From @YaleVM.YCC.YALE.EDU:LOJBAN@CUVMB.BITNET Tue Sep 7 00:56:12 1993 Received: from ELI.CS.YALE.EDU by NEBULA.SYSTEMSZ.CS.YALE.EDU via SMTP; Mon, 6 Sep 1993 00:59:20 -0400 Received: from YALEVM.YCC.YALE.EDU by eli.CS.YALE.EDU via SMTP; Mon, 6 Sep 1993 00:59:15 -0400 Message-Id: <199309060459.AA01771@eli.CS.YALE.EDU> Received: from CUVMB.CC.COLUMBIA.EDU by YaleVM.YCC.Yale.Edu (IBM VM SMTP V2R2) with BSMTP id 6198; Mon, 06 Sep 93 00:57:42 EDT Received: from CUVMB.COLUMBIA.EDU by CUVMB.CC.COLUMBIA.EDU (Mailer R2.07) with BSMTP id 4811; Mon, 06 Sep 93 01:00:16 EDT Date: Mon, 6 Sep 1993 14:56:12 +1000 Reply-To: Nick Nicholas Sender: Lojban list From: Nick Nicholas Subject: Lujvo paper part 1 of 4 X-To: Lojban Mailing List To: Erik Rauch Status: O X-Status: "Doing the {belenu} blues": Lujvo place structure Paper. Version 2. 1. Introductory. 1.1. What tanru do. Tanru in Lojban are a combination of two or more predicates. Since each predicate expresses a relation between its arguments, tanru express a relation between the arguments of all their components. Take for example the tanru {gerku zdani}. {gerku} expresses a relation between an individual dog {le gerku}, and a dog breed {le se gerku}. {zdani} expresses a relation between a house {le zdani}, and someone housed {le se zdani}. The tanru {gerku zdani}, which denotes something to do with both dogs and houses, expresses a relationship between the dog, its breed, the house, and the house occupant. Though this relationship is inherently ambiguous, all these places can be named explicitly in a sentence. If we want to somehow relate Spot, a Saint Bernard, with the White House, home of the U.S. President, we *can* speak of: 1.1) {la blabyzdan. cu gerku befa la spat. bei la sankt. bernard. be'o zdani le merli'e} Of course, a tanru is not just a jumble of gismu: not all the sumti of its component gismu need be present in the tanru, and not all of them need have the same interpretation as they do in the original gismu. Consider of the possible interpretation of {gerku zdani} as dog kennel. In speaking of dog kennels, we are expressing a relation between a dog and a house; it is not as clear that we are also expressing a relation involving a dog breed, or a resident of the house *distinct* from the dog. If we are to speak of Spot's kennel, called Mon Repos, we may say: 1.2) {la monrePOS. cu gerku befa la spat. bei la sankt. bernard. be'o zdani la spat.} But obviously {le gerku} is the same as {le se zdani}, so we lose no precision by saying: 1.3) {la monrePOS. cu gerku bei la sankt. bernard. be'o zdani la spat.} Furthermore, it could be argued that a kennel is a kennel, regardless of what breed of dog lives in it; the breed is not important to the *definition* of a kennel, and only arguments important in such a way should be present in a bridi. If we accept this argument, the fact that Spot is a Saint Bernard does not add any important information to the claim that Mon Repos is its kennel. Thus there are only two important sumti left: 1.4) {la monrePOS. cu gerku zdani la spat.} 1.2. What lujvo do. A lujvo is equivalent to a tanru, but it unambiguously expresses a specific chosen relation between its arguments, out of the many an ambiguous tanru can convey. Which one it chooses depends on the relative usefulness of the concept, though for nonce use, this is equivalent to 'whatever the speaker decides'. (In writing a dictionary, we at least in theory have to be prepared to override someones nonce usage because we see a more obvious interpretation for a lujvo.) As distinct from a tanru, a lujvo does not nest its sumti: all its component sumti appear in sequence, as they do for a gismu. Compare: 1.5) {.i (mi) zmadu (do) [leka (mi) barda (leka xadycla kei) (lo'e remna) kei] (lo mitre be li pimu)} 1.6) {.i (mi) barda [be (leka xadycla kei) bei (lo'e remna) be'o] zmadu (do) (zo'e) (lo mitre be li pimu)} 1.7) {.i (mi) bramau (do) (leka xadycla kei) (lo mitre be li pimu)} "I exceed you in height by half a metre". ("I'm half a meter taller than you"; see below for the reason the {lo'e remna} place is omitted.) The place structure of a lujvo is extremely important. In Lojban, a predicate language, place structure is essential to the *definition* of a word, whether gismu or lujvo. As we saw with {gerku zdani}, not all the places of the component gismu will be as important in this definition. Some may be omitted altogether in the lujvo place structure; some may be merged with other places, and some