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Re: [lojban] Questions about jorne



Unfortunately I am just now getting back to my computer to answer comments. I had not originally intended to respond to the whole list, so my apologies for the thread getting mangled. But since the discussion has escaped onto the list now, I'll explain a little about the jorne project to anyone who might find it interesting. I'll try to straddle the line between being readable and technical, for those who have no idea what RDF is.

The primary goal of jorne is creating intelligent systems that combine Lojban with Semantic Web technologies (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semantic_Web).

The project is currently focused on these tasks:

1. use Lojban text to add statements to knowledge bases, or ask questions about the content
2. describe data contained within knowledge bases, using Lojban text

(A triple is an instance of subject, predicate, and object. Many of these, in combination, form a graph database that is called a triplestore. Some people refer to these as knowledge bases.)

I chose to start with a mapping of a few brivla to URIs (RDF uses URIs as identifiers to form statements), and then convert to and from some queries against an RDF store.

Nothing is cast in stone yet for a URI format, or for which OWL ontologies are to be applied. The goal is not to replace other systems or try to do everything, but to augment existing work and allow Lojban to play an interesting part in this experiment.

Using DBPedia, geonames, and other public linked data sets, there is already a huge amount of data with which to work. The reason I mentioned Wordnet, is that if a Lojban Wordnet were created, it would allow mapping of Lojban synsets to existing data. The English Wordnet data is already linked to many other ontologies (e.g. DBPedia, SKOS, Library of Congress Subject Headings, music, movie, and book metadata, to name just a few). There are billions of linked triples, and this number is growing exponentially. See http://linkeddata.org/ and imagine what would happen if Lojban text could be easily generated from these data sources.

Technical details for my initial work: I am using Robin's PEG parser to read simple brivla and convert these into Java structures, which I then convert to statements using an RDF API, and place into Sesame (a triplestore implementation). Using words such as "ma", it will not be too difficult to convert some Lojban questions into simple SPARQL queries.

There is no code yet on the jorne site. Any code is on my machine in a very rough state. The jorne page has not been updated in several years, and there are certainly many unmentioned new technologies and standards that can be applied.

To answer Oren's question, I would suggest that describing the entire Lojban vocabulary using technologies such as in the links given (perhaps starting with a Wordnet implementation?) would bring great benefit to the Lojban community. Besides Wordnet, SKOS is also an excellent way to implement a Semantic-Web-friendly thesaurus.

Regards,
la iuban.

Quoting Oren <get.oren@gmail.com>:

The jorne page on sourceforge [http://jorne.sourceforge.net/] doesn't
mention OWL or appear to have any source code... is there a newer
specification or codebase that I'm missing? The PEG parser?

As for the ideas proposed on the page, I still need to be sold. There seems
to be overlap with the W3C incubator projects for representing Wordnet in
RDF/OWL http://www.w3.org/TR/wordnet-rdf/, and quite frankly, lojban's
minimal and prescriptive vocabulary doesn't seem to offer much application
here.

Two separate overlapping W3C incubator projects seem to be more appropriate
for semantic querying, Common Web Language (semantic representation)
http://www.w3.org/2005/Incubator/cwl/XGR-cwl-20080331/ and Emotional Markup
Language http://www.w3.org/2005/Incubator/emotion/XGR-emotionml-20081120/.

Lojban, as a human language, can't offer what these robust proposals
describe-- that is, you can't really argue that lojban is any more
'readable' than these languages, nor believe that it would be briefer or
more thorough; but it may be fun to try and define the entire lojban
vocabulary using these technologies. Or maybe that's what you meant all
along?

<http://www.w3.org/TR/wordnet-rdf/>co'o mi'e korbi

On Thu, Apr 15, 2010 at 19:49, Brian Eubanks <brian@buildsoftware.com>wrote:

Hi Oren,

We corresponded last year about the Jorne (Lojban RDF) project I am trying
to get started.

The idea of using a Wordnet type approach is excellent. In fact, I would
love to see a LojWordNet in association with the Jorne OWL mapping.

Are you still interested in working on an OWL mapping for Lojban gismu? If
so, I would like you to join the Sourceforge Jorne project. The growing
amount of linked data makes this a great time to do this.

I am working with the PEG parser to import simple sentences into an RDF
triple store with the hope of converting between SPARQL and Lojban queries.
My Lojban is not even baby talk level yet, which is where I could use your
help too. I've been a lurker in the Lojban space but haven't spent time to
learn it.

