From @YaleVM.YCC.YALE.EDU:LOJBAN@CUVMB.BITNET Mon Oct 11 04:36:51 1993 Received: from ELI.CS.YALE.EDU by NEBULA.SYSTEMSZ.CS.YALE.EDU via SMTP; Mon, 11 Oct 1993 04:36:51 -0400 Received: from YALEVM.YCC.YALE.EDU by eli.CS.YALE.EDU via SMTP; Mon, 11 Oct 1993 04:36:46 -0400 Message-Id: <199310110836.AA14107@eli.CS.YALE.EDU> Received: from CUVMB.CC.COLUMBIA.EDU by YaleVM.YCC.Yale.Edu (IBM VM SMTP V2R2) with BSMTP id 4181; Mon, 11 Oct 93 04:34:55 EDT Received: from CUVMB.COLUMBIA.EDU by CUVMB.CC.COLUMBIA.EDU (Mailer R2.07) with BSMTP id 5204; Mon, 11 Oct 93 04:37:42 EDT Date: Mon, 11 Oct 1993 09:35:53 BST Reply-To: I.Alexander.bra0125@oasis.icl.co.uk Sender: Lojban list From: Iain Alexander Subject: Re: TECH: Lean Lujvo and fat gismu To: lojbab@access.digex.net Cc: lojban@cuvmb.cc.columbia.edu Status: RO X-Status: This is a Big Subject, and I'm probably not going to do it justice in this selmri: How >do< you choose (the place structures for) your predicates in a language based on the Predicate Calculus? Certainly in Lojban, we have conflicting requirements. On the one hand, we have a set of gismu which is intended to cover the most commonly used predicates for expressing oneself in the language. In this role, they want to have either places for _all_ the aspects you might want to specify, or some subset of these which is judged to cover the most common cases, and rely on the extension mechanisms to cope with the rest. On the other hand, these same gismu are also the _basis_ for these very extension mechanisms, either by proxy (as it were), in tags using the associated BAI, or in their own right in {fi'o}-constructed tags or as components of lujvo. In this role, it would probably make things easier if they had a small number of places, typically two, which would allow you to build up a more complicated concept from simpler pieces, each new component adding one new sumti (which fills one of the component's places), and relating it in its own way to the rest of the event (which fills the other place of the two-place component relationship). So, the price you pay for the (neat, elegant) economy of using the same units for both purposes is the agony of juggling the place structures to make it all work. Tough. There are no easy answers, at least not in general. We're going to have to make some compromises and allow some leeway and hope for the best. It's easy to construct horrendous examples for any particular choice of place structures. If I want to talk about the relationship between a "text" and the language it's expressed in, I've first got to decide what to use for "text". Let's suppose I decide I mean a {se cusku}, rather than anything more specific. But {cusku} doesn't have a "language" place, so I've got to use another word to tack this on. We normally use {bau} or {bangu}, although this has a seemingly irrelevant-in-this-context place for the people who speak the language. (Various other gismu have a language place. Most of them are too specific - {[ve] tavla} is about a specific {ve cusku}, which isn't always appropriate, and {te/ve fanva} only applies to a particular situation. Most of the grammatical terms (e.g. jufra, cmavo) have a language place, but are too limiting. {se gerna}'s pretty close, but the one I really like is {te valsi} - there are always some words involved.) But suppose I decide to go with {bau/bangu} - it's traditional, probably because it's the x1 that's interesting. I've then got to combine these two concepts, using something like {[se] cusku bau la lojban.} or a lujvo {mi bausku dei la lojban.}. This doesn't look like any of the standard lujvo-construction patterns I remember, because the place structures don't connect at all, and monjvo heuristics are going to give us a "people- who-speak-the-language" place which isn't very interesting. Perhaps {cusku} should have a language place, but then someone would come up with a lujvo involving {cusku} where the language was irrelevant. It's a judgement call, and we're going to get some of them wrong, and discuss them, and change them, and it's a living language, isn't it? I could do the same for the subject/topic of a statement. Maybe {[se] notci} covers this, although it doesn't have a language place. {jufra} covers both, but is restricted to a single "sentence" ({me la'e zo .i}?). Etc... It would no doubt be interesting to have a language which allowed us to explore lots of different ways of constructing predicates from (simpler?) parts, but I don't think Lojban is it. Lojban has several goals, and manages to cover most of them pretty well. It appears to have just about enough mechanisms to allow constructions when they're needed, but they're there as enablers, to allow us to get on with the business of using the language, rather than as features to be investigated in their own right. I agree in principle with John(?) that gismu places should all be there in the lujvo, but normally not be used. What would be useful is some way of determining and/or indicating which places are marginal - ideally they should be displaced towards the end of the list. But I don't see any way of doing this. Neither do I see how you {zi'o} out places in a component of a lujvo. (I don't see {bangu zei be zei zi'o zei cusku} being practical, somehow.) banzu .i nunsipna tcika mi'e .i,n.