may have their meaning shift. The ability to select, from the places of the original gismu, those that should go into the final lujvo is critical for making lujvo which clearly and succinctly express the desired relation. In using selbri in Lojban, it is important to remember the right order of the sumti. This becomes critical with lujvo: the set of places selected must be ordered in such a way that a reader, unfamiliar with the lujvo, is able to tell which place is which. The ordering of places should somehow be reproducible, and follow a consistent pattern. So good place selection ensures the lujvo meaning is clearly and economically expressed. Good place ordering ensures the lujvo place structure can be reproduced and understood without relying on context. Neither principle is absolute: there are cases where they need to be violated to accomodate lujvo meaning better. In general, they should be adhered to, but we should recall that these are guidelines only; they cannot be expressed as rigid rules. (To quote John Cowan: "Tanru mean whatever the speaker wants [constrained by the fact that the place structure of this tanru is that of the final term], gismu mean what the dictionary says. Lujvo, on the other hand, have meanings that are constrained by the place structures of the underlying gismu, but not fully determined by them.") For this reason, this paper does not have the same force as other papers published by the LLG, and does not represent official LLG policy. But the guidelines are still important. If a desired place structure does not match that obtained by these guidelines, the base tanru (veljvo) chosen may not be the best for the job, and may not actually express what is desired. In general, there should be no need to introduce places external to the component gismu, or to radically reorder the lujvo places (though this cannot be ruled out). Consider as an example the concept "meeting", which involves, at the least, people meeting (or workshopping), and a topic for the meeting. The gismu {penmi} (to meet) has three places: someone doing the meeting, someone met with, and a place at which the meeting occurs. Is {nunpenmi} a good lujvo for "meeting" as we have defined it? Not really: there is nothing in the place structure of {nu} or {penmi} that could give us a topic of discussion; in lacking that place, all {nunpenmi} can properly mean is "an act of meeting someone, an encounter". For the type of meeting in which the business of discussing is conducted, you need a veljvo which will make the appropriate places available. A topic of discussion is a {se casnu}, so {snununpenmi} better expresses the desired meaning. 2. Lujvo place selection. There are two ways to determine the arguments a lujvo should have. The first is to initially postulate a place structure, and try to derive it by elimination of places from the component gismu. The second is to start without any preconceptions of the final place structure, and eliminate places according to some notion of redundancy. If the result of eliminating places doesn't convey the information desired (remember that the place structure *is* the meaning of a bridi in Lojban), try a new veljvo. The few place structure derivations published in _ju'i lobypli_ have followed the first approach. In this study, we will follow the second approach (though we may still be guided by our preconceptions in eliminating places). We believe this approach encourages better-made lujvo, with their intended meaning more closely and predictably matching to the veljvo, and without relying on external knowledge. There are two criteria for eliminating places from the component gismu of a lujvo: * The place conveys redundant information. * The place conveys irrelevant information. Usually at least one place will be eliminated by redundancy. To explain why, we digress to consider the three main classifications of lujvo according to the relation understood between the seltanru and tertanru. 2.1. Lujvo classifications. 