From lojban+bncCIywt_XDCRCFp5jpBBoEhAX_tw@googlegroups.com Thu Jan 06 11:10:12 2011 Received: from mail-gx0-f189.google.com ([209.85.161.189]) by chain.digitalkingdom.org with esmtp (Exim 4.72) (envelope-from ) id 1PavDs-0006kw-9l; Thu, 06 Jan 2011 11:10:12 -0800 Received: by gxk19 with SMTP id 19sf15627194gxk.16 for ; Thu, 06 Jan 2011 11:10:02 -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:message-id:x-ymail-osg:received :x-mailer:references:date:from:subject:to:in-reply-to:mime-version :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; bh=ospww/L37Q3F46TnosZ5bd5BtD8sE/jOjHJEFzE29r0=; b=2gz5V54a8/+bUEoCsxYdWL7s518Rsu47Ud/xM1S1KLxMBG04797xarDUMOjins2zlJ 52ZZtKmsoo+Ee4zFlqL27wC0tYIWy8SDlpU9utJAsTCnadMkVHLyg/mwoyH10w1Vu7vX SYCo4R6PQuiob9IU6NIggNggAT43gDiR2hVRI= DomainKey-Signature: a=rsa-sha1; c=nofws; d=googlegroups.com; s=beta; h=x-beenthere:received-spf:message-id:x-ymail-osg:x-mailer:references :date:from:subject:to:in-reply-to:mime-version: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; b=kUN9I09cs38KJi1p7+It8L+Xv7kttmTwGcA+PD9ZP/riZO49n3LgAtKWqs+2WYGk6K qoNPAvedUTqGFG8MktD1aUr4s78cCcRAFfvwf4hDCNBJ26loWpo1khC1Croyu4SvcKex Q4yhl0ktSSzRnvHdrWYN0rSZ0j//O+FKBZG3I= Received: by 10.100.137.15 with SMTP id k15mr37683and.44.1294340997941; Thu, 06 Jan 2011 11:09:57 -0800 (PST) X-BeenThere: lojban@googlegroups.com Received: by 10.100.75.33 with SMTP id x33ls1559980ana.4.p; Thu, 06 Jan 2011 11:09:56 -0800 (PST) Received: by 10.100.190.18 with SMTP id n18mr4107330anf.32.1294340996711; Thu, 06 Jan 2011 11:09:56 -0800 (PST) Received: by 10.100.190.18 with SMTP id n18mr4107329anf.32.1294340996690; Thu, 06 Jan 2011 11:09:56 -0800 (PST) Received: from web81304.mail.mud.yahoo.com (web81304.mail.mud.yahoo.com [68.142.199.120]) by gmr-mx.google.com with SMTP id c18si10268628anc.6.2011.01.06.11.09.55; Thu, 06 Jan 2011 11:09:55 -0800 (PST) Received-SPF: pass (google.com: best guess record for domain of kali9putra@yahoo.com designates 68.142.199.120 as permitted sender) client-ip=68.142.199.120; Received: (qmail 45815 invoked by uid 60001); 6 Jan 2011 19:09:55 -0000 Message-ID: <35521.44266.qm@web81304.mail.mud.yahoo.com> X-YMail-OSG: nHl.SyEVM1k76ubii9r6.NyntvuNZhwsvTMfAt_DwROnYSR 98_jCrwuiuq8uPbcDUO_sE5ZYM0SE560DaH.EuOSQ93inxOwLvWKvUpMiL9z 0u5UzStFPLoDPRz2Oi5ILiPrEHElGRUBlAUcYI9HyCLVFW.VjEDgAOZBmgtv SQqWz6Y_SHvJk0GJAKDEt1zMMRJKUE4K.xP5XmLP83VzOG5fgPE_6z931R1. XOoKomr5MONKZVvw6Up4Sd5kkARd26QdxikSWvLrB_HP7H1Yj4ted_dHk1lr O0LkNe0IjmTpOgOtJiDbju39EheQlhUBIYz5GhMMy5zG_a6p6.lezwv4PKlh W5SqQIVlsWPb5mQgvzuNXIXQO2uEgqB9PHpf_5UrDCqmNprn2OtqrS6sk.ZX q3cjoRnAnQcKjdtnjbKhtYpY- Received: from [99.92.110.13] by web81304.mail.mud.yahoo.com via HTTP; Thu, 06 Jan 2011 11:09:54 PST X-Mailer: YahooMailRC/553 YahooMailWebService/0.8.107.285259 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> <20110106185151.GE17534@digitalkingdom.org> Date: Thu, 6 Jan 2011 11:09:54 -0800 (PST) From: John E Clifford Subject: Re: Lojban is *NOT* broken! Stop saying that! (was Re: [lojban] Re: Vote for the Future Global Language) To: lojban@googlegroups.com In-Reply-To: <20110106185151.GE17534@digitalkingdom.org> MIME-Version: 1.0 X-Original-Sender: kali9putra@yahoo.com X-Original-Authentication-Results: gmr-mx.google.com; spf=pass (google.com: best guess record for domain of kali9putra@yahoo.com designates 68.142.199.120 as permitted sender) smtp.mail=kali9putra@yahoo.com; dkim=pass (test mode) header.i=@yahoo.com 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 Please don't say "general semantics" even in lower case; the hellish odor of that whole cult is still too much with us. ----- Original Message ---- From: Robin Lee Powell To: lojban@googlegroups.com Sent: Thu, January 6, 2011 12:51:51 PM Subject: Re: Lojban is *NOT* broken! Stop saying that! (was Re: [lojban] Re: Vote for the Future Global Language) 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? **Complete for a language, no. Models for (small) parts of languages, look in any old anthropological linguistics journal. > >>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? **Well, scope limits are undefined for most quantifiers (which are indeterminately defined themselves) and for negations and alternate world functions (real modals), for starters. This just needs decisions by someone, writing them up, and getting people to actually use them. It is not a flaw in the syntax, except that it means some semantically distinctive substructures are not (reliably, at least) syntactically distinct. > 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). **It is, of course, logically impossible to define all of the terms of a language in that language without either circularity or contradiction. It is possible, however, to define all the terms of a language in another language, here the semantic metalanguage. It is incompletely specified, but can completely specify Ebglish, say, or Lojban (of course, it doesn't exist and the models for it have all so far been flawed). 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. -- 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.