Regards,
Brian Eubanks

Sent from my iPhone


On Apr 15, 2010, at 3:52 AM, Oren <get.oren@gmail.com> wrote:

 I like the idea of categories (or... tags!), I think the wiki is the
place for it to happen, and I also think we shouldn't start from
scratch. The thesaurus on the wiki page already segregates all gismu
into hierarchical categories. We can make a page template that allows
people to add "lujvo requests" to a category. A sister project to
consider would be fleshing out that same ontology with the existing
specialized lujvo lists and the lujvo flat file.

I would also think that English/natlang glosses for the categories
should be optional while lojban section titles be mandatory and
default, for clarity.

Back to the original topic of finding a minimal wordlist for a
dictionary, I think the real forward-thinking approach would be to
find some sufficiently open project similar to EuroWordNet [a
multilingual WordNet], and then extracting a set number of unique
*syslinks* (word senses), so that when we sit down to define 'spring'
we don't have to remember jumping, metal coils and le printemps all by
our erring-human selves.

We could either use an arbitrary limit and go by frequency, and/or go
for all syslinks that contain an arbitrary number of constituent
languages. For example, only bother with 50% of all word senses that
appear in three or more languages.

co'o mi'e korbi

On Thu, Apr 15, 2010 at 15:13, Lindar <lindarthebard@yahoo.com> wrote:

My absolutely fantastic idea that donri/kribacr started and never
finished (or never even started, but definitely came up before I
thought of it [but it's still my idea]) is/was/will be to have groups
of people select topics, and then go through and come up with as many
words related to that topic as possible. I got this idea one day as I
was sticking masking tape to pretty much everything around my
apartment and writing the Lojban word for it in sharpie. I came across
the simple fact that jvs didn't have words for "pot", "kitchen",
"frying pan", etc., so I came up with words for them, and I think at
least "kitchen" (jupku'a) is up there. I tried this again with
computer terminology and it completely failed as nobody could agree
properly on things (like "window", on which I still harshly/
obnoxiously/rudely/insultingly disagree with xorxes).

Rather than having one person sit through some big gehorsenshitfesten
(parden my German) trying to pick out the most common concepts in the
universe, why don't we use the wiki idea and create "conversational
categories" under which we can place words (probably a lot of fu'ivla
and lujvo) relevant to the topic. This will generate a much larger and
relevant body of information, and it's a -much- less daunting task.
For example, I am a recording engineer, so I would be likely to start
a "recording technology" topic, and possibly contribute to the "music"
topic as I would be more likely than anybody else to need/use words
like "Hertz"/"kHz", "microphone", "nearfield monitors", "synthesizer",
"MIDI", "mixing console", "bass", "treble", and I would probably be
more qualified to determine what kind of terminology in Lojban is the
most suitable. I'd also be fairly interested in the "kitchen and
cooking" topic, and I think a great many a newbie would be very
interested in the "household objects" topic, which would probably
include a pointer to the "kitchen and cooking" topic and maybe even a
"bathroom and hygiene" topic. This way people find what interests them
and contribute to topics that they enjoy, which doesn't necessarily
give an accurate picture of common usage based on an average through
world cultures, but definitely gives a good sampling of words to use
in conversation for the types of conversation that people learning
Lojban would have. It works as a double edged sword (of handiness) in
that we have people that are going to enjoy working because they're
learning how to talk about things that interest them by contributing
(which means things are more likely to get added, being that it's fun
and not a chore) -AND- that we have quick 'topic reference'
dictionaries so you can just leave the list open and peak through to
make it easier to carry on conversations about what an arse your
government leader is without having to poke through a list for ten
minutes while the conversation has already passed because you wanted a
word for "idiot" and jvs only had "stupid" as a gloss word for
tolmencre. (Bad example, you get the picture.)

Perhaps we can quickly brainstorm a few major topics just to have
something up on a wiki?

household items
kitchen and cooking
bathroom and hygiene
sports and spectating
automotive and driving
computer ((hot topic, prone to arguments))
music
politics and law
school and education
work and the workplace
friends and family

The idea would be to have a big list of topics (and possibly
subtopics), and on the pages of each we have brief glosses with Lojban
words, with links to a page detailing the place structure, examples of
usage, actual usage example if available, and potentially a relevant
image (for those that learn by seeing and not reading).

Perhaps under "household items" is "garage", and on the page for that
it includes a little link for "see section: automotive and driving",
and perhaps even "garage" is also located under "automotive and
driving" or somesuch.

Neatonifty idea, right?

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