From lojbab@lojban.org Tue May 06 18:34:12 2003 Return-Path: X-Sender: lojbab@lojban.org X-Apparently-To: lojban@yahoogroups.com Received: (EGP: mail-8_2_6_6); 7 May 2003 01:34:12 -0000 Received: (qmail 32863 invoked from network); 7 May 2003 01:34:12 -0000 Received: from unknown (66.218.66.218) by m11.grp.scd.yahoo.com with QMQP; 7 May 2003 01:34:12 -0000 Received: from unknown (HELO lakemtao02.cox.net) (68.1.17.243) by mta3.grp.scd.yahoo.com with SMTP; 7 May 2003 01:34:12 -0000 Received: from lojban.lojban.org ([68.100.92.1]) by lakemtao02.cox.net (InterMail vM.5.01.04.05 201-253-122-122-105-20011231) with ESMTP id <20030507013411.LYA24359.lakemtao02.cox.net@lojban.lojban.org> for ; Tue, 6 May 2003 21:34:11 -0400 Message-Id: <5.2.0.9.0.20030506210928.03622220@pop.east.cox.net> X-Sender: rlechevalier@pop.east.cox.net X-Mailer: QUALCOMM Windows Eudora Version 5.2.0.9 Date: Tue, 06 May 2003 21:29:07 -0400 To: lojban@yahoogroups.com Subject: Re: [lojban] measuring semantic space In-Reply-To: <10d.23f47ac0.2be96916@wmconnect.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"; format=flowed From: Robert LeChevalier X-Yahoo-Group-Post: member; u=1120595 X-Yahoo-Profile: lojbab X-Yahoo-Message-Num: 19654 At 03:37 PM 5/6/03 -0400, MorphemeAddict@wmconnect.com wrote: >In a message dated 2003-05-06 5:56:54 AM Eastern Daylight Time, >lojban@yahoogroups.com writes: > >>How does one demonstrate that? (Or, for starters, measure semantic space?) > >my first thought is: by starting with everything and successively dividing >it into smaller spaces. rick morneau (creator of katanda/nasendi) does >this or very similar. > >second thought: use concept lists (e.g. roget's thesaurus). A Roget's analysis of the gismu list was performed in the early history of the language http://www.lojban.org/publications/wordlists/roget.txt http://www.lojban.org/files/history/ROGETNEW.TX1 >i don't know what the 35 minimal concepts that have been mentioned here >are (any pointers, anyone?), but if i choose 5 concepts, something is >likely to get left out. if i choose 50 or 500, i think the same is >true: something will get left out. btw, toki pona comes to mind as a >minimalist language. The concept of "blanketing semantic space" was important when we designed the gismu list, and several approaches were used to ensure completeness, erring on the side of redundancy. On the other hand, new concepts are always being invented, and thus there is the potential need to cover an expansion of semantic space, so we have fu'ivla which can be used for borrowings and coinings, as well as additional potential to add gismu (but hopefully not for a generation or so). There has been at least one attempt to map semantic space with only 30 roots. Somewhere in my deep archive (paper only), I have a letter describing this. The guy who devised it was selling his tome defining all English words in terms of these roots for something like $100. (I may have mentioned it in an early JL - likely before issue 7) It was pretty gross (and rather naive in its interpretation of English words as if they had only one meaning). lojbab -- lojbab lojbab@lojban.org Bob LeChevalier, President, The Logical Language Group, Inc. 2904 Beau Lane, Fairfax VA 22031-1303 USA 703-385-0273 Artificial language Loglan/Lojban: http://www.lojban.org