From lojban+bncCL-Ey5qiChCV75jpBBoE4U6Mag@googlegroups.com Thu Jan 06 13:44:05 2011 Received: from mail-wy0-f189.google.com ([74.125.82.189]) by chain.digitalkingdom.org with esmtp (Exim 4.72) (envelope-from ) id 1Paxcn-0007Pk-6m; Thu, 06 Jan 2011 13:44:05 -0800 Received: by wyb35 with SMTP id 35sf18483014wyb.16 for ; Thu, 06 Jan 2011 13:43:54 -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:mime-version:received:received :in-reply-to:references:date:message-id:subject:from:to :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-transfer-encoding; bh=+WFcbi/TxWMfsTCuUu3aop1xA1SOdITwjmEFqInVm5A=; b=ZtWQdjscckYOYsuE3hDOSUJQKn004Ge2hp2FVEVnyTfytwC/T5uajTwpZbrSdfkhF7 pyzFLpQCLSjbonAuabrzPcJ2GyJL4zWc3UqHO5brMWzqF5YoGlEJCLSLBq8e4zQ2XjAL xNV4C8Gf4XUxi/wW/ndkvfFiygcpmYrBm04Xo= DomainKey-Signature: a=rsa-sha1; c=nofws; d=googlegroups.com; s=beta; h=x-beenthere:received-spf:mime-version:in-reply-to:references:date :message-id:subject:from:to: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-transfer-encoding; b=umHCE3u+CQC/zNBcag4FBRO7ktZOQmpvreDS8NIOHKwVyq+FoxjFlAYo3lRn2E3bUf lW4c3yyTI1yFCkMv6WEEhUHVjqSMBbj5L4x8HIJJXBZ8XPB0K6V5LsURsjdaVKWeceKk sRY5TOUbgr3Yr8AXlUuAeUKyZDYqa78GL3+tg= Received: by 10.216.157.139 with SMTP id o11mr3264647wek.28.1294350229832; Thu, 06 Jan 2011 13:43:49 -0800 (PST) X-BeenThere: lojban@googlegroups.com Received: by 10.227.102.89 with SMTP id f25ls1988277wbo.0.p; Thu, 06 Jan 2011 13:43:48 -0800 (PST) Received: by 10.227.143.146 with SMTP id v18mr824117wbu.15.1294350228849; Thu, 06 Jan 2011 13:43:48 -0800 (PST) Received: by 10.227.143.146 with SMTP id v18mr824116wbu.15.1294350228801; Thu, 06 Jan 2011 13:43:48 -0800 (PST) Received: from mail-wy0-f171.google.com (mail-wy0-f171.google.com [74.125.82.171]) by gmr-mx.google.com with ESMTP id m15si3827178wbg.1.2011.01.06.13.43.47; Thu, 06 Jan 2011 13:43:47 -0800 (PST) Received-SPF: pass (google.com: domain of craigbdaniel@gmail.com designates 74.125.82.171 as permitted sender) client-ip=74.125.82.171; Received: by mail-wy0-f171.google.com with SMTP id 38so17032963wyb.30 for ; Thu, 06 Jan 2011 13:43:47 -0800 (PST) MIME-Version: 1.0 Received: by 10.227.138.129 with SMTP id a1mr10147176wbu.37.1294350227582; Thu, 06 Jan 2011 13:43:47 -0800 (PST) Received: by 10.227.39.73 with HTTP; Thu, 6 Jan 2011 13:43:47 -0800 (PST) In-Reply-To: <20110106203441.GD8367@nvg.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> <20110106203441.GD8367@nvg.org> Date: Thu, 6 Jan 2011 16:43:47 -0500 Message-ID: Subject: Re: Lojban is *NOT* broken! Stop saying that! (was Re: [lojban] Re: Vote for the Future Global Language) From: Craig Daniel To: lojban@googlegroups.com X-Original-Sender: craigbdaniel@gmail.com X-Original-Authentication-Results: gmr-mx.google.com; spf=pass (google.com: domain of craigbdaniel@gmail.com designates 74.125.82.171 as permitted sender) smtp.mail=craigbdaniel@gmail.com; dkim=pass (test mode) header.i=@gmail.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=windows-1252 Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable On Thu, Jan 6, 2011 at 3:34 PM, Arnt Richard Johansen wrote: > On Thu, Jan 06, 2011 at 09:13:47AM -0800, Robin Lee Powell wrote: >> On Thu, Jan 06, 2011 at 04:51:59PM +0000, And Rosta wrote: >> >> > What a real grammar would do is define a set of correspondences >> > between sentence forms and sentence meanings. >> >> [...] I have no idea how you could formalize such a thing (and I'm not >> terribly sure I care, to be honest). > > For what it's worth, ERG is an example of such a thing: > http://www.delph-in.net/erg/ > > To summarize your objection from further downthread: =93Formal semantics = is just a system for transforming one string of meaningless > symbols into another string of meaningless symbols, so what's the point?= =94 > > Well, to a certain extent you're right, but if you choose the right kind = of semantic representation, you can do things like proving that two > different strings of Lojban have the same meaning. Correct me if I'm wron= g, but at the moment no machine grammar of Lojban > represents the fact that =93mi viska do=94 is equivalent to =93do se visk= a mi=94. It is not equivalent, because of different emphasis. The details are not explicitly spelled out and may well vary a fair bit from one Lojbanist to another, but no human speaker is going to deliberately pick a longer phrasing of something if they don't intend the choice to be meaningful. The only difference is pragmatics, but one of them violates a Gricean maxim, resulting in the implication that the other choice was less well-suited to what the speaker wished to convey. Subtle, but basic - well, basic to a subfield of linguistics that we have been largely ignoring since JCB started the whole project. (I'm not saying we *should* try to formally spell out Lojban pragmatics, either; I'm not sure that particular task is tractable even in theory. I'm just disagreeing that "mi viska do" and "do se viska mi" will ever be equivalent in actual usage generated by any human or any software whose linguistic behavior obeys similar principles.) Esperanto was defined with a lot of morphology and little syntax; in practice, it is as syntactically rich as any natlang, because human language use works like that. Lojban as a very precisely defined syntax and absolutely no official pragmatics, but all human language use is affected by considerations of such. > I don't think that we absolutely need to have such a thing, and I am cert= ainly not volunteering to make it, but if we did have such a > thing, I'm sure it would reveal one or two problems about Lojban grammar = that no-one's thought about before. Almost definitely. --=20 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@googlegrou= ps.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/lojban= ?hl=3Den.