[lojban] Re: Semantics of lojban and glibau, and Lojban FrameNet revisited

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

On Fri, Apr 08, 2005 at 06:24:00PM -0400, Ben Goertzel wrote:
> Sorry to reply to myself again...
> 
> I suppose in this case the asymmetry of the semantics of "Lojban"
> versus "English" in Lojban can be worked around easily via e.g.
> 
> .i la lojban HYP glibau
> 
> but that doesn't really solve the problem of "lojban" being a
> cmene versus "glibau" being a predicate with arguments, which
> seems an odd asymmetry to me...

"la lojban" means "the referent of the name "Lojban", as I determine
it".  Why should that be an odd thing to describe as fitting the x1
of glibau?  I mean, you'd be wrong, but it's a semantic error, not a
type error.

[on systematizing lujvo]
> Taking this kind of approach to defining argument structures would
> seem to reduce the risk of odd inconsistencies occurring in the
> dictionary of argument-structures... I'm curious why a systematic
> approach like this wasn't taken in constructing the Lojban
> dictionary, since Lojbanoidic folks seem so interested in order
> and systematicity... it's odd that the argument-structures are
> only imperfectly and informally systematized, no?

The reason is that sometimes the results of a formalized place
structure suck ass.

:-)

-Robin

-- 
http://www.digitalkingdom.org/~rlpowell/ *** http://www.lojban.org/
Reason #237 To Learn Lojban: "Homonyms: Their Grate!"
Proud Supporter of the Singularity Institute - http://singinst.org/