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

[Jorge Llambías <jjllambias@gmail.com>]

On Thu, Dec 8, 2011 at 8:39 PM, John E. Clifford <kali9putra@yahoo.com> wrote:
> I suppose my point is just that, when we make all these claims about being logical ( even in the narrow sense), one expects that the way that sentences are constructed has some rational connection to the logic below, not just helper smelter rules which happen to work, in some practical sense.  So, what I sketched briefly was one case of trying to make such a rule, where the sentences clearly meant the same thing from beginning to end, not just ending up right.  As I  say later, such rules may not be possible, but they do deserve a look.

The sentences have to mean the same thing from beginning to end with
the helper smelter rules too, not just end up right. If there is one
step where they mean something different, the helper smelter rule
fails.

It seems that what bothers you is that Lojban has eks and giheks, and
quantifiers and negations admitted as pseudo-arguments. You may want
to call that illogical, and in some sense it is, but it's been part of
Lojban and of Loglan from the beginning, so you can't be finding out
about it just now.

Since these constructions are not part of standard notation, there
have to be helper smelter rules to show how they come about from
standard notation, or how to change them into standard notation.

I don't see anything particularly irrational in the helper smelter
rules as I proposed them, and you didn't give enough information about
any alternative rule you have in mind that you claim would make more
rational connections, so I can't compare.

> As for what is ignored, the list in this case is fairly short: binding, instantiation, and role.  The one particular quantifier is governed by two universals ( more or less), which means it's instantiation has to take both into account,

How is "ro lo re prenu cu citka su'o plise" different from "la .djan.
.e la .meris. citka su'o plise"? "Each of the two people ate an apple"
vs. "Both John and Mary ate an apple"?

Or even better: How is "no lo re prenu cu citka su'o plise" different
from "la .djan. na .e nai la .meris. citka su'o plise"? "None of the
two people ate an apple" vs. "Neither John nor Mary ate an apple".

Assuming we agree those are in some sense equivalent (but who knows if
I can make that assumption), extend it now to "Each of the two boys
and one of the two girls ate an apple" vs "John and Paul, and either
Mary or Alice but not both, ate an apple". Is there any reason for
that not to be the reading of "ro lo re nanla .e pa lo re nixli cu
citka su'o plise"?

>while in the final analysis, the two particular quantifiers are each governed by a single quantifier and needs only to take that into account.  Neither of the two ultimate instantiations would be the one the single case would give,  and, while you may say that the quantifier expressions are not terms, they are certainly treated as such

So that's what bothers you, right? That a quantifier is treated
syntactically as a term, when it is obviously not a term semantically.
If that's what you wanted to point out as irrational, then I agree,
there is some irrationality in that. But it's something that has
always been part of Lojban.

> (the claim that that they can't shift positions doesn't enter here, nor, I would think, in analysis generally);they are, after all, joined just like names, not the overarching structural elements the are ( ultimately).

Right, and that's why we need helper smelter rules to sort that out.
Or do you think there is some other way?

> Yes, every particular quantifier ( and universal, for that matter) is the same in function, but surely not in content, a {su'o plise} in one sentence points to different apples from that in another sentence. And similarly for a universal, if we are restricting our domain to just the immediately relevant groups, as seems to be the (unacknowledged) case here.

Is that also what bothers you, that a predicate may have different
extensions in different instances of use due to domain of discourse
shifts? This is a separate issue, and then you should also be worried
about "la .djan. .e la .pol. cu prami la .meris." expanding as "la
.djan. cu prami la .meris. .i je la .pol. cu prami la .meris.", since
we can conceive of contexts in which "la .meris." has different
referents in the expanded form but not in the collapsed form. The
helper smelter rules assume a fixed domain of discourse so that "su'o
plise" (or "ro plise", or "no plise") keeps the same domain every
time.

>>> (note the negation sign has here
>>> been reassigned as part of the quantifier)
>>
> The objection is, of course, to burying a negation ( another structural element) in a term, a non-structural element.

But that's what Lojban does and has always done. Surely you are not
finding out about this just now.

>> They are two instances of one and the
>> same sentential operator, just like two instances of "na ku" would be
>> two instances of one and the same sentential operator. (They are
>> "terms" only in the sense that Lojban's formal grammar calls them
>> that, but that's just Lojban being sloppy with technical terms as
>> usual.)
>>
> Except that quantifiers, unlike negations, introduce references to things.

In the sense that they need a domain of quantification? Yes. And the
domain of quantification should be maintained for quantifier "terms"
that are shared by eks or giheks.

>> That involves a donkey pronoun, and we don't as yet have spelled out
>> proper rules to handle them. This is not part of the kind of unpacking
>> rules we were discussing.
>>
> But it is just the kind of rule that needs to be discussed.

Sure. But let's not confuse it with the helper smelter rules that deal
with the much more tractable issue of expanding eks and giheks and
moving "quantifier terms" and negations to the prenex, and the
slightly more hairy but still manageable issue of dealing with
implicit binding of variables. The jury is still out on donkey
anaphora, but eks, giheks, quantifier terms and negations only need a
reasonable convention. Let's not muddle the simple issues with the
truly complicated ones.

mu'o mi'e xorxes

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