From lojban-out@lojban.org Wed Jun 21 09:01:26 2006 Return-Path: X-Sender: lojban-out@lojban.org X-Apparently-To: lojban@yahoogroups.com Received: (qmail 41400 invoked from network); 21 Jun 2006 15:52:05 -0000 Received: from unknown (66.218.67.35) by m25.grp.scd.yahoo.com with QMQP; 21 Jun 2006 15:52:05 -0000 Received: from unknown (HELO chain.digitalkingdom.org) (64.81.49.134) by mta9.grp.scd.yahoo.com with SMTP; 21 Jun 2006 15:52:05 -0000 Received: from lojban-out by chain.digitalkingdom.org with local (Exim 4.62) (envelope-from ) id 1Ft4wk-0004EE-NV for lojban@yahoogroups.com; Wed, 21 Jun 2006 08:48:50 -0700 Received: from chain.digitalkingdom.org ([64.81.49.134]) by chain.digitalkingdom.org with esmtp (Exim 4.62) (envelope-from ) id 1Ft4v3-0004DM-NB; Wed, 21 Jun 2006 08:47:06 -0700 Received: with ECARTIS (v1.0.0; list lojban-list); Wed, 21 Jun 2006 08:46:57 -0700 (PDT) Received: from nobody by chain.digitalkingdom.org with local (Exim 4.62) (envelope-from ) id 1Ft4uc-0004DA-De for lojban-list-real@lojban.org; Wed, 21 Jun 2006 08:46:38 -0700 Received: from web81315.mail.mud.yahoo.com ([68.142.199.41]) by chain.digitalkingdom.org with smtp (Exim 4.62) (envelope-from ) id 1Ft4ua-0004D3-5H for lojban-list@lojban.org; Wed, 21 Jun 2006 08:46:38 -0700 Received: (qmail 36186 invoked by uid 60001); 21 Jun 2006 15:46:37 -0000 Message-ID: <20060621154637.36184.qmail@web81315.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Received: from [70.237.199.54] by web81315.mail.mud.yahoo.com via HTTP; Wed, 21 Jun 2006 08:46:37 PDT Date: Wed, 21 Jun 2006 08:46:37 -0700 (PDT) In-Reply-To: <737b61f30606202224o343f520ax965acb6410a7014f@mail.gmail.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit X-Spam-Score: -0.6 (/) X-archive-position: 11815 X-ecartis-version: Ecartis v1.0.0 Errors-to: lojban-list-bounce@lojban.org X-original-sender: clifford-j@sbcglobal.net X-list: lojban-list X-Spam-Score: -0.6 (/) To: lojban@yahoogroups.com X-Originating-IP: 64.81.49.134 X-eGroups-Msg-Info: 1:0:0:0 X-eGroups-From: John E Clifford From: John E Clifford Reply-To: clifford-j@sbcglobal.net Subject: [lojban] Re: ambiguity in lojban X-Yahoo-Group-Post: member; u=116389790; y=sOVQi8ppNi5IDGgckDQ9Mzza0UDFTCnCTL-EriKwjO8NLR8RMQ X-Yahoo-Profile: lojban_out X-Yahoo-Message-Num: 26238 For most of its history, Loglan/Lojban's claim of unambiguity was cashed out as claims that 1) the speech stream was uniquely decomposed into words, 2) the word string was uniquely parsed and 3)no words are polysemous. Both of the first two claims were false when first made but served as goals. They are now pretty much true (I haven't seen a clear case of a problem in quite a while, the issue of cmavo in names aside.) The third is always suspect for a living language and, insofar as it is true, points to Lojban's deadness, which no doubt will be solved some day. And various pressures from an Academy may well keep polysemy to a minimum. When Loglan started, language data processing was barely fetal, let alone in its infancy. And the first problem to solve was parsing (you can't figure out what a sentence means until you figure what it is). Even today, the best you can get for a natural language sentences is an array of possibilities and perhaps some attached probabilities -- even with content and context taken into account. Of course, this is often more than enough for practical purposes, but not having to go through the processing involved would speed thing up considerably, as would avoiding the hard cases. Hence Lojban's apparent virtue. No one in his right mind ever claimed that Lojban was ambiguity-free in a broad sense, nor even that it was significantly better at extention issues than other languages (bracketting the possibility that Lojban words are -- or will be when the language is filled out -- narrower than those in other languages. This actually seems improbable to me, a firm believer in what you gain in one place you lose in another). It is good to be reminded of this, though the relative percentage of problem in each of these areas is open to some question (and prgamatic problems are left out here altogether). --- Chris Capel wrote: > On 6/20/06, Yanis Batura wrote: > > I think no one has ever pretended that Lojban can 10 times ease the > > understanding of the language by a machine. > > I think some of the older texts did imply that Lojban would be a *big* > help in machine language comprehension. I haven't seen anyone really > advocate this recently, though. I bet it's been many years since this > position has really been plausible--maybe in the early 90s it was much > more defensible. But I wanted to throw it in there anyway. :-) > > Chris Capel > -- > "What is it like to be a bat? What is it like to bat a bee? What is it > like to be a bee being batted? What is it like to be a batted bee?" > -- The Mind's I (Hofstadter, Dennet) > > > To unsubscribe from this list, send mail to lojban-list-request@lojban.org > with the subject unsubscribe, or go to http://www.lojban.org/lsg2/, or if > you're really stuck, send mail to secretary@lojban.org for help. > > To unsubscribe from this list, send mail to lojban-list-request@lojban.org with the subject unsubscribe, or go to http://www.lojban.org/lsg2/, or if you're really stuck, send mail to secretary@lojban.org for help.