Message-Id: <9202110620.AA28701@cunixf.cc.columbia.edu>
Date:         Mon, 10 Feb 1992 23:51:06 -0500
Reply-To: Logical Language Group <cbmvax!uunet!GREBYN.COM!cuvmb.cc.columbia.edu!lojbab>
Sender: Lojban list <cbmvax!uunet!CUVMA.BITNET!cuvmb.cc.columbia.edu!LOJBAN>
From: Logical Language Group <cbmvax!uunet!GREBYN.COM!cuvmb.cc.columbia.edu!lojbab>
Subject:      Re: baselines and semantics
To: John Cowan <cowan@SNARK.THYRSUS.COM>,
        Eric Raymond <eric@SNARK.THYRSUS.COM>,
        Eric Tiedemann <est@SNARK.THYRSUS.COM>
Status: RO

hopefully we would choose a good set of keywords for a non-English language,
and the problem wouldn;t be too severe.  However, it has NEVER been our intent
to define semantics by keywords.  Even the soon-obsolete 40-character place
structures are much more clear than the keywords.

When I say that there is no unambiguous presentation of semantics, I mean, to
use your example, that there is no way for me to communicate to you
 unambiguouss-
ly the full semantics of mruli, or for that matter, of hammer.  I can define
some key properties of a hammer, but I must use other words, each of which is
semantically ambiguous on its own.  I can show you several hammers, an deven
show you how they are used, but then if I show you a borderline case of a
stick that has had its end solidified into a block of concrete, lying on said
concrete as a base like:

  |
  |
  |
{___}

you might be uncertain whether it is a hammer until/unless you actually see
it used.  On the other hand, if you suddenly and urgently needed to pound
a nail in, and that were at hand, you would probably not hesitate to grab and
use it.  Thus, whether it is a hammer to YOU depends on the cicumstances
wherein you are thinking about the conceopt.  Those circumstances differ
for all people, and vary woith time.  So whether something is a 'hammer'
or not is semantically loose, and I can imagine no way to define the concept
of a hammer to cover all possible circumsatnces.

Lexicographers deal with the question of meaning by trying to draw a circle
of meaning that encompasses each cluster of semantics in a 'sense' of the word,
but recognizing that any definition that covered all uses of a word would be so
general and vague as to be useless to people trying to deal with more specific
usages.

lojbab