[lojban] Re: Loglish: A Modest Proposal

[John E Clifford <lojban-out@lojban.org>]

--- Ben Goertzel <ben@goertzel.org> wrote:

> 
> 
> > Let me see if I understand what would be the
> > point of all this.
> 
> The main point is pragmatic....
> 
> It seems that, after a pretty modest amount of
> work specifying Loglish
> grammar and writing a Loglish parser (utilizing
> WordNet, FrameNet, and the
> existing Lojban grammar), one would have a
> situation where

So, you will just use Lojban grammar with English
words for the predicates -- well, English + "qui"
and "quu" (which latter is looking less useful
the more Lojban comes in -- {sepi'o} in place of
"quu weapon" for example (also simplifying the
matvch up to FrameNet categories).  This still
leaves all the Lojban cmavo to learn -- without
the at leat occasional aid of matches with gismu.
 It might be better to use English for at least
BAI type cmavo to make the learning easier.  Of
course, then we again wonder about how much tis
is based on Lojban and whether the grammar can
take the shift (predicate quu would have to go
before, not after, probably).

> 1) Loglish is much easier to train users in
> than Lojban

Yes, because of the vocabulary learning.  The
rest would be on a par, with the cmavo learning a
bit harder perhaps. I don't know how significant
the difference would be.

> 2) Loglish queries can automatically be used to
> query databases of knowledge
> built up using English-language
> information-extraction tools (whereas to do
> this using Lojban would require building a real
> Lojban-English dictionary,
> including a translation of Lojban words into
> WordNet senses and Lojban
> argument-positions into FrameNet argument
> labels, or something similar)

I am not sure I understand this.  If the enquiry
is in Loglish than (grammar aside) the text can
be processed like ordinary English, using tools
devised for that ordinary language.  If the
inquiry say is in Lojban, either these tools have
to be replicated for Lojban or the Lojban query
has to be translated into English at least to the
extent of using English words in place of Lojban
ones.  Now, in Loglish this will have to be done
already with the cmavo, I suppose.  Anbd the
replacement in the case of predicates will
require  so fairly fancy processing toight
translation in the context (working through
WordNet and FrameNet and whatever else is
available.  On the other hand, presumably words
are ultimately to be represented as WordNet +
FrameNet entries for the purpose of processing in
the various ways.  If Lojban words were once so
represented, then -- without passing through
English -- they could be used directly, sparing
the need to diambiguate (or pick the right
meaning given all the contextual stuff).  That
is, the small extra effort (OK, not so small)
pays off bigtime in the end (and points the way
to a mass of databases that are less dependent on
English (or Lojban for that matter) than the
present plan.

> 3) Loglish can immediately be used to discuss
> complex topics in any area of
> discourse without needing to spend time
> continually inventing new vocabulary
> words

 Word inventing doesn't take much time and only
need be done once in a given topic.  The meaning
will then be more or less on its face, rther
thanneeding further work to fit into the
processes following. And, of course, the ;lack of
vocabulary is a temporary matter, not a long term
one -- and the sooner people start using Lojban
to talk of many things, the sooner the problem
will disappear. For most purposes a predicate
volume of the order of 10k is enough and that
would arise in weeks or months if we did
something as simple as translating the Sunday
paper.
 
> The potential Achilles heel is, it might turn
> out that Loglish is a much
> bigger pain to speak than Lojban, because of a
> psychological difficulty with
> using English vocabulary within non-English
> syntax.  I really don't think
> this will be a problem, but I can recognize it
> as the major risk with the
> Loglish idea.

As noted, Lojban grammar is close enough to
English that the problem will likely be the
restrictions, not new constructions. The
experience with radically different grammars from
the home one would suggest that -- if Loglish
really had such a different grammar -- it would
be worse than learning Lojban vocabulary to get
doing it right.

> I emphasize that this is not entirely a
> theoretical discussion.  In
> 2003-2004 I managed a project building an NLP
> information extraction system
> for a government customer -- and in late 2004 I
> actually tried to sell them
> on making a Lojban query front end to the
> knowledge repository, but the idea
> was just too weird for them.  

Would Loglish seem (or be made to seem) less
weird?

We did build for
> them a system that lets the
> user enter knowledge and queries in English,
> and then has a parser that
> presents the user with a menu of possible
> parses of the sentence -- the user
> then has to choose the correct parse (based on
> their semantic insight),
> which is a pain.  I have a feeling that Loglish
> -- though still very weird
> by ordinary societal standards -- might
> potentially be non-weird enough to
> get funding from this customer or another one,
> in order to fund the building
> of knowledge bases using Loglish and the
> building of fully-featured
> professional Loglish software tools.
> 
> -- Ben G
> 
> >We can train a machine up in
> > Loglish and then we can talk to it -- feed it
> > information orask it question or program it
> or...
> > .  Clearly we can do the same in Lojban and
> > rather more easily, since Lojban is already
> open
> > to unique parsing and decomposition, whiles
> > Loglish needs to have it grammar specified to
> > reach that point (and then people need to be
> > trained to stick to that grammar).  Now one
> of
> > the thngs we want the machine in question to
> do
> > is process masses of linguistic data in
> English
> > (I gather).  But these processes -- other
> than
> > perhaps actual translation -- have nothing to
> do
> > with Loglish, so, assuming the processing can
> be
> > done, asking for it, directing it, and the
> like
> > can be done as well in Lojban as in Loglish. 
> Ah,
> > but Lojban has a limited vocabulary whereas
> > Loglish has all of English (with some
> > restrictions imposed by decomposition
> processes
> > and parsing and perhaps other things (which
> > restrictions people have to learn and abide
> by). >




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