From lojban+bncCK30vq5WEMqemOkEGgQORwvX@googlegroups.com Thu Jan 06 10:52:11 2011 Received: from mail-px0-f189.google.com ([209.85.212.189]) by chain.digitalkingdom.org with esmtp (Exim 4.72) (envelope-from ) id 1PauwP-00063I-6h; Thu, 06 Jan 2011 10:52:11 -0800 Received: by pxi19 with SMTP id 19sf6635260pxi.16 for ; Thu, 06 Jan 2011 10:51:59 -0800 (PST) DKIM-Signature: v=1; a=rsa-sha256; c=relaxed/relaxed; d=googlegroups.com; s=beta; h=domainkey-signature:received:x-beenthere:received:received:received :received:received-spf:received:date:from:to:subject:message-id :references:mime-version:in-reply-to:user-agent:x-original-sender :x-original-authentication-results:reply-to:precedence:mailing-list :list-id:list-post:list-help:list-archive:sender:list-subscribe :list-unsubscribe:content-type:content-disposition; bh=SjSxHPhgiTdbzuvv54mV5kG4uolR2h4c2YDhmgVyMa4=; b=CNiktkBTohhzQUfuVNma0PFzYrnylI1aNi/utO25W20gF5Fhl3kkFP7OGJOorjKRPg YpJRgYz6BFAuU/5MUIgo9gTqPgsAmweebcd4fIuB2hw8GF8Y4+DM90gF+tJN/JzIyaaz DavbySow3AoXHVBouln7wGaUZi2hhwiXB/1Vo= DomainKey-Signature: a=rsa-sha1; c=nofws; d=googlegroups.com; s=beta; h=x-beenthere:received-spf:date:from:to:subject:message-id:references :mime-version:in-reply-to:user-agent:x-original-sender :x-original-authentication-results:reply-to:precedence:mailing-list :list-id:list-post:list-help:list-archive:sender:list-subscribe :list-unsubscribe:content-type:content-disposition; b=yfC6bS1Gmw9HRsYNmTdKN9gzfvcN5G8wraYBoJjSFLDBioCVghkeh5rcDTgfi0UJ8v auPLuH5rsPIyWUk7OomrPyftmRPpHRfEnGEmmb/QOeVF2FAAQg4K53zK3Ui+pxqjw3/t Z/iIhzsFMhXyfTqBbnHrQmArZpwI4FXqN5Qxc= Received: by 10.142.150.5 with SMTP id x5mr88048wfd.27.1294339914382; Thu, 06 Jan 2011 10:51:54 -0800 (PST) X-BeenThere: lojban@googlegroups.com Received: by 10.142.97.18 with SMTP id u18ls1379395wfb.2.p; Thu, 06 Jan 2011 10:51:52 -0800 (PST) Received: by 10.142.200.11 with SMTP id x11mr982606wff.59.1294339912571; Thu, 06 Jan 2011 10:51:52 -0800 (PST) Received: by 10.142.200.11 with SMTP id x11mr982604wff.59.1294339912470; Thu, 06 Jan 2011 10:51:52 -0800 (PST) Received: from chain.digitalkingdom.org (digitalkingdom.org [173.13.139.234]) by gmr-mx.google.com with ESMTPS id p40si1284389wfc.2.2011.01.06.10.51.52 (version=TLSv1/SSLv3 cipher=RC4-MD5); Thu, 06 Jan 2011 10:51:52 -0800 (PST) Received-SPF: pass (google.com: best guess record for domain of rlpowell@digitalkingdom.org designates 173.13.139.234 as permitted sender) client-ip=173.13.139.234; Received: from rlpowell by chain.digitalkingdom.org with local (Exim 4.72) (envelope-from ) id 1PauwB-000636-AJ for lojban@googlegroups.com; Thu, 06 Jan 2011 10:51:51 -0800 Date: Thu, 6 Jan 2011 10:51:51 -0800 From: Robin Lee Powell To: lojban@googlegroups.com Subject: Re: Lojban is *NOT* broken! Stop saying that! (was Re: [lojban] Re: Vote for the Future Global Language) Message-ID: <20110106185151.GE17534@digitalkingdom.org> References: <9114501.161.1294150198377.JavaMail.geo-discussion-forums@yqhy19> <7c0687a1-deba-495a-9760-95d1d0649423@t8g2000prh.googlegroups.com> <20110105165231.GK17534@digitalkingdom.org> <4D25F32F.8000209@gmail.com> <20110106171347.GY17534@digitalkingdom.org> <4D260BE0.3020909@gmail.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 In-Reply-To: <4D260BE0.3020909@gmail.com> User-Agent: Mutt/1.5.20 (2009-06-14) X-Original-Sender: rlpowell@digitalkingdom.org X-Original-Authentication-Results: gmr-mx.google.com; spf=pass (google.com: best guess record for domain of rlpowell@digitalkingdom.org designates 173.13.139.234 as permitted sender) smtp.mail=rlpowell@digitalkingdom.org Reply-To: lojban@googlegroups.com Precedence: list Mailing-list: list lojban@googlegroups.com; contact lojban+owners@googlegroups.com List-ID: List-Post: , List-Help: , List-Archive: Sender: lojban@googlegroups.com List-Subscribe: , List-Unsubscribe: , Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Disposition: inline On Thu, Jan 06, 2011 at 06:37:20PM +0000, And Rosta wrote: > "Formal grammar" has a further meaning in linguistics, which is > "grammar formulated in