From a.rosta@dtn.ntl.com Tue Aug 14 18:33:24 2001 Return-Path: X-Sender: a.rosta@dtn.ntl.com X-Apparently-To: lojban@yahoogroups.com Received: (EGP: mail-7_3_1); 15 Aug 2001 01:33:23 -0000 Received: (qmail 51923 invoked from network); 15 Aug 2001 01:33:22 -0000 Received: from unknown (10.1.10.26) by l7.egroups.com with QMQP; 15 Aug 2001 01:33:22 -0000 Received: from unknown (HELO relay3-gui.server.ntli.net) (194.168.4.200) by mta1 with SMTP; 15 Aug 2001 01:33:22 -0000 Received: from m56-mp1-cvx2c.bre.ntl.com ([62.253.88.56] helo=andrew) by relay3-gui.server.ntli.net with smtp (Exim 3.03 #2) id 15WpJC-0007Px-00 for lojban@yahoogroups.com; Wed, 15 Aug 2001 02:17:23 +0100 To: Subject: RE: [lojban] Chomskyan universals and Lojban Date: Wed, 15 Aug 2001 02:32:27 +0100 Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="UTF-8" Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable X-Priority: 3 (Normal) X-MSMail-Priority: Normal X-Mailer: Microsoft Outlook IMO, Build 9.0.2416 (9.0.2910.0) In-Reply-To: X-MimeOLE: Produced By Microsoft MimeOLE V5.00.2615.200 Importance: Normal From: "And Rosta" X-Yahoo-Message-Num: 9626 Jay: > On Tue, 14 Aug 2001, And Rosta wrote: >=20 > > Off the top of my head, here's an inexhaustive list of what I think > > unnatural: > > > > * the syntactic structure assigned by the yacc grammar > > * terminators >=20 > Many natural languages can be approximated by unambiguous context-free > grammars. Even more languages can be handled by ambiguous ones. So a > LALR(1) grammar doesn't seem strange, just unlikely to occur naturally. I'm not sure how your remarks pertain to mine, but at any rate, what I meant is: * In natlang syntax, all phrases have lexical heads; so a natlang grammar of Lojban would make every phrase an X Phrase, where X is a selmaho. * Natlang syntax doesn't have terminators (AFAIK) =20 > > * MEX >=20 > I wouldn't be surprised if something similar evolved in languages if > talking about math were a significantly more important part of the lives > of all speakers. Right. But that's not how things are in actuality. =20 > > * the complexity of Tense, and aspects of its semantics >=20 > It seems a lot easier than conjugating Latin was in high school! :) >=20 > > * semantically arbitrary place structures >=20 > They don't seem to be arbitrary to me (at least not the order). Seems as > though they're all the most frequently used things which might be related > to each other. What I mean is that you can't generalize about the semantics of, say, x2s across predicates, and, in principle, you can't predict which semantic argument is mapped to x1 and which to x2. > > * SE >=20 > Sort of unfair to list it as its own thing, as its merely a side effect o= f > the place structure. The selmaho SE, both because it swaps x1 and x2/3/4/5/... and because it's recursive. > > * SI/SA/SU >=20 > Hey. Natural languages have ways to indicate that you just made a mistake= . > They're not as explicit in the amount of mistake you made, but they're > there. But, as you say, they're less explicit. Because speakers can't remember which words they've just said. > > * go'e go'o nei no'a >=20 > That seems like a somewhat arbitrary list of anaphora to claim unnatural. > What about go'i or ri? It is a bit arbitrary, but the motivation is that natlangs do have sumti anaphora and bridi anaphora, but AFAIK not the ordinal system that the Lojban anaphors are organized into. =20 > > * LAU >=20 > s/LAU/lerfu/ >=20 > And again, lerfu just make explicit something already in existance. >=20 > > I don't think Lojban will test whether a putatative universal is > > genuine, because these universals pertain to natural language, and > > Lojban won't be a natural language until it is acquired as a > > native tongue. >=20 > Geesh, you say that like it won't ever happen. I don't think it will, but it would become a different language if it became a natlang. I suppose that if unnatural features survived unchanged into a lojban creole, then there would be some very=20 significant conclusions to be drawn. --And.