Re: [lojban] semantic parser - tersmu-0.1rc1

["John E. Clifford" <kali9putra@yahoo.com>]

Sent from my iPad

On Nov 26, 2011, at 8:04 PM, Martin Bays <mbays@sdf.org> wrote:

> * Saturday, 2011-11-26 at 17:40 -0600 - John E. Clifford <kali9putra@yahoo.com>:
> 
>> On Nov 26, 2011, at 12:29 PM, Martin Bays <mbays@sdf.org> wrote:
>> 
>>> * Saturday, 2011-11-26 at 14:35 -0300 - Jorge Llambías <jjllambias@gmail.com>:
>>> 
>>>> On Sat, Nov 26, 2011 at 12:41 PM, Martin Bays <mbays@sdf.org> wrote:
>>>>> Hmm. I wonder if I now finally understand part of xorlo: would you say
>>>>> that {lo broda} is equivalent, under this side-clause interpretation of
>>>>> {noi} you've just set out, to {le broda noi broda}?
>>>> 
>>>> I can't think of any reason why not, but then I'm not completely
>>>> satisfied that I understand "le".
>>> 
>>> Ah! Maybe this is progress! For my personal understanding of xorlo, that
>>> is.
>>> 
>>> {le} to me seems pretty clear: {le broda} refers, wherever it appears,
>>> to some individuals which I have in mind or would have in mind
>>> if I thought about it (to steal pycyn's phrase), and which I hope you
>>> will be able to glork from a mixture of context and them being described
>>> as brodaing.
>>> 
>>> Whether I actually believe them to broda is beside the point; presumably
>>> I do expect that you believe them to broda, or that you expect me to
>>> expect you to believe them to broda, or etc.
>>> 
>>> Since there's a single intended referent-bunch, {le broda} is invariant
>>> under passing it through a negation.
>>> 
>>> Obviously it isn't wholly immune to scope, because of the {ro da le
>>> broda be da} issue.
>>> 
>>> I don't see why it should be even when the description doesn't
>>> explicitly mention bound variables; e.g. why {ro verba cu prami le
>>> mamta} shouldn't be a reasonable abbreviation of {ro verba cu prami le
>>> mamta be ri}, or why in {pu je ba ku mi'o jinga fi le bradi} we
>>> should have {le bradi} getting the same referents both times.
>> 
>> It is a linguistic precondition of the collapse of parallel sentences
>> marked by {je}.
> 
> I suppose it just seems odd to me that we don't allow the unfilled x2 of
> mamta in {ro da poi verba cu prami le mamta} to refer to da.

I would assume that (by a different process) the unfilled place their will be taken to be {da}.  But just what the process that gets to that is is unclear (surely, the {le} helps-- a clue from Basque again).
> 
>>> xorlo seems to declare that it is constant in this way - unless I'm
>>> misunderstanding again? (Just being hopeful...)
>>> 
>>> 
>>> Anyway, {lo broda} just adds to {le broda} the side-claim that the
>>> referents *actually* broda, rather than merely that I expect you to
>>> think that they do (or otherwise understand me when I describe them as
>>> brodaing). OK!
>> 
>> And subtracts the specificity that the in mind provision gives.
> 
> It does? How can it be non-specific and yet not involve quantification?

I suppose all quantifiers are by nature non-specific, but the converse doesn't hold.  The lions, who are mucking in my garden, are not very specific lions; I know them by their deeds, not as individuals or even as a herd.  I don't, as the story has developed, even know how many they are or whether they are the same each night.  I would presumably know these things about le cinfo.

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