From nobody@digitalkingdom.org Sun Sep 21 11:37:19 2008 Received: with ECARTIS (v1.0.0; list lojban-list); Sun, 21 Sep 2008 11:37:19 -0700 (PDT) Received: from nobody by chain.digitalkingdom.org with local (Exim 4.69) (envelope-from ) id 1KhTo7-0003v2-1D for lojban-list-real@lojban.org; Sun, 21 Sep 2008 11:37:19 -0700 Received: from el-out-1112.google.com ([209.85.162.181]) by chain.digitalkingdom.org with esmtp (Exim 4.69) (envelope-from ) id 1KhTo3-0003ul-6u for lojban-list@lojban.org; Sun, 21 Sep 2008 11:37:18 -0700 Received: by el-out-1112.google.com with SMTP id z25so284364ele.1 for ; Sun, 21 Sep 2008 11:37:13 -0700 (PDT) DKIM-Signature: v=1; a=rsa-sha256; c=relaxed/relaxed; d=gmail.com; s=gamma; h=domainkey-signature:received:received:message-id:date:from:to :subject:in-reply-to:mime-version:content-type :content-transfer-encoding:content-disposition:references; bh=fGkAvM6Vf+T1XLAXlZt8ugSlOuTpKWMMfTR2em6B+JE=; b=o3aEw1f+WEo8XN8/k6e6Etg7XpySUFV+L0TnSwRQhRjZ4uFyPHnEgsm8rP2BEsCPSn e9EonSWnKZIwZJ4B3Mxm4KVpxDW+aYS+Dp02/a4Poso7/+itOdxaszYeVV4M6ObWftxt xPTQvi7U0sGt6b7hWvwcaOATP/GJ/mZZ9QyzY= DomainKey-Signature: a=rsa-sha1; c=nofws; d=gmail.com; s=gamma; h=message-id:date:from:to:subject:in-reply-to:mime-version :content-type:content-transfer-encoding:content-disposition :references; b=Cz40Y79yXzm+gOtKVRpxGNKMNMlCcB8v1xlV0jCwpPUDuWml0qW92tZDS/A1h0fIga HH31QdCIz7O5o/C/adQmhB2yhsbO0bu2VNoEGqMHiHTosI8LLGradgnVO2bAn/cyfBZ+ i19UhWGDep2Xt66KTv2Yxy9+Api2POhpgDjM8= Received: by 10.150.181.11 with SMTP id d11mr5130444ybf.210.1222022233839; Sun, 21 Sep 2008 11:37:13 -0700 (PDT) Received: by 10.150.199.20 with HTTP; Sun, 21 Sep 2008 11:37:13 -0700 (PDT) Message-ID: <737b61f30809211137m68daea76nb9b699b0ddcfd475@mail.gmail.com> Date: Sun, 21 Sep 2008 13:37:13 -0500 From: "Chris Capel" To: lojban-list@lojban.org Subject: [lojban] Re: How to spread the word In-Reply-To: <1222020317.3622.4.camel@tulcod-desky> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Disposition: inline References: <1222020317.3622.4.camel@tulcod-desky> X-Spam-Score: -0.0 X-Spam-Score-Int: 0 X-Spam-Bar: / X-archive-position: 14781 X-ecartis-version: Ecartis v1.0.0 Sender: lojban-list-bounce@lojban.org Errors-to: lojban-list-bounce@lojban.org X-original-sender: pdf23ds@gmail.com Precedence: bulk Reply-to: lojban-list@lojban.org X-list: lojban-list On Sun, Sep 21, 2008 at 13:05, Auke Booij wrote: > Returning to the discussion on why it is needed. > Recently found in a news article: > "The specific section will have to have its temperature raised > significantly above its usual absolute zero so engineers can go in and > repair it without dying, which is apparently a very time-consuming > process." > What does the part starting at "which" refer to? The dying? the > temperature raising? The repairing? The going in of engineers? I think, given the context, the only reasonable interpretation is that "which" refers to the repairing, although I'm sure the dying could be a lengthy process as well. The referent of the subordinate phrase can only be determined using the meaning of the sentence as a whole, which is a very common occurence in English. Most of the time it happens you don't notice at all. This is a slightly unusual case in that the potential reference nearest the subordinate phrase, dying, makes superficial sense and during the brain's parsing of the sentence, may be the preferred candidate for a few tenths of a second, lending it some amount of conscious awareness and thus the potential to be noticed. The worst you can accuse this sentence of is clumsiness. Any good copy editor could tell you when the referent is too ambiguous and have you rephrase the sentence. The above sentence would probably be an edge case. But in Lojban this process is improved only slightly. While the referent may be technically unambiguous (unless using one of the explicitly ambiguous pro-sumti), I have encountered plenty of instances in published Lojban text (not just IRC, but proofread stuff) where the subordinate phrase was apparently, and rather obviously, pointing to the wrong phrase. I would never have noticed these things if I had not been reading it in my parser, and I doubt any other Lojban reader would either, except rarely. Just because you're reading Lojban doesn't mean you stop automatically and unconsciously correcting small ambiguities/errors. Just because you're reading Lojban doesn't mean you start parsing it the same way a computer would. I imagine if some Lojban text heavily relied on grammatical structure to disambiguate things that would not otherwise be possible to disambiguate, that reading that text would be a rather time-consuming and laborious task. I believe most Lojban text relies on the semantics just as much as English to disambiguate. Observe the ease of getting gismu places switched around and still being understood. 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.