Date: Sat, 4 Oct 1997 23:54:48 -0500 (EST) Message-Id: <199710050454.XAA14591@locke.ccil.org> Reply-To: absieber@eos.ncsu.edu Sender: Lojban list From: Andrew Sieber Subject: Simple Lojban questions X-To: Lojban list To: John Cowan X-Mozilla-Status: 0001 Content-Length: 2137 Lines: 34 Regarding what is and isn't sentactically or semantically ambiguous in English or Lojban, and the idea of decreasing levels of ambiguity without ever reaching _zero_ ambiguity, I think I need to wait until after I've spend some time reading over the reference grammar before I continue. I need to have at least a basic understanding of the language before I try to talk about its pros and cons. That said, I understand the point that was made about the level of ambiguity involved in communication relying on people's ideas of "normalcy"; ie. a "small" school would (normally) be considered bigger than 3 inches tall. I understand perfectly well that this type of ambiguity _must_ be present in all but the most boring, detail-laden communication; if I am having a "normal" conversation with a "normal" person, it is reasonable for me to comment that the school across the street is "small", without having to go into detail about the physical dimensions of the school, or even the fact that I am indeed referring to physical dimensions rather than some other characteristic, such as number of students. This, I understand, is semantic ambiguity (to a degree), since the person I'm talking to doesn't necessarily have the same ideas of what a "normal" size is for a school. A thought I just had is that we can break the ambiguity into two parts: dimension and quantity. A _general_ quantity is given (small), but _no_ dimension information is given; only the object whose dimension is being described--the school. Whether the dimension is physical size, student body count, faculty count, annual budget, etc. is not specified. I thought that I was referring to something different when I mentioned the difference between the Lojban versions of "a person who uses computers" and "a computer which uses [stuff]", but perhaps I wasn't. I was under the impression that there was syntactic ambiguity involved, but since I don't yet know how Lojban syntax works, I'm not sure. In any case, as I said, I'll wait until I've read some of the book before I comment further. Looking forward to November... --Andrew absieber@eos.ncsu.edu