2.1.1. Lujvo classifications: {be}, {je}. We postulate the following hypothesis: all concepts expressable as tanru or lujvo in Lojban can also be expressed as bridi in which each selbri is a single gismu. We will call this hypothesis the Gismu Deep Structure Hypothesis --- GDSH.) This hypothesis has been tacitly assumed in much Lojban work. For example, consider the frequently made claim that we can disambiguate tanru in Lojban --- namely, that we can identify and present the different possible meanings of a Lojban tanru (and by extension, of a lujvo) in Lojban. This is why the cmavo {ta'unai} exists. How would this be done? We can either use tanru, lujvo, or gismu to express the various bridi necessary. But tanru are inherently ambiguous, and lujvo, though notionally unambiguous, are derived from ambiguous tanru. Either case gives a chicken-or-the-egg dead-end. The only possible way of unambiguous paraphrase must use gismu and cmavo only. But this is exactly the claim that the GDSH makes. Of course, the hypothesis is making rather strong claims, and languages tend to evolve away from that level of formality. But the results discussed in this paper are still valid if we use a weaker version of the hypothesis --- that the meaning of a lujvo is *approximately* defined by a GDS, but enough for its place structure to be determined from it. To illustrate the hypothesis, consider again the tanru {gerku zdani}. The following strings of cmavo and gismu can be considered possible disambiguations (GDS's) of the tanru: {.i ta zdani be lo gerku} {.i ta gerku gi'e zdani loimu'a civla} {.i ta zdani neta'i lo'e gerku .iva'i ta gerku tarmi zdani} If the GDSH is true, the meaning of a tanru can be expressed as a bridi where the seltanru and tertanru are in some *syntactic* relation ({broda je brode}, {broda be lo brode}, {broda pe lo brode}). Then at least one place of the tertanru will contain information shared with a place in the seltanru. Consider the following two tanru and their GDS's: 2.1) {ta gerku zdani} {ta zdani da poi ke'a gerku} {ta zdani be lo gerku} {z1 zdani z2=g1} 2.2) {ta banli sonci} {ta banli gi'e sonci} {ta banli je sonci} {ge da banli gi da sonci} {b1=c1 banli gi'e sonci} (In the above examples, and in other examples in this paper, a letter x followed by a number n denotes the nth place of the gismu starting with x. Thus z1 is the first place of {zdani}. The equals sign means that the two places typically denote the same thing. This might not always be the case, though. If a tortoise lives in a doghouse, we can say that {le resprtestudine. cu se gerzda}; but the tortoise, while being a {se zdani}, isn't a {gerku}! But this issue is complicated: we might not even want to say that {le gerzda cu gerzda le resprtestudine.}, but simply that {le gerzda cu zdani le resprtestudine.}) Most (though not all) tanru and lujvo can be analysed by one of the two paradigms exemplified above. The seltanru and tertanru may be related in a GDS by the word {be}. In that case, the seltanru gismu contains information on a place (usually x2) of the tertanru. Such tanru are called asymmetrical in the tanru paper. Example (2.1) shows this: the bridi {gerku} gives further information on the x2 place of the tertanru {zdani} --- {le se zdani cu gerku}. In effect, the place z2 denotes the same entity as the place g1, and they shouldn't both be included in the place structure of {gerzda}. Rather than have the place structure of {gerzda} as: {gerzda}: ... ... is the entity housed in the doghouse; ... is the dog... one has: {gerzda}: ... ... is the dog, which is the entity housed in the doghouse... The entity housed and the dog are the same thing, in this definition of "doghouse". (There is some fine print to this, which we'll return to.) On the other hand, the two gismu may both be making claims that are true of a given entity. In that case, the relationship may be expressed using the word {je}, or a word with a similar semantic function (like {joi}). Such tanru are called symmetrical in the tanru paper. Example (2.2) shows this: it is true of entity {da} that {da banli}, as well as that {da sonci}. So the places b1 and s1 denote the same object, and they shouldn't both be included in the place structure of {balsoi}. Rather than having the place structure: {balsoi}: ... ... is great; ... is a soldier... one has: {balsoi}: ... ... is a great-soldier... To stress the importance of GDS (which will become more apparent when we discuss place ordering), we will term the paradigm exemplified by (2.1) "be-tanru", and that exemplified by (2.2) "je-tanru". 2.1.2. Lujvo classifications: {belenu}. As a special case of be-tanru, consider (2.3): 2.3) {mi gasnu lenu le gerku cu citka loi guzme} I make the dog eat melons {mi nu lo gerku cu citka loi guzme kei gasnu} {mi nunctikezgau le gerku loi guzme} I feed the dog melons This is an example of a causative, a predicate in which an agent brings about an action described by the seltanru. Thus 'feed' is the causative version of 'to eat'; the transitive verb 'sink' (eg. "I sink boats") is the causative of the intransitive 'sink' (eg. "I sink in the ocean"). While all languages have causatives, there are different ways to express them. English only occasionally forms the causative verb form directly from its non-causative counterpart (eg. 