From cbmvax!uunet!cuvma.bitnet!LOJBAN Thu Dec 12 19:00:15 1991 Return-Path: Date: Thu Dec 12 19:00:15 1991 Message-Id: <9112122136.AA17179@relay1.UU.NET> Reply-To: cbmvax!uunet!pucc.princeton.edu!jimc Sender: Lojban list From: cbmvax!uunet!pucc.princeton.edu!jimc Subject: Re: more thoughts on lujvo X-To: lojban@cuvmb.columbia.edu, newlang@buphy.bu.edu To: John Cowan , Ken Taylor In-Reply-To: Your message of "Mon, 09 Dec 91 11:03:00 +1200." <9112082302.AA16125@julia.math.ucla.edu> Status: RO Chris Handley writes: > Dave Cortesi raises some interesting ideas on th relationship > between the speaker and the listener. This is especially true if > these are of different cultures and may therefore apply different > "world knowledge" to the interpretation. > > What happens if the auditor is a computer? Even reasonably smart > computer programs are (typically) woefully lacking in any sort of > world-knowledge and have very little culture to fall back on... Some Loglanists and also Language X people have been reluctant to put computer processing high on their list of goals. I also doubt that either language will actually be used a lot in practice for computer processing. But the discipline of making the language comprehensible to a computer, I think, is very valuable. It implies, for example, that ambiguity is extremely expensive and should be avoided wherever feasible. Computer orientation also puts a premium on simplicity. Both of these dimensions have a big impact on how easy it is for the humans to learn and use the language, and to use it as a model in language research. Thus even though I don't expect to use it much on computers, I feel that accomodating computer analysis is important. -- jimc