[lojban] Re: Loglish

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

--- Ben Goertzel <ben@goertzel.org> wrote:
 
> > mi djuno ledu?u zo?e kau cilre la loglish
> > Well, {loglic} to begin with (or {loglec}, if
> the
> > short vowel seems more natural).  I can't
> figure
> > out {zo'e kau} in Lojban: {kau} attaches to
> > interrogative words to signal indirect
> questions,
> > so maybe {ma kau} is meant: "I know who is
> > learning Loglish." This misses the first half
> of
> > the English (except by implication -- if I
> know
> > who it is there must be someone).  On the
> other
> > hand, without the {kau} in the original, we
> get
> > the not very illuminating "I know that (you
> know
> > who/someone it doesn't matter who) is
> learning
> > Loglish," which misses the second part.  the
> > problems carry over to the Loglish (I think
> > {zo'e} is a bad choice here in any case, but
> that
> > seems to be idiosyncratic).
> 
> Well,
> 
> "
> mi djuno ledu'u zo'e kau cilre la lojban.
> 
> I know someone is learning Lojban, and I know
> who it is.
> "
> 
> is straight from the Lojban introductory text
> 
>
http://ptolemy.tlg.uci.edu/~opoudjis/lojbanbrochure/lessons/less15.html
> 
> so if there are problems with it, I'm not to
> blame in this particular
> instance ;-)

Fascinating -- and a clear warning about short
descripotions of words.  {kau} is always defined
as the indirect question marker, but it turns out
that it is that very incidentally to its real
role, for which there does not seem to be an
ready term -- or description.  It represents
(except in the indirect question cases) an nglish
cleft construction "it is ... that ..." rather
efficiently when the lifted word is buried in
deep  enough.  It differs from stress in having a
fixed meaning (of a sort, at least), but performs
one of   stress's roles apparently.  In this
role, it conflicts with the use of indefinites,
as in your example (and the book's) -- which is
why defining that role is a bit hard to do.
The problem with {zo'e} is just that its meaning
(or hatever) has been specified so many ways that
it is hard to figure out what it means in a
particular case and here, where the meaning of
the whole construction seems to depend on what
{zo'e} means, this gets to be problematic. 
Assuming {zo'e} means only that there is a sumti
(though I may not know one) that fills the gap to
make a true claim, then that sumti might be {no
da} for example (which is one of the reasons why
many people say that that is not what {zo'e}
means, despite what CLL says) and so it does not
really say "there is someone."  Other possible
readings, which try to give {zo'e} some content,
include "the obvious case" : "someone and you
know who" in effect. Or "it doesn't matter who,"
which does not fit this case at all well, since
not every value makes a true sentence and of
those that do not every one is one I know about. 
Of course, this last also doe not consort well
with the apparent meaning of {kau} either.  That
is why I say {zo'e} is usually a bad choice of
words (until it gets cleaned up).

> > la Ben cu murder lo chicken lo weapon fi?o
> pliers
> > Realtive order of {lo} and {fi'o} again (and
> > maybe of {fi'o} and "weapon," but I have to
> see
> > how this plays out.
> > You later claim that this cannot be a chicken
> > with pliers, but the resolution appears to be
> > semantic, not grammatical.  Lojban would
> insist
> > on a grammatical disambiguation.
> 
> Lojbanizing the use of fi'o yields
> 
> "
> la Ben cu murder lo chicken fi?o weapon lo
> pliers
> "
> 
> Regarding your point about whose argument the
> fi'o specifies -- I believe
> this is unproblematic,
> becaues the fi'o clearly tells whose argument
> "lo pliers" fits into, and "lo
> pliers" is clearly
> fitting into *some* argument of "murder."  To
> have "lo pliers" fit into some
> argument of "chicken"
> one would have to use "be" or some other
> similar mechanism, I believe.

Quite right.  But that means that, from the point
of the parser, the FrameNet bits are unnecessary
and that discussion is irrelevant at that point. 
At some point in interpretation (and, yes, I
think the two are --or ought to be -- separate as
much as possible, which is 100%) we learn that a
weapon is an instrument or means, but  that only
because we already know that it is a peripheral
argument of "murder."


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