[lojban] Re: How to spread the word

["Chris Capel" <pdf23ds@gmail.com>]

On Sun, Sep 21, 2008 at 13:05, Auke Booij <auke.booij@gmail.com> wrote:
> Returning to the discussion on why it is needed.
> Recently found in a news article:
> "The specific section will have to have its temperature raised
> significantly above its usual absolute zero so engineers can go in and
> repair it without dying, which is apparently a very time-consuming
> process."
> What does the part starting at "which" refer to? The dying? the
> temperature raising? The repairing? The going in of engineers?

I think, given the context, the only reasonable interpretation is that
"which" refers to the repairing, although I'm sure the dying could be
a lengthy process as well. The referent of the subordinate phrase can
only be determined using the meaning of the sentence as a whole, which
is a very common occurence in English. Most of the time it happens you
don't notice at all. This is a slightly unusual case in that the
potential reference nearest the subordinate phrase, dying, makes
superficial sense and during the brain's parsing of the sentence, may
be the preferred candidate for a few tenths of a second, lending it
some amount of conscious awareness and thus the potential to be
noticed. The worst you can accuse this sentence of is clumsiness.

Any good copy editor could tell you when the referent is too ambiguous
and have you rephrase the sentence. The above sentence would probably
be an edge case. But in Lojban this process is improved only slightly.
While the referent may be technically unambiguous (unless using one of
the explicitly ambiguous pro-sumti), I have encountered plenty of
instances in published Lojban text (not just IRC, but proofread stuff)
where the subordinate phrase was apparently, and rather obviously,
pointing to the wrong phrase. I would never have noticed these things
if I had not been reading it in my parser, and I doubt any other
Lojban reader would either, except rarely. Just because you're reading
Lojban doesn't mean you stop automatically and unconsciously
correcting small ambiguities/errors. Just because you're reading
Lojban doesn't mean you start parsing it the same way a computer
would.

I imagine if some Lojban text heavily relied on grammatical structure
to disambiguate things that would not otherwise be possible to
disambiguate, that reading that text would be a rather time-consuming
and laborious task. I believe most Lojban text relies on the semantics
just as much as English to disambiguate. Observe the ease of getting
gismu places switched around and still being understood.

Chris Capel
-- 
"What is it like to be a bat? What is it like to bat a bee? What is it
like to be a bee being batted? What is it like to be a batted bee?"
-- The Mind's I (Hofstadter, Dennet)


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