Re: [lojban] Re: mi kakne lo bajra

These tags are becoming indistinguishable from the definitions of the terms themselves, the subject of 'gerku' must refer to a dog (btw, the mixing of language levels is getting a little muddling here). So you can't make a false statement in Lojban? Or at least not one about dogs? About the outer limit of usefulness here is to refer to the abstractors (sorry) that typically occur in each argument place, when there are somre and otherwise just leave it open. If Tom is a block of wood, then saying he is a dog is false but not ungrammatical. And, indeed, no noun phrase is ungrammatical in any argument position. Just puzzling, sometimes.

From: Oren <get.oren@gmail.com>
To: lojban@googlegroups.com
Sent: Tue, November 2, 2010 3:58:36 PM
Subject: Re: [lojban] Re: mi kakne lo bajra

@Luke.

Mm. Good question. No standoffishness taken.

Obviously, this all says nothing about treatment of named entities and other pro-sumti. It may end up applied to cases of pronoun resolution, but let's first focus on whether this specification could even offer something consistently valid.

You raise a good point. To extend your argument, not only would { lo gerku } must-be "animate" and even "animal," but specifically it would have to be "a dog/canine" for it to "make sense" in the same way as above. { lo mlatu cu gerku } just "doesn't make sense." At first I'm hesitant as to how such seemingly tautological restrictions should relate to seemingly non-trivial ones like { lo [se/te/ve] bajra }.

Here's what I think would happen for {lo gerku}

{ lo gerku } must-be:dog/canine

{ lo gerku } can-act-as: animal, object, animate, agent, volitional

I guess { lo gerku } is similar to other gismu such as { lo dacti } where any attempt to semantically specify it's sensical limits results in naming a class that may or may not span other words. For example, "canine" might be a tag assignable to things like { lo lorxu } and { lo labno }. Of course, the same spanning wouldn't hold true for { lo lorxu } or { lo labno }, which would have both met the end of a hierarchy of specificiation.

So, it sounds like what we'd actually be describing is not just a mass of unrelated 'tags,' but a series of overlapping hierarchical taxonomies. Using this method, if a tag is itself a word, then all words it spans could inherit those tags. Thus, from { lo gerku }'s information above, we now know:

{ lo lorxu } must-be:dog/canine

{ lo lorxu } can-act-as: animal, object, animate, agent, volitional

{ lo labno } must-be:dog/canine

{ lo labno } can-act-as: animal, object, animate, agent, volitional

The 'must-be' relations here are a different kind of necessity than I was using before, but it's still based on our 'common sense' or 'real world' knowledge that folks can immediately point out.

For example, that { lo mudri bliku cu kelci gerku } doesn't make as much sense as { lo mudri bliku cu gerku se kelci }

Note that certain tautological restrictions (like { lo labno } must-be a "wolf") won't actually be usefully spanning classes for other words (unlike "animal" and "canine," which both span at least several other words). If there is a "keyhole" so specific that no other "key" exists to fit in it's place, we can only expect that "sensical" sentences will fill that sumti-location with some sort of named entity or pronoun. Right?

co'o mi'e korbi

On Tue, Nov 2, 2010 at 15:38, Luke Bergen <lukeabergen@gmail.com> wrote:

My only question is, will we also be marking x1 of {gerku} as being an animal? lo gerku are animals, lo se skari are colors, you ve skina movies, citka food, pilno tools, djuno facts, and djica events.

It is nonsensical to say {la tam cu gerku} if {tam} is a block of wood. In my opinion, it is in the same class of absurdity to say {mi djica lo mudri bliku}. Now, because people might get confused and think that x2 of djica can be an object, we should mark that x2 of djica is an event/state. Using that same reasoning, we should also mark x1 of gerku as being an animate object (or even more specific, that it must be an animal).

So where's the spreadsheet and can I add x1 of gerku to it?

Sorry if I'm sounding stand-offish. Maybe I'm missing what the issue is. Don't the gismu list's/jbovlaste say in the definitions of the gismu when things are expected to be (events)/(ojbects)/(volitional entity)? There's nothing in the grammar that requires them to be that, it's just absurd to put anything else there in the same way that it is absurd to refer to my mudri bliku as lo gerku.

On Tue, Nov 2, 2010 at 3:18 PM, .alyn.post. <alyn.post@lodockikumazvati.org> wrote:
That's roughly what I had in mind for it.

Note that even though there are a few gismu and that universe is
closed, lujvo will need some way to be marked with these classes
as well.

