Re: [lojban] Technical, Help Request: What information *should* a Lojban dictionary system have?

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

On Sat, Sep 11, 2010 at 06:31:12PM -0400, Kevin Reid wrote:
> On Sep 11, 2010, at 17:50, Robin Lee Powell wrote:
> 
> >What got this started is the realization that Lojban isn't
> >English, and that, in particular, the brivla definitions seem
> >anti-Lojbanic. When I see
> >
> > x1 gets/procures/acquires/obtains/accepts x2 from source x3
> >
> >that kind of looks to me like a verb; I see the big thing in the
> >middle as being "the meaning" of "the verb".
> ...
> >In particular, it seemed to me that if you had the right kind of
> >information about the places, you could generate the sort of
> >definiton I pasted above automatically from that.
> 
> 
> I think this is a dangerous idea, and arguably less Lojbanic than
> the current definition format.

'swhy I asked.  :)

> Lojban is not English; selbri places are not prepositions. The
> definition of a selbri is the *RELATION* among *ALL* of the
> places, not the combination of the meanings of individual places.

Fair enough.

What if there was detailed information about the places *and*
something like what we now call gloss words?  That is, words that
describe the whole relationship?

> What would be an improvement in the area of "avoiding the verb" is
> having the brivla definitions be given with each of the places as
> the English subject; for example:
> 
> spati
>   x1 is a plant of species x2.
>   x2 is the species of plant x1.
> 
> (I've omitted the / words from the gismu list definition for
> brevity.)
> 
> The latter (with the numbers changed) could also be used as a
> definition of {selspati}, and that sort of thing does occur in
> jbovlaste (for example, I wrote a definition for {tersmu} so that
> I could index it under the English verb "understand"), but I think
> that it would be better if a single brivla entry (especially for
> lujvo, which are not as obviously sel-convertable) contained the
> “English verb” perspectives for *all* of its places.

That's a very interesting idea.

Now, how would that look such that it was stored in a more
machine-understandable way and not as actual strings of English
text?

It's the giant strings of English text thing that I most want to get
away from; it's caused us nothing but trouble IME.

-Roibn

-- 
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