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Re: [lojban] Tangent: Is there a better grammar?

Oren, On 07/04/2010 02:14:

On Wed, Apr 7, 2010 at 01:03, And Rosta wrote:
    [* As I see it, the design problem has two parts. Both have to do
    with finding ways to logically precise meanings concise enough to be
    worth the effort of verbalizing. One part is to find a more concise
    way of of encoding variables than standard predicate logic notation
    and Lojban offer, given that in most propositions we express (in
    natural language) there are many variables and each variable tends
    to be argument of many predicates. The other part is to devise an
    inventory of predicates that expand to more complex logical structures.]
I don't really see your case here; if one of the basic goals is to be a useful human language, then I don't see any alternative to predicate logic as two-dimensional representation of utterances. Or, if there was one. it would seem inherently illogical due to it's complexity. Could you (or anyone) expand this thought? 

I'm not sure what you mean by "two-dimensional representation". In (what I would see as) a two-dimensional representation of predicate--argument structure, each element in the structure could be notated just once, so for example if something were argument of many predicates it could be notated in one place and then connected by (tangling) lines to the predicates it is argument of. Presumably that sort of thing is a reasonable simulacrum of propositional thoughts. The challenge then is to linearize this into speakable form with sufficient concision -- and with sufficient processability.

* * *

Long ago for much of my lojban writing, I would write what I wanted to say out in predicate logic form, first of all. But though the translation of that into Lojban was reasonably straightforward, the result was ghastly -- verbose, unprocessable, a rebarbative jungle of "da xi"s and "zo'u"s. What competent Lojban stylists, and clever grammatical schemes like xorlo, do is throw away lots of information until left with a residue that can be expressed with acceptable elegance.

--And.

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