'to sit' --- 'to seat' = 'to make someone sit'). The corresponding causative is usually an unrelated word, or an entire phrase (eg. 'to make someone lie down' is the causative for 'to lie down'). The derivation of causatives in Turkish and Esperanto, on the other hand, proceeds quite regularly. 'To eat' in Esperanto is 'mangxi', and 'to feed' is 'mangxigi'; 'to sink (intransitive)' is 'sinki', and 'to sink (transitive)' is 'sinkigi'. In Turkish, these verbs are respectively 'yemek', 'yedirmek', 'batmak', and 'batIrmak'. It is obvious why single verb causatives like those in Turkish and Esperanto would be advatageous in a language like Lojban. The alternative, using a full GDS, is longwinded and counterintuitive. To say {mi gasnu lenu da citka de} involves sumti nesting, and conceals the fact that we perceive feeding as a direct relation between three entities (the feeder, the fed, and the food). {nunctikezgau} has no such disadvantage: as (2.3) shows, the three entities are related directly by just one bridi. It is safe to predict that causatives will become quite prevalent in Lojban. This is because of the small number of gismu in Lojban: many concepts, for which we have verbs or adjectives in English, fall into causative/non-causative pairs; more often than not, only the non-causative predicate will be represented by a gismu. Take the verb "to record". The gismu {vreji} does not correspond to this verb, but to the predicate "to be a record". If we want to say "I record data", we need to say the equivalent of "I act so that X is a record of data", {mi gasnu lenu da vreji loi datni}, or more elegantly and succinctly, {mi nunveikezgau da loi datni}. Now, {nunctikezgau} expresses a relation between an actor and an *event* of eating ({nu citka}); as such, it is a straight-forward be-tanru ({gasnu be le nuncitka}). In this lujvo, we would like a place for the actor (g1), for the eater (c1), and for the food (c2). {nuncitka}, as we will see in section 5, has the place structure n1 c1 c2: the event of eating is x1, the eater is x2, the food is x3. g2 is obviously the same as n1 ({le se gasnu cu nuncitka}). It is possible to omit *both* g2 and n1 from the place structure: since we already know that we are discussing an act of eating, it is redundant to leave in a place for the event, when we have already given all the event's sumti. So "{nunctikezgau}: agent x1 causes event x2 of x3 eating x4" would be giving redundant information, when all the *pertinent* information about the event x2 is given by arguments x3 and x4. (This is not strictly true: the event of eating is specified by all the arguments of the bridi {citka}, not just those built into its place structure. There are time and location, for example: {nu mi citka ca la pacicac. vi le ctikumfa}. The only argument for keeping a separate place for {lenu citka} in {nunctikezgau} is that the auxillary places of the event {nu gasnu} can differ from those of {nu citka}. You can bring about someone eating at 1 PM by an action of yours done at 9 am. The GDS is: {mi ca la socac. gasnu lenu da citka ca la pacicac.} If we can keep a place for {nu citka}, we can transform this to the lujvo: {mi nunctikezgau lenu da citka ca la pacicac. kei da ca la socac.} But this lujvo is so redundant (saying nothing that {mi gasnu lenu da ba'e citka ca la pacicac. kei ca la socac.} doesn't), and so counterintuitive, that it is best to leave out the abstract sumti place, and assume it is implicitly specified as much as is necessary by the remaining lujvo places: {mi nunctikezgau da ca la socac.