From lojbab@GREBYN.COM Sat Mar 6 22:49:42 2010 Date: Tue, 10 Aug 1993 02:12:44 EDT From: Logical Language Group X-Mozilla-Status: 0000 Message-ID: An interesting post from comp.ai.nat-lang, and my private mail response. >From: u7911005@cc.nctu.edu.tw () >Subject: Re: VSO languages? (was: Prefix languages?) >Organization: National Chiao Tung University >Date: Wed, 16 Jun 1993 12:53:47 GMT >: The problem is considerably more complex. Part of the problem is that >: linguists -- including me -- are too often tempted to make the traditional >: [...] >: What of subjects and objects? Well, though subjects in languages of the >: normal Western European type, such as English, do tend to make the doer >: of the action (if there is one) the subject -- but they don't have to; >: it's perfectly OK to say "Charlie was arrested by the sheriff." > >Here the subject and object of the sentence are reversed by the use of >passive voice. Clearly, the meaning of "Charlie was arrested by the >sheriff" and "Charlie arrested the sheriff" is different. I don't know >if linguistics consider "Charlie" or "sheriff" the "subject" of the >passive-voice sentence, but I think the "sheriff" is the "true" subject. > >: What's a subject? Very simple: a noun or pronoun which >: in some particular language gets this special treatment reserved for one >: noun or pronoun per clause -- whatever that treatment may be. > >I see. When we analyze a sentence using predicate logic (i.e., >arrest(sheriff(), Charlie())), I think we can take everything as a >function, so: A noun would be a function without arguments; and a verb >or an adjective would be a function with one or more arguments. And the >"subject" would be the "first argument" of the verb function, which (as >you pointed out) doesn't have to be the "active argument" at all. > >(Here, some particular "features" of English are making thinking >generally about all kinds of languages a bit more difficult.) > >: Finally, someone else claimed in a post that the notion of "subject" may >: not apply in "ergative" languages such as Basque. Ergative languages have >: subjects all right, but they identify them on different principles. When >: a verb has a "doer" and a "receiver of the action", we would make the >: doer the subject -- they make the receiver the subject and give it exactly >: the same treatment they would give to the only noun in sentences such as >: _The children are running_, _The woman is tired_ etc. > >Would that be a language with the "passive argument" always >being the "first argument" to the verb? > >: Someone (if anyone is still reading) will jump on this and say that the >: doer of the action in active or ergative languages is the "syntactic >: subject". There's no need for such a concept. It turns out that in >: all the languages I know, two sorts of nouns and pronouns are syntacti- >: cally important: subjects in the sense that I have used the term, and >: the noun or pronoun which ranks highest in a semantic hierarchy -- what >: I called "most active" above. These can just be called "highest ranking >: NP"; there's no particular reason to say they're a separate sort of >: subject, or (quod Deus avertat) the *only* subject. > >: So: is a distinction between noun and verb necessary? Apparently yes; at >: least, all languages make distinctions, though some much more clearly than >: others. > >As I said above, the "everything's a function" (i.e., lambda calculus) >concept, when applied to designing (artificial) languages, can result in >no distinctions between nouns and verbs being needed. For example, in a >postfix artificial language based on lambda calculus (where "postfix" >means "all the function arguments (if any) comes *before* the function >name), the sentence "The sheriff arrested Charlie" would become "Sheriff >Charlie arrest." (Of course, the tenses of verbs are being ignored >here.) > >Some kinds of ambiguity in English can be avoided this way. For >example, the sentence "They are flying airplanes" have several different >meanings in (simplified) predicate logic: "flying(they, airplanes)", >"be(they, flying(airplanes))", etc. In the abovementioned postfix >language, these meanings would become: "Fly airplanes they" and "They >airplanes flying be". > >But (just as in any other language) the only way to *completely* avoid >ambiguity is to use parenthesis-like devices to denote the "number of >arguments" to each function. The problem is that, given a certain >function, there might be different number of arguments to it, and there >are even "optional arguments" identified by "keywords/prepositions". >For instance: "He gave." "He gave it." "He gave it to her." > >Without parenthesis-like devices, the sentence "He saw the boy with a >telescope" == "saw(he, boy, use:telescope)" would also mean "saw(he, >have(boy, telescope))" -- the same ambiguity would still exist with the >sentence "he boy with:telescope saw". > >: Are subjects and objects necessary? Certainly not. This is just one >: possible way to encode the difference between "doers" and "receivers of >: the action". And in fact, not all languages have them. > >Agree... In fact, when I come to think of it, it is rather strange that >a number of languages *do* use the doer/receiver difference to >distinguish subjects and objects, and even more languages have the >distinction between subjects and objects. > >: Are categorizations such as SVO justified? Are they useful? In general, >: yes -- but it gets really hairy when linguists start fighting about what >: is the "real" or "syntactic" subject of some sentence. For instance, >: Spanish is said to be SVO, with the proviso that object *pronouns* must >: [...] >: So SVO and its ilk are sometimes accurate for a given language, sometimes >: misleading, though accidentlally right much of the time (as with Spanish), >: and sometimes, according to other posters, irrelevant. > >Here I see three kinds of distinctions, all getting confused with >English: > - subject/object > - first argument/other arguments > - before verb/after verb > > > To: u7911005@cc.nctu.edu.tw u7911005@[140.113.4.17] > >I'm responding today because I just ran across your post on comp.ai.nat-lang >regarding subjects and