-Alan

On Tue, Nov 02, 2010 at 02:14:06PM -0400, Oren wrote:
> Re: "Again, the important thing is which individual places accept what
> sorts of arguments. The gismu itself just relates those places."
>
> So then, the concept of my spreadsheet *DOES* contain useful and valid
> information, but would only be complete if it were expanded to include all
> the 'oblique' sumti places as well?
>
> Re:"Does it bother you that *{mi pinxe lo jubme} would also be considered
> semantic nonsense, because tables aren't the sort of thing that one can
> drink?"
>
> If things like "agent/object" are specified in these definitions, why
> shouldn't all 'sensical' general classes like material states
> ("liquid/solid") be included as well? This is in part why I was referring
> to these 'classifiers' as 'tags' originally. As long as people can easily
> point to a construction and say "according to this sumti's implied class
> and that selbri's meaning, this makes no sense," I think that type of
> judgement should have a clear litmus test. And there's nothing stopping
> us. With a vocabulary of less than 1500 words, many of which fall into
> regular sub-classes in the thesaurus, I see no reason why we shouldn't
> have this resource.
>
> So, to expand the scope here, I'm proposing that each and every sumti
> position in gismu definitions list explicit tags for baseline sensicality.
> That is, for bajra:
>
> bajra: x1 runs on surface x2 using limbs x3 with gait x4
>
> Now account for baseline sensicality:
>
> x1 must-be agent...
> x2 must-be material...
> x3 must-be material, must-be movable-part...
> x4 must-be manner...
>
> Now let's envision that these clearly specified 'baseline sensicality
> tags' for sumti positions are like 'keyhole definitions' that only these
> explicit classes can fit. Now, each sumti position also gets any number of
> 'key definitions' for what it can fit into, or what sumti places it can
> sensically 'fill.'
>
> x1 can-act-as agent, can-act-as moving-thing, can-act-as athlete...
> x2 can-act-as general-place, can-act-as surface...
> x3 can-act-as body-part...
> x4 can-act-as idea...
>
> Now, if we do this for every gismu, I imagine we'd end up with many
> high-frequency tags like "agent" and "material," and several hundred less
> frequent tags like "liquid" "body-part." Each of these tags would have a
> list of sumti positions it requires, and a (probably much larger) list of
> sumti positions that can "sensically" fit that semantic role.
> This data/document would not only provide a richer (many-to-many) series
> of 'categories' for vocabulary study lists, there are a series of new
> applications this would allow. You could automatically gauge the degree of
> 'figurative language' used in a text. You could automatically generate
> sensical example sentences for given vocabulary (or even generate a

> [1]minimal spanning sensible sentence for a set of words). You could even

> develop a kind of auto-complete function for a lojban-specific
> text-editor: as you begin to type a sumti in, a list of 'sensical'
> suggestions could come up in a tooltip window. If we get this data, I'd
> totally code that!
>
> But I want to make sure I'm understanding the nature of this data set.
> Please let me know if I'm still making sense, and if I do, I'll come up
> with technical specs for a web interface to make this data easy to gather
> and manage. Maybe I'll use this as a way to learn to use github.
>
> co'o mi'e korbi
>

> On Tue, Nov 2, 2010 at 12:14, John E Clifford <[2]kali9putra@yahoo.com>

> wrote:
> >
> > Well, xorxes has ideas about how Lojban *does* work, and, with minor
> exceptions,
> > he has got it right. So Lojban is his "other" language. Sorry you think
> this
> > discussion is bull-crap; it is trying to work out the ramifications of
> Lojvan
> > being a logical language, dealing with both the logical part and the
> language
> > part, and shooting for reasonable resolution where they appear to
> conflict.
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > ----- Original Message ----

> > From: Lindar <[3]lindarthebard@yahoo.com>
> > To: lojban <[4]lojban@googlegroups.com>
> > Sent: Tue, November 2, 2010 9:55:04 AM
> > Subject: [lojban] Re: mi kakne lo bajra
> >
> > Oren, I answered your question some two or three times.
> >
> >
> > Where x2 of broda asks for {nu} and x1 of brode asks for {nu}, {.i
> > broda lo brode} is kosher, because lo brode already -is- an event. For
> > all other cases, an abstractor is necessary.
> >
> > (barring all the other bullcrap/arguments going on right now)
> >
> > xorxes, since you have all these ideas about how Lojban should work,
> > why don't you just make your -own- language and let it stand up to
> > Lojban?
> >
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> >
> >
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>
> --
> Oren Robinson
> (315) 569-2888
> 102 Morrison Ave
> Somerville, MA 02144
>
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> References
>
> Visible links
> 1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minimum_spanning_tree
> 2. mailto:kali9putra@yahoo.com
> 3. mailto:lindarthebard@yahoo.com
> 4. mailto:lojban@googlegroups.com
> 5. mailto:lojban@googlegroups.com
> 6. mailto:lojban%2Bunsubscribe@googlegroups.com
> 7. http://groups.google.com/group/lojban?hl=en
> 8. mailto:lojban@googlegroups.com
> 9. mailto:lojban%2Bunsubscribe@googlegroups.com
> 10. http://groups.google.com/group/lojban?hl=en

--
.i ko djuno fi le do sevzi

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