} If we need to specify the abstract sumti information more precisely, we can always recourse to the GDS form. This follows general principles given in section 2.3, and empirical data from natural langauges. Single words (like {nunctikezgau}) are used to encode direct relations between a small number of arguments, while whole phrases (like the GDS, or its English equivalent "I made the dog eat at 1pm, at 11am") encode less direct relations between a possibly greater number of arguments.) For lujvo made with {gasnu}, the seltanru will usually specify an event. We may thus omit the {nun} rafsi as implicit, and say simply {ctigau}: agent x1 causes x2 to eat x3. (x1 feeds x3 to x2.) In this case, the place g2, the action performed, is equivalent to an *abstraction* composed of all the places of {citka}. Rather than having a be-lujvo, where a single place of the seltanru substitutes for a place in the tertanru, we now substitute a *number* of places for that single place. This particular paradigm we will call a belenu-lujvo; it is useful not only for causatives ({rinka} and {gasnu} tertanru), but most tertanru with an abstract sumti in x2 or x3. be-lujvo, je-lujvo, and belenu-lujvo are the three types of lujvo Jim Carter has identified in his earlier work on lujvo. Remember that belenu-lujvo are really an abbreviation of be-lujvo based on abstract sumti. {ctigau} is really an abbreviation for {nunctikezgau}, and is comparable to other lujvo with elided rafsi, considered in section 4. Furthermore, this is not an abbreviation that can be performed automatically. There are only a few tertanru for which the rafsi {nun} is obviously implicit, and to assume it too widely can lead to ambiguity. For example, the x2 of {djica} is either an event or a simple sumti. {le soidji}, in the be-lujvo interpretation, is someone who wants a soldier ({djica be lo sonci}). In the belenu-lujvo interpretation, it is someone who wants to be a soldier, a wannabe soldier ({djica be lenu ri sonci}), or perhaps someone who wants someone else to be a soldier ({djica be lenu zo'e sonci}). In these cases, it is safer to say {nunsoidji} for the latter case, and {soidji} for the former. Lojbanists must be careful to use the abbreviated form only when no reasonable ambiguity will result. This is much likelier with bridi like {gasnu} and {rinka} than with, say, {djica} or {nelci}. Despite these complications, belenu-lujvo are powerful means in the language of rendering succinct and manageable concepts out of quite verbose GDS forms, thereby increasing expressive power. 2.1.3. Lujvo classifications: Summary. * In je-lujvo, the x1 of the tertanru is semantically "doubled up" by (denotes an object identical to, or is also described by) the x1 of the seltanru, so it shouldn't be necessary for both these places to appear in the lujvo place structure. * In be-lujvo, the x2 of the tertanru (typically; sometimes, the x3) is doubled up by the x1 of the seltanru: again, the two places needn't both appear in the lujvo place structure. * In belenu-lujvo, the x2 (typically) of the tertanru is an event abstraction, whose selbri is the seltanru, and whose internal sumti are the sumti of the seltanru. This place in the tertanru is thus replaced by the places of the seltanru bridi. We must stress that this type of analysis, though it can be made to apply to many lujvo, is not appropriate for all of them. Elimination of redundancies in lujvo not fulfilling these patterns has to be done case-by-case. Even with lujvo falling within these paradigms, there are often extra redundant places that need to be eliminated. Take the lujvo {ninpe'i}, "to newly meet", which has been used to translate "to be introduced to someone". We can analyse this as a be-lujvo: its GDS is {penmi be lo cnino}. The full GDS, though, is {da penmi de poi ke'a cnino da kei di}. In other words, not only is c1=p2 (the person met is the person who is new), but also c2=p1 (the person doing the meeting is the person to whom the other is new). The place structure resulting should take advantage of this redundancy: {da ninpe'i de di}, x1 is introduced to x2 (who is new to x1) at x3. 2.2. Eliminating irrelevant places as lujvo definition. 2.2.1. Tertanru versus seltanru place elimination. By using lujvo classification, we have concentrated on eliminating redundant lujvo places. It is also important to eliminate places irrelevant to the *definition* of the relation desired. This is a skill essential for lujvo makers. Leaving in or omitting places can make a big difference to the concept the lujvo ends up specifying. Consider as an example {tciterjai}, the handle of a tool. The gismu involved have the following place structures: {jgari}: x1 grasps/holds/clutches/seizes x2 with x3 {tutci}: x1 is a tool/utensil used for doing x2 So there are five places involved; eliminating redundancy (the {se jgari} is obviously the {tutci}), we have four: j3 j2=t1 j1 t2. It turns out we can eliminate two more places. The first place is t2, and the kind of elimination it exemplifies is prevalent amongst