Well, Rick, skipping over the intermediate argle-bargle of the Lojban, the fact remains that, since this is (surprisingly) grammatical nowadays, there is only one valid parse for it. There are clearly two valid parses for the English. All of these parses are unambiguous (I suspect "ambiguous parse" is either a contradiction or just sloppy terminology). The English sentence is ambiguous (indeed, amphibolous) precisely because it has two valid parses. The Lojban is not, precisely because it has only one valid parse. The uncertainty is about who or what was flying over Zurich when I saw the plane. For the English, this comes down to the issue of which of the two parses of the sentence trace it back to the original proposition (in my Montogovian way of putting things -- which parse was intended, otherwise). Presumably the speaker knew and even intended to tell the answer.
For the Lojban, we can leave the speaker out, apparently, since it comes down to which object actually was flying over Zurich at the time (it is not clear to me that the choices are actually limited to me and the plane here, but five idiotic cmavo in a row is beyond my limit).
The utterer of this sentence pretty clearly did not mean to say and may not even have been in a position to. What is the same between the two is the uncertainty, its source is different in the two cases: amphiboly in one, coyness in the other.
2015-01-28 20:03 GMT+03:00 'John E Clifford' via lojban <lojban@googlegroups.com>:This is a grammatical fact which gives rise to a practical uncertainty: which proposition is being asserted, roughly, "When I was flying over Zurich, I saw a plane" or "I saw a plane when it was flying over Zurich". Lojban cannot create this uncertainty in the same way, since it cannot produce an amphibolous sentence, so, if it wants to create the same (or a practically similar) uncertainty, it must say, in effect "When either I or a plane were flying over Zurich, I saw the plane". Same uncertainty, but no amphiboly. (It is not quite the same uncertainty, since tgis asserts a definite proposition, whereas the original English failed to actually assert one, only presenting two possibilities, neither of them really put forward.)
And even in{mi pu viska lo vinji ca lonu lo se xi vei mo'e zo'e no'a cu vofli ga'u la tsurix}you see uncertainty but not amphiboly?What is put forward here now? Again uncertainty? Then why can't the English sentence be perceived exactly the same way as creating uncertainty to which sumti the clause links to?Why should we call the same thing "ambiguous parse" in one case and uncertainty in the other case?Why not say that in this aspect English is as uncertain as Lojban and not ambiguous?--
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