Re: [lojban] Re: some thoughts about lojban use and future

["And Rosta" <a.rosta@v21.me.uk>]

Rob:
> Here are the things we can't do outside of demos:
> 1. We can't translate between vastly different languages (like English and
> Korean) with any success at all.
> 2. We can't parse arbitrary sentences.
> 3. Even if we have parse trees, we can't turn them into accurate semantic
> representations.
> 4. Even if we have accurate semantic representations, we can't put them
> together and hold a natural discourse.
>
> I'm working on a project to use Lojban to get a foot in the door on 2,
> 3, and 4. The problem is convincing a professor that artificial language
> processing will help natural language processing, but it's not because
> the things I'm doing in Lojban have already been accomplished with
> natural languages. It's because it seems that we won't accomplish these
> things in natural languages for another 15 to 50 years, and most people
> have given up on them.

For natlangs, 2 & 3 are the fault of linguistics -- it's really hard
for the linguist to work out the grammar of a language, but to the
extent that linguists succeed with 2 & 3, the computational problem
of 2 & 3 -- aside from disambiguation -- ought surely to then be
very straightforward. A suitable invented language should make 2 & 3
easy, & make disambiguation unnecessary. But 1 & 4 surely require
general intelligence, & the problem is not really a linguistic
one: I have no idea how long it will be until computers have general
intelligence.

--And.