguists merely describe. Introducing rigid rules (prescriptive linguistics) goes against what are seen as the natural ungovernability of the language process. 2. The range of meanings to be covered by lujvo is broad. The rules select only a subset of possible meanings; for example, Dave's "dryly caused" would be excluded in favor of "caused to be dry". Restricting ourselves to one meaning per word is too limiting, especially if the allowed meaning is prespecified via an algorithm. 3. There are several patterns -- three, in the most recent formulation. Lojban is not pre-designed to allow unambiguous distinction between them. (Whereas -gua!spi was designed from the beginning with dikyjvo in mind.) It would take coordinated language features to resolve this ambiguity. In addition, there are two related problems also mentioned by Dave. First and simpler, there is a natural tendency to interpret a lujvo the same as its underlying tanru. Thus if rules are adopted to interpret lujvo they would naturally be used equally on tanru. Any tampering with the florid metaphoricity of tanru is strongly resisted. (Note that it is possible to preserve florid metaphor despite rules, by using a special cmavo to join truly metaphoric tanru terms.) The second problem is the old nemesis of cleft places. As an illustration, take "x1 is a wannabe-soldier". To make a lujvo for this, let's analyse it into English phrases headed by gismu: "x1 wants to be a soldier", or in Lojban, "x1 djica lodu'u sonci". Now the hard part: who is a soldier? Lojbab says that you can pretty well figure it out from context, which is true, but which sounds to me to be a lot closer to English and other nasty natural languages than it is to a "real" logical predicate language. In my ideal language I would be able to say authoritatively, "x1 of the containing bridi is the x1 of the abstraction (unless otherwise specified with an explicit sumti), because that's how you always use `want'". Dave asked how the wheat got to be in x1 of "dry", and I'm saying there should be an explicit rule. Here's how it works. (sudri'a steps on too many other issues, so I'll stick with my own example.) In wannabe-soldier, the tanru is sonci djica, the lujvo is soidji, and in both forms you are supposed to interpret the phrase as "x1 djica lodu'u x1 sonci". The rule for interpretation comes as part of the definition of djica -- for this and about 350 other words, there are particular common patterns of usage where containing bridi arguments get replicated into abstract sumti (and non-abstract ones too!) in ways that vary with the individual word. Actually there are only a few patterns repeated over and over, but there are enough exceptions in the place structures I have built that I found it useful to annotate the words individually. Lojbab resists such a plan because it designates specific argument places for specific purposes, thus providing grounds for saying that "cases" in the Latin sense are recognized in Lojban. Lojbab has a "case nihilism" policy (which I rather agree with) that the semantic role of each place of each gismu is unique; the obvious parallels within certain classes of places may be observed for learning aids, but are not recognized formally within the language. Thus there is no need to specify as policy just what the semantic role categories (cases) actually are. While I understand Lojbab's concern and I agree with his way of dealing with it for Lojban, I do not agree with carrying the "head in sand" case policy so far as to sacrifice the very useful possibilities of cleft places and dikyjvo. -- jimc