be-lujvo. In many lujvo, the tertanru already has an x1 place in the lujvo place structure. The other places of the tertanru are supplementary information about that x1. There is usually no reason why this information shouldn't appear in the x1 place itself, rather than in the overall place structure. Thus, if we are considering the handle of a scraping tool, it seems hard to justify the place structure {ti tciterjai lo smuci lenu citka} --- x1 is the handle, x2 the tool, x3 what the tool is used for. What the tool is used for is important to the definition of the tool, but not of the handle. It makes much more sense to say {ti tciterjai lo smuci be lenu citka} --- which corresponds more closely to the actual syntactic structure of its translation, "this is the handle of a spoon for eating". "for eating" belongs with "spoon", and not with "handle"; for that reason, you can't say *"this is the handle of a spoon, I believe, for eating" as readily as "this is the handle, I believe, of a spoon for eating". You can't interrupt a phrase of words that belong together (what syntacticians call a *consistuent*). The same thing occurs with our original example, the doghouse. It makes little sense to say {la monrePOS. gerzda la spat. la sankt. bernard.}. The breed is important to the definition of the dog, but not to the definition of the doghouse. {la monrePOS. gerzda la spat. noi gerku la sankt. bernard.} ("Mon Repos is the doghouse of Spot, a Saint Bernard") makes much more sense. The second place of {tciterjai} we would omit is {le jgari}. A handle is a handle, irrespective of who grasps it. A handle does not become a different handle just because Buffy rather than Van Helsing grasps it. To leave in the "grasper" place, we would have to argue that the person grasping the handle affects the essence of what a handle is. But this is not the case. Which tool the handle belongs to, on the other hand, is very important to the definition of the handle. (It is true that what is a handle for *humans* may not be a handle for dogs, and vice versa. In that case the place may be kept, but its meaning will shift. It no longer denotes the individual handling the tool, but the class of individuals who can do so. The difference is akin to that between {le citka} and {le se cidja}, and we will return to it shortly.) Another example of irrelevant place omission is {laurba'u}, as a translation of "to bellow". Its component gismu have the following place structures: {bacru}: x1 utters verbally/says/phonates [vocally makes sound] x2 {cladu}: x1 is loud/noisy at observation point x2 by standard x3 Eliminating the obvious redundancy, we have: b1=c1 b2 c2 c3. But how relevant is c2 to bellowing? A person bellowing in New York will be pretty quiet at an observation point in Boston. But that person is still bellowing. What matters is not where the bellow is loud and where it isn't, but that bellowers intend their speech to be loud. {le bacru cu cladu zu'i}, in other words --- they are loud where they need to be, and where precisely they are loud is not important to the definition of bellowing. As a further example, take {bramau}, "bigger". In lojban, there are three arguments to "big": the big entity (b1), the way in which it is big (b2), and what it is big relative to (b3). The last place is included because "big" is a subjective concept. It doesn't make sense to say things are big in the absolute: bigness depends on a reference standard. Thus, an elephant is big to a mouse, but small to a planet: {.i lo xanto cu barda fi lo ratci gi'e cmalu fi lo plini}. Now consider {bramau}. Normally, we would include all the places of {barda} in the place structure of {bramau}. But there is nothing relative about one thing being bigger than another. Whether you have the vantage point of a mouse or a planet, an elephant is bigger than a human. So it makes little sense (in fact, it is confusing) to say that something is bigger than something else, *relative to* something. For this reason, a {te barda} place does not belong in the place structure of {bramau}. Similar arguments can be made for other such comparatives involving ******************************************************************************* A freshman once observed to me: Nick Nicholas am I, of Melbourne, Oz. On the edge of the Rubicon, nsn@munagin.ee.mu.oz.au (IRC: nicxjo) men don't go fishing. CogSci and CompSci & wannabe Linguist. - Alice Goodman, _Nixon In China_ Mail me! Mail me! Mail me! Or don't!!