[jbovlaste] Re: [jvs-watch] Per www-data : Bad NatLangWords Report

[Robin Lee Powell <rlpowell@digitalkingdom.org>]

On Mon, Mar 16, 2009 at 07:29:58PM +1030, David Gowers wrote:
> On Mon, Mar 16, 2009 at 6:45 PM, Arnt Richard Johansen <arj@nvg.org> wrote:
> > On Sun, Mar 15, 2009 at 09:15:29PM +0000, www-data wrote:
> >>
> >>
> >> The following words in the given languages have a null definition *AND* a not null definition.  Please fix.
> >
> > Please explain. What's a null definition?
> 
> If you look at
> 
> http://jbovlaste.lojban.org/natlang/en/solid
> http://jbovlaste.lojban.org/natlang/en/product
> 
> it appears to refer to a word that is used in no definitions - which
> basically amounts to a nonexistent definition.

No.

What it means is that if you look at
http://jbovlaste.lojban.org/natlang/en/solid , there is a version
with a sense specifier ("solid", in the sense of "not liquid or
gaseous") and there is one without (just "solid").  This makes
little sense, because if no qualifier was needed (that is, if
there's only one sense of "solid" in English) there shouldn't be any
others.

The fact that one of them isn't used in any valsi definitions is
entirely beside the point.

IIRC we decided that sometimes the default sense was too hard to pin
down, and having a default along with a bunch of specialist senses
was OK.

-Robin

-- 
They say:  "The first AIs will be built by the military as weapons."
And I'm thinking:  "Does it even occur to you to try for something
other than the default outcome?" -- http://shorl.com/tydruhedufogre
http://www.digitalkingdom.org/~rlpowell/ *** http://www.lojban.org/