From nobody@digitalkingdom.org Fri Mar 18 06:35:20 2005 Received: with ECARTIS (v1.0.0; list lojban-list); Fri, 18 Mar 2005 06:35:22 -0800 (PST) Received: from nobody by chain.digitalkingdom.org with local (Exim 4.44) id 1DCIZ0-0007L1-AQ for lojban-list-real@lojban.org; Fri, 18 Mar 2005 06:34:58 -0800 Received: from web81302.mail.yahoo.com ([206.190.37.77]) by chain.digitalkingdom.org with smtp (Exim 4.44) id 1DCIYu-0007Kg-25 for lojban-list@lojban.org; Fri, 18 Mar 2005 06:34:57 -0800 Message-ID: <20050318143420.63792.qmail@web81302.mail.yahoo.com> Received: from [65.69.48.37] by web81302.mail.yahoo.com via HTTP; Fri, 18 Mar 2005 06:34:20 PST Date: Fri, 18 Mar 2005 06:34:20 -0800 (PST) From: John E Clifford Subject: [lojban] Re: lojban ills: implicit emphasis To: lojban-list@lojban.org In-Reply-To: 6667 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii X-Spam-Score: -2.5 (--) X-archive-position: 9604 X-ecartis-version: Ecartis v1.0.0 Sender: lojban-list-bounce@lojban.org Errors-to: lojban-list-bounce@lojban.org X-original-sender: clifford-j@sbcglobal.net Precedence: bulk Reply-to: lojban-list@lojban.org X-list: lojban-list Whether or not conversions (reorderings) serve a useful rhetorical purpose (emphasis or the like), they have a major logical purpose, getting the quantifiers (and the like) in the right places wwithout putting everything in prenex normal form: {roda prami de} is not {de se prami roda} (s reordering does not always preserve semantic content) being the convenient forms of the more "logical" {ro da su'o de zo'u da prami de} and {su'o de ro da zo'u da prami de} respectively. The device is not enough to cover all cases, but it takes care of the vast majority. --- Ben Goertzel wrote: > Hi, > > So far as I know the creators of Lojban never > claimed nor intended it to be ISOMORPHIC to > logic. > > Rather, the goal as I understand it was to make > a language that provided the best possible > compromise between > > * logical soundness > * practical usability > > A language that was simply a verbalizable form > of predicate logic would fail the "practical > usability" criterion. > > As Cycorp has found, carefully and correctly > encoding an ordinary English sentence in > predicate logic takes a trained individual at > least 10-15 minutes. This kind of > time-requirement is not viable for a spoken or > written language. > > What is really cool about Lojban, IMO, is that > it shows how far one can go in the direction of > logicality, without making huge sacrifices in > terms of the time required to express > commonsensically simple things. > > Regarding your comment about the existence of > different orderings of sentences that are > semantically equivalent, I don't think emphasis > is the main point here, but rather cognitive > naturalness. If you tried to impose a fixed > ordering on all Lojban sentences, I think you'd > be making the process of sentence-formulation > too cognitively unnatural, which means that > speaking and understanding would be made to > take a significantly longer time than with the > current version of Lojban. So I view this as > an example of the necessary compromise between > logical precision and practical usability by > human beings. > > Of course, the Lojbanic system of > precision/usability compromises is not the only > possible such system, and there may be a better > one. But it is clear to me that over the > history of Loglan/Lojban a lot of clever folks > have put a lot of thought into "tuning" the > Lojbanic system of compromises. Even if one > found another logical-language-structure that > was fundamentally better than Lojban, I still > suspect it would take a lot of effort to "tune" > it into a really workable language (which so > far as I can tell, Lojban *just barely* is, in > spite of all the work that's gone into it...) > > > - Ben Goertzel (also a Lojban novice) > > ----- Original Message ----- > From: xah lee > To: lojban@yahoogroups.com > Sent: Friday, March 18, 2005 5:49 AM > Subject: [lojban] lojban ills: implicit > emphasis > > > while studying lojban, i find it less and > less of my rather ignorant > original expectations. (however, i still find > studying it greatly > fruitful and has useful applications) > > anyway, here's one snippet of reasons that > just came to me, and i > thought i'd just throw it out to the open. > > For example, one can use different ordering > to say the same thing but > with different emphasis, e.g. > > do vecnu ta mi > > ta se vecnu do mi > > means the same thing but with different > emphasis. > > Now, lojban claims to be isomorphic this or > that or logic and explicit > semantic this or that, but here there is a > implicit meaning attached to > emphasis. As a manner of speaking, we may > ask, why didn't lojban > provide some mechanism to indicate emphasis, > instead of using the > rather implicit and undefined emphasis > attached to ordering? > > Xah > xah@xahlee.org > http://xahlee.org/PageTwo_dir/more.html > > > > To unsubscribe, send mail to > lojban-unsubscribe@onelist.com > > > Yahoo! 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