From LOJBAN@CUVMB.CC.COLUMBIA.EDU Sat Mar 6 22:48:00 2010 Return-Path: Delivered-To: veion@XIRON.PC.HELSINKI.FI Received: (qmail 26388 invoked from network); 9 May 1997 16:37:23 -0000 Received: from segate.sunet.se (192.36.125.6) by xiron.pc.helsinki.fi with SMTP; 9 May 1997 16:37:23 -0000 Received: from segate.sunet.se by SEGATE.SUNET.SE (LSMTP for OpenVMS v1.1a) with SMTP id <11.7FA3E55E@SEGATE.SUNET.SE>; Fri, 9 May 1997 18:37:23 +0100 Date: Fri, 9 May 1997 07:06:04 -0400 Reply-To: glossner@LUCENT.COM Sender: Lojban list From: John Glossner Subject: Re: Natural Language Processing Using Lojban X-To: Lionel Bonnetier , LOJBAN List To: Veijo Vilva Content-Length: 5406 Lines: 138 Message-ID: [[ This is an inprogress private thread that is being moved to the Lojban ]] [[ Forum. If there is significant interest, I will summarize the previous ]] [[ correspondances. Please join in. ]] [[ Thanks, John Glossner ]] Saluton Lionel, Lionel Bonnetier wrote: > > Saluton John, > > Vi do decidis esperantistighi? > Currently, my Esperanto studies have been limited to 2 weeks part time and that includes a new baby! However, what attracts me to Esperanto is the fact that I can understand quite a bit with practically no time investment! This is not true of Lojban. Now, I realize that I am of Euro-Germanic descent and that knowing some French and Dutch makes Esperanto almost too easy. However, after one hour, I was able to comprehend some sentences. Lojban is a different beast altogether. That is going to take much more time. > I do agree that Esperanto and Lojban are less tricky to parse at a > skeen-deep level, but after many years of using esperanto I must acknowledge > that it bears exactly the same semantic ambiguities as any other language on > the planet. > Agreed! My reasons for learning the two are very different. What I hope to achieve with a "language compiler" is the ability to represent certain semantic ambiguities at various levels. From my limited understanding of Lojban, I can specify ambiguity. However, in Esperanto, the ambiguity is a normal part of the language. Let's suppose I want to convert a Dutch text to a German text. What I would look for is a conversion of Dutch->Esperanto->Lojban->Esperanto->German. Now the obvious question is why go to Lojban? What I am hoping is that just as a compiler can perform certain optimizations at various level of Intermediate Representations (called IRs), that I can do the same. Where might this be useful? Suppose we have a sentence such as: The water can't be too high. I hope to resolve "meaning" ambiguity with Lojban. For example, if I can determine that the context is a nuclear power plant, then you always want lots of water :-) (some Saturday night live fans may remember a hilarious comedy stunt with this ambiguity as the main point) However, if I can determine that the context is glass of water, then I know if the water gets to high it will overflow. Now, I really don't know how to represent this in Esperanto (or any other language) unless I add a whole lot of words. I am hoping that Lojban can "optimize" some of these sentences and clarify the ambiguity. It may be only a hope but if it can be done (which I do not yet know), then I can have an interesting way of representing knowledge. Plus, with Lojban, it seems I can determine the truthfulness of falseness of a statement. > Have you heard about the Distributive Language Translation (DLT) Project > sponsored by the Netherlands in the '80s. It used Esperanto as the > turntable, and was competing with another project using numeric entries, > whose name I can't remember now. The money stopped flowing in at some point, > and I don't know what all that became. You may find info at some esperanto > web sites. > If this is now the program Ergane at http://www.travelang.com then yes I know of it. The S/W is free, the support is excellent, and I have found it very useful for learning Esperanto and Dutch! > > Several levels of representation might bring suppleness, the same way the > neuron layers cope with complex signals. > I agree. This is exactly why I'm exploring multiple representations. Esperanto merely solves the O(n^2) problem of language<->language translation. Lojban on the other hand is a way of dealing with the levels of representation. > But we have to go very deep behind > the language to meet Minsky's "assembly of the mind". > Here is where the fact that I'm a Computer Scientist/Architect will reveal itself :-) > I would be happy if we can continue these discussions -- I'm stopping now > for I'm made awkward by a whole night & day of awful C++ coding. > And you're still sane ;-) My favorite times at UNC were the 3 straight days of programming (and not even noticing that the days had passed :-) Anyway, I'm at Bell Labs and code daily in C++ - let's just say that it is an expressive language! :-) (try to parse the real meaning of that one in a program!!!) > I hope my English is understandable :) > As you have seen, your English is far better than my French. And, judging from what I've seen you write, I think it is better than my English!!! > > Maybe we should drive some of our threads in the Lojban list? Unless they > have a technical problem, no article has been posted for long, but I know > there are many computer scientists among them. > Agreed. Done as of this response. > I guess you've downloaded their lojban parser? > Yes but I've not played with it yet. I will get to that soon though. John -- ********************************************************************** * John Glossner * * * Adv. DSP Compiler / Architecture R&D * 55E-212 * * glossner@lucent.com * 1247 S. Cedar Crest Blvd * * http://einstein.et.tudelft.nl/~glossner * Allentown, Pa 18104 * * Ph: (610) 712-2532 * Fx: (610) 712-2790 * **********************************************************************