objects, dated 16 Jun. Very interesting, and I am >curious as I slowly catch up on my 2 month behind mail reading to see if >there was any response. > >Your posting was interesting because in Loglan/Lojban it is indeed true >that there is little difference between a noun and a verb. In your >post, you make the following definitions: > >>When we analyze a sentence using predicate logic (i.e., >>arrest(sheriff(), Charlie())), I think we can take everything as a >>function, so: A noun would be a function without arguments; and a verb >>or an adjective would be a function with one or more arguments. And the >>"subject" would be the "first argument" of the verb function, which (as >>you pointed out) doesn't have to be the "active argument" at all. > >In Lojban we could not even say this much. Nouns may also have >arguments in Lojban (and I suspect in other languages as well) For >"sheriff", the obvious arguments are the person who fills the role, and >the place he is sheriff of: sheriff(John(), Nottingham()). So >[arrest(sheriff(John(), Nottingham()), Charlie())] would seem to be the >formalism I want. In Loglan/Lojban we attach the Nottingham onto the >sheriff easily, and in a way identical to an option way of attaching >arguments to the main predicate (verb). Using English content words in the >Lojban, this gives: > >le sheriff be la Nottingham bei fa la John cu arrest be la Charlie. > noun noun"object" noun "subject" >---------------------------------------------- ------ ------------- > verb subject verb verb object > >Note that in this case I expressed the 'subject' in 'VOS' order, >probably most natural if one were to actually express the sentence this >way in Lojban which is unlikely. Rather, as in natural languages, we >tend to express further information about the noun in the form of >relative clauses or relative phrases that attach to the noun but analyze >independently from it. Loglan/Lojban allows the option of going either >way. > >However, my statements are a little misleading, because in analysis we >came to a different conclusion. 'Nouns' in Lojban, which are the >arguments of the various predicates expressed in the language, are >either names (i.e. labels), pronouns, or "descriptions", which >themselves are verbs WHICH ARE EXPRESSED IN TERMS OF THEIR FIRST >ARGUMENT. i.e. "Sheriff of Nottingham" is a reference to the first >argument of the function 'Sheriff()', which is the person filling the >job. We are describing that person by expressing another verb about him >wherein he serves the first argument. > >It is abnormal therefore to express the first argument of such a noun >overtly as I did in more early pseudo-Lojban sentence mentioning "John", >Though it is permitted. Normally in English (I don't know about other >natural languages), an oppositive is used to express such a first >argument since it is just ANOTHER expression of the same first argument >that the descriptive argument itself is providing. Lojban allows it in >all three ways: as oppositive, relative clause/phrase, or attached as a >direct expression of the first argument as I did in my pseudo-Lojban >above. > >Interesting about this analysis is that it assigns a special grammatical >role to the first argument - i.e. it is what enables a verb to be turned >into a noun, (or actually, a predicate into an argument). Thus we could >label this first argument "subject" and it would be useful and >meaningful as a label. But in Loglan/Lojban, that first argument need >not be agent, passive, or any other particular semantic role in the >sentence - it just is the first argument of the referenced predicate, >whatever role may be played by that argument. In most Lojban "active >verbs" the first argument is indeed an agent, but there are some where >it is not, and reordering the places is a simple grammatical function >with no defined semantics beyond that reordering (we label this >re-ordering "conversion", and its usual purpose is indeed to move an >argument not naturally in the first position to that position so it may >be used in an argument). In Lojban words that equate to English nouns >or adjectives, the first argument is typically the thing that is >labelled by the noun or described by the adjective, but there are >usually other arguments defined as well (a standard or observer for many >'adjectives' for example). But this is only when we look at these words >with an English eye. For the sentences expressing sheriff(John, >Nottingham) and blue(eye, some_standard), we can look at these as verbs >just as easily as nouns or adjectives. The resulting English is >strange, but understandable: > >John sheriffs at Nottingham. > -------- >The eye blues according to some standard. > ----- > >where I have underlined the odd verb form of the "noun" and "adjective" >respectively. > > >Thus, I think I agree with you that: >>As I said above, the "everything's a function" (i.e., lambda calculus) >>concept, when applied to designing (artificial) languages, can result in >>no distinctions between nouns and verbs being needed. > >And Lojban indeed avoids some ambiguities of natural language through >this practice, though far more are avoided by the structures of the >formal grammar, which genrally act as parentheses that may be elided >when unnecessary. > >Note that we get a special definition for "subject" based on its logical >position, but otherwise the distinction is between predicate=function >and argument=object. Lojban thus can be attributed an ordering by >saying that an argument being a subject is thereby not an object, while >all the rest of the objects keep that label. > >By this rather arbitrary standard the unmarked order for Lojban is >either SVO or SOV with preference generally determined by the order of >ones natural language (hence most commonly SOV due to English influence, >these days, but it doesn't have to be.) But the markings necessary to >support any of the other orders is relatively minimal, and, for example, >certain predicates (those which in English are expressed as subjectless >modals, e.g "It's possible that I am coming" are often expressed in VSO >order even though the form is marked by a single word. But this >abnormal order is not mandatory.