Re: [lojban] The efficacy of Lojban's grammar.

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

On Mon, Apr 12, 2010 at 10:58:49AM -0700, Robin Lee Powell wrote:
> On Sat, Apr 10, 2010 at 02:51:17PM +0100, And Rosta wrote:
> > Robin Lee Powell, On 10/04/2010 04:59:
> > >On Sat, Apr 10, 2010 at 03:15:11AM +0100, And Rosta wrote:
> > >>Probably the most fundamentally unnatural and perhaps even
> > >>'uncognizable' part of Lojban is the formal grammar. The
> > >>structures of the formal grammar are nothing like those found
> > >>in natural languages. And I rather doubt whether anybody does
> > >>or can internalize the formal grammar as part of learning and
> > >>using Lojban;
> > >
> > >When I'm in practice, my statements pass the formal parser
> > >(mine, not the official on) on the order of 95 times out of a
> > >hundred. I'd wager real money on that.
> > >
> > >Certainly 8 or 9 out of 10 is true for all the serious speakers
> > >on IRC.
> > >
> > >I'm really not sure what you're on about here.
> > 
> > I don't doubt that the great majority of expert Lojban speakers'
> > utterances are passed as licit by the formal parser. But I do
> > doubt that the licitness of those utterances is due to the
> > Lojban speaker having internalized the formal grammar and making
> > active use of it during sentence processing.
> 
> That is certainly my internal experience.
> 
> > I wager that syntactic structures that would be assigned to Lojban
> > sentences by (1) syntacticians and (2) Lojban speakers would
> > differ very substantially from the syntactic structures assigned
> > by the formal grammar. 
> 
> I can't speak to (1), but my structures would differ significantly
> only by missing parts.

Just for the record: I'm OK if I'm in the minority here (and if I
*am* in the minority, then I think your point is made, so I guess
I'm offering to concede).  As long as the utterances of those people
who don't use the formal grammar in their heads parses.

In fact, what you're asserting dovetails very nicely with my
comments about tiered learning materials; someone who has only read
L4B will not, and should not, be parsing Lojban with anything like
the formal grammar in their heads.

So, sorry for my kneejerk hostility.  :)

-Robin

-- 
They say:  "The first AIs will be built by the military as weapons."
And I'm  thinking:  "Does it even occur to you to try for something
other  than  the default  outcome?"  See http://shrunklink.com/cdiz
http://www.digitalkingdom.org/~rlpowell/ *** http://www.lojban.org/

-- 
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "lojban" group.
To post to this group, send email to lojban@googlegroups.com.
To unsubscribe from this group, send email to lojban+unsubscribe@googlegroups.com.
For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/lojban?hl=en.