an explicit way", and it's this meaning > that is relevant to the specification of a human language. Ah. I don't know that use. Can you point me to an example of such a thing? > >>What a real grammar would do is define a set of correspondences > >>between sentence forms and sentence meanings. > > > >I don't know what that is, but it's not a formal grammar. Ask > >google if you don't believe me. :) I have no idea how you could > >formalize such a thing (and I'm not terribly sure I care, to be > >honest). > > If you think about it, I think you will find you do care. > Obviously the essential function of a language is to define > correspondences between forms and meanings. If your putative > specification of a language describes only possible forms and says > nothing of meanings, then it is simply not a specification of a > language. (Rather, it would be a specification of a "formal > language" in the sense referred to above.) Of course; the CLL does, in fact, cover semantics in quite a lot of detail (and, I assert, more thoroughly than any such document natural language; I have no way to measure this though). > As for you having no idea how to formalize such a thing, surely > you can imagine having and implementing the design goal of a > speakable predicate logic (which was one of Loglan's original > goals). Retrofitting such a thing onto existing Lojban would be > difficult, Wait what? How do we not have that? > but surely the principle of it is easy to grasp: rules that take > the phonological forms of Lojban sentences and translate them into > predicate logic. That doesn't do anything for general semantics, though. IsRed(x) as a predicate is just a suggestively named lisp token ( see http://singinst.org/ourresearch/publications/GISAI/meta/glossary.html#gloss_lisp_tokens and http://lesswrong.com/lw/la/truly_part_of_you/ ); to formalize actual semantics in the way I think you're talking about, you need to formalize what it means for something to be Red. You can't do that in bare predicate logic; you'd do samething like HasWavelengthBetween(x,630nm,700nm), but that doesn't help, because now you have to have predicates for nanometers, and what a wavelength is, and on and on and on. Having a complete semantic mapping of *anything* is a fool's errand, which is why the semantic web is dead (and was dead before it started). As far as I can tell, the semantic descriptions of Lojban in the CLL are about as good as can reasonably be achieved without falling down the rabbit hole of perfect semantic description, I don't see how it differs from "spoken predicate logic" in that respect, and I'm very curious as to whether you have evidence to the contrary. > >>The design of the language itself has little intrinsic > >>excellence (when viewed ahistorically), and it is naive to deny > >>that it is massively incomplete. > > > >I completely disagree. I don't see anything even vaguely > >approaching "massively incomplete" in any part of Lojban, except > >maybe vocabulary. I'd ask you to point to specific examples, but > >I'm honstly not sure that I'm terribly interested in debating the > >issue. > > The major incompleteness is in the specification of > correspondences between forms and meanings (i.e. predicate logic). > I don't mean the definitions of individual brivla, but rather the > meanings of sentences containing nonbrivla stuff. I don't feel a significant lack there. If you do, please make updates to the Notes sections of the various BPFK pages so I can try to fix it. -Robin -- http://singinst.org/ : Our last, best hope for a fantastic future. Lojban (http://www.lojban.org/): The language in which "this parrot is dead" is "ti poi spitaki cu morsi", but "this sentence is false" is "na nei". My personal page: http://www.digitalkingdom.org/rlp/ -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "lojban" group. To post to this group, send email to lojban@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to lojban+unsubscribe@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/lojban?hl=en.