* Saturday, 2011-11-26 at 10:52 -0300 - Jorge Llambías <jjllambias@gmail.com>:
> On Sat, Nov 26, 2011 at 1:07 AM, Martin Bays <mbays@sdf.org> wrote:
> > It seems related to donkey anaphora - consider
> > {ro te cange poi ponse su'o xasli noi ke'a xi re darxi cu broda}.
>
> Right, it's the same thing. The grammar allows both ke'a and ri to see
> as its antecedent something that in principle it should have no
> business seeing as its antecedent, and so we have to cope somehow.
Well... in the case of true donkey anaphora, I think I'll be happiest
declaring them semantically anomalous.
(I don't consider something like {la alis goi ko'a cu nixli .i ko'a
fanza} to be a true donkey anaphora, although it has the grammatical
form of one and therefore is not handled by my current code)
> > Also, note that the scope-respecting rules sometimes are the most
> > intuitive - e.g. in {ro da prami de noi se prami da}. I'm not sure what
> > the scope-breaking rules would make of that; I guess something
> > nonsensical.
>
> In principle as nonsensical as "no da prami de noi se prami da".
>
> But what you call scope-respecting rules are the rules for "poi", not "noi".
Yes, in the case of an existential quantifier I am making no distinction.
> >> I think it's "broda be na ku" that must force tight scope.
> >
> > I don't see why.
>
> Mainly because that's what the sytntax suggests. It's when we go
> against the syntax that we end up with problem cases.
How can the syntax be suggesting that linkargs but not selbri tags get
tighter scope than tailterms?
> > But in {broda da gi'e brode da}, the first {da} is to the left of the
> > {gi'e}. So why shouldn't the {gi'e} be in the scope of the {[su'o] da}?
>
> Because "gi'e" connects two bridi-tails, and so each bridi-tail is
> subordinate to it. It's for the same reason that in "na broda gi'e na
> brode" the first "na" is in the scope of "gi'e" and not the other way
> around.
I agree; my point was only that the scope rules don't always respect
textual order, which you were appealing to.
> > So do you also have {da broda .i je da brode} -> {ge da broda gi da
> > brode}? If so: that's clearly contrary to CLL (and much usage).
>
> Yes, as I said, that's what I would have. I find the CLL rule somewhat
> strange.
OK. Then I'm not worried that we disagree on this.
I intend to stick with the CLL as far as coherence allows for the first
pass.
I hope that having rigorously implemented semantics for one form of
lojban will make it easier to develop alternatives.
> >> >> ko'a .e ko'e broda su'o da
> >>
> >> How does that work for ".e"? It seems that if you do what I do, you
> >> end up exporting "su'o da" to newly created preneces.
> >
> > In a sense, yes; e.g.
> >
> > da ko'a .e ko'e de broda
> > Prop: EX x1. (EX x2. broda(x1,ko'a,x2) /\ EX x2. broda(x1,ko'e,x2))
> >
> > ; but I think of this as exporting the connective to the prenex, and
> > then the inner existential to that same prenex within the scope of the
> > connective.
>
> Same with "gi'e".
I understand.
If it helps: my code is such that switching to your preferred gihek and
ijek handling is easy to do.
> Presumably in "su'o da .e su'o de" you have the first "su'o" within
> the scope of ".e", yes?
Yes, certainly. And I have that being equivalent to {da .e da} (which
may be more controversial, but I think must be right).
> > Basically: when parsing, we always have a notion of 'current prenex',
> > which corresponds to the closest instance of 'statement' or
> > 'subsentence' we're below. All sumti connectives, termset connectives,
> > quantifiers and tagged terms (currently just {naku}) export to that
> > prenex, in order.
>
> Yes, but I'm just parsing gi'e, na and selbri tags before tail terms
> rather than leaving them for last. That's what the syntax suggests,
> and I just don't see the advantage of doing otherwise.
For giheks and ijeks, an argument might be that they are afterthought
connectives, so should be usable in situations where you had not
considered when starting the sentence that you were going to want to add
the connective. If you introduce a quantifier (or sumti connective)
during the first connectant, you may want it to scope over the second
connectant - and since you hadn't planned on expressing the second
connectant at all, you won't have had the foresight to put the
quantifier in a prenex.
As for having {na broda da} work differently from {na ku broda da}...
one argument would simply be that it allows you to efficiently get at
meanings which would otherwise be complicated to express. e.g. suppose
we want to add negations to modify
{broda da gi'e brode vau de}
to have the first conjunct be
EX x1. EX x2. !broda( ,x1,x2) .
With your {na} rule, it seems you would have to make it
{broda da gi'e nai brode vau de na ku} .
With mine, it's just
{na broda da gi'e brode vau de} .
Another argument would involve your agreeing with me that
broda je brode da
Prop: EX x1. (broda( ,x1) /\ brode( ,x1))
is correct... do you?
Martin
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