Re: [lojban] Re: [Llg-members] nu ningau so'u se jbovlaste / updating a few jbovlaste entries

[And Rosta <and.rosta@gmail.com>]

Jorge Llambías, On 21/01/2015 16:54:
>
> On Wed, Jan 21, 2015 at 12:08 PM, And Rosta <and.rosta@gmail.com <mailto:and.rosta@gmail.com>> wrote:
>
>     Jorge Llambías, On 21/01/2015 12:33:
>
>         On Tue, Jan 20, 2015 at 8:35 PM, And Rosta <and.rosta@gmail.com <mailto:and.rosta@gmail.com> <mailto:and.rosta@gmail.com <mailto:and.rosta@gmail.com>>> wrote:
>
>
>              Step (3') yields something like Tersmu output, probably augmented by some purely syntactic (i.e. without logical import) structure. I think that can and should be done without reference to the formal grammars.
>
>         But Tersmu output is basically FOPL, which has its own formal grammar
>         (on which Lojban's formal grammar is based). I still don't see what
>         problems formal grammars create.
>
>
>     (3') must certainly involve a grammar, and I can't think of any sense in which a grammar could meaningfully be called 'informal', so I'm happy to call that grammar 'formal'. But it differs from the CS (or at least the Lojban) notion primarily in not having phonological objects as any of its nodes and secondarily in not necessarily being simply a labelled bracketing of a string.
>
>
> I don't understand your primary objection because the syntactic tree
> generated by the Lojban formal grammars doesn't rely on its terminal
> nodes being phonological objects. The terminal nodes of the syntax
> part of the grammar are the selma'o. It just happens that these can
> be mapped in a trivial way to the output of the morphology, but
> that's not important. One could implement a completely different
> morphology and mount the same Lojban syntax on that. The only
> requirement for the syntax is that each syntactic word be a member of
> one of the selma'o.

My primary objection is not so much the phonologicality of the
terminal nodes as their nonsyntacticality: if they were syntactic then
they would contain logical structure, and ellipsed elements.

> The secondary objection I accept, but that's why I had (4), to
> complement the labelled bracketing generated by (3). That's what
> Martin's Tersmu is meant to do, because as I understand it it doesn't
> start from scratch with just a string of syntactic words, it starts
> from the output of (3).

Well, I've already said that even tho the 'Formal Grammar' must be
discarded, it can still be recycled into the actual grammar. Building
the actual grammar simply by bolting together the Formal Grammar and
Tersmu isn't going to resemble anything whose innards resemble human
language, but at least it would be functionally equivalent to a human
language syntax module.

>     To the extent that Lojban is a language, (3) doesn't really constitute any part of Lojban (despite the mistaken belief of many Lojbanists to the contrary). Also, to the extent that Lojban is a language, there exists an implicit version of (3'), albeit not necessarily one that is coherent or unambiguous. So I would recommend removing the current Formal Grammars from the definition of Lojban, and replacing them by one -- an explicit (3') -- that more credibly represents actual human language (but is unambiguous etc.).
>
> The only problem with that is that we don't have anyone else besides
> yourself competent enough to give an explicit (3'). I wouldn't even
> know what (3') has to look like. We can only do what we know how to
> do.

Even if this is true, the goal of formulating an explicit (3') is
surely one the community should have, even if unable to achieve it
yet.

But starting to tackle (3') is not so daunting:
Step 1: What is the least clunky way of getting unambiguously from
phonological words to logical form -- from the phonological words of
Lojban sentences to the logical forms of Lojban sentences (with the
notion of Lojban sentence defined by usage or consensus)? Any
loglanger could have a stab at tackling this.
Step 2: Identify any devices that are absent from natlangs.
Step 3: Redo Step 1, without using devices identified in Step 2.


Reflecting on this further, during the couple of weeks it's taken for
me to find the time to finish this reply, I would suggest that
*official*, *definitional* specification of the grammar consist only
of a set of sentences defined as pairings of phonological and logical
forms (ideally, consistent with the 'monoparsing' precept that to
every phonological form there must correspond no more than one logical
form). Then, any rule set that generates that set of pairings would be
deemed to count as a valid grammar of Lojban, and then from among the
valid grammars we could seek the one(s) that are closest to those
internalized by human speakers.



>         Ok, but in Lojban there's almost a one-to-one match between
>         phonological and syntactic words.
>
>
>     That remains to be seen, because there isn't yet an explicit real syntax for Lojban. However, it's perfectly possible that in Lojban, phonology--syntax mismatches are rare.
>
>
> The only mismatch I'm aware of is "ybu", which is treated as a syntactic word even though phonologically it would break down into the hesitation "y" and the phonological word "bu".

We currently don't have a clear idea of what syntactic words Lojban
has, where by "syntactic word" I mean ingredients of logicosyntactic
form, the form that encodes logical structure. Some phonological words
seem to correspond to chunks of logical structure rather than single
nodes, and there will be instances of nodes in logical structure that
don't correspond to anything in phonology (-- the most obvious example
is ellipsis, which Lojban sensibly makes heavy use of).

>     I'm not sure if choosing a simple Lojban example is going to reveal why you can't have beliefs about binary branching in natlangs.
>
>
> What I meant to say is that I can't see a syntax as an intrinsic feature of a natlang, as opposed to being just a model, which can be a better or worse fit, but it can never be the language.

Are holding for natlangs the view that I propose above for Lojban,
namely that a language is a set of sentences, i.e. form--meaning
correspondences, and although in practice there must be some system
for generating that set, it doesn't matter what the system is, so long
as it generates the right set, and therefore in that sense the system
is not intrinsic to language?

If Yes, I don't agree, but I think the position is coherent enough
that I won't try to dissuade you from it.

If not, do explain again what you mean.

> So I can accept that binary branching syntaxes are more elegant, more perspicuous, etc, I just can't believe they are a feature of the language, just like the description of a house is not a feature of the house. Maybe that's just me not being a linguist.

But could a description of an architectural plan of a house be an
architectural plan of a house? Could a comprehensive explcit
description of a code be a code? Surely yes, and the same for
language.

>     . In my case I think the rules matter because (i) to understand the system you need to understand its internal mechanics, and (ii) a speaker knows a certain set of rules. and it's known-rules that are my object of study.
>
>
> Yes, but can't those rules, or rather a part of those rules, be presented as a CS type grammar? I understand that the Lojban formal grammars as they are are something of a monstrosity, but what if they were cleaned up and made more human compatible? You seem to be saying that the very idea of a PEG/YACC/BNF type grammar is counter to a proper grammar, not just the particular poor choices made for the Lojban grammar.

I don't know how suitable PEG/YACC/BNF are for natlangs. I must
ruefully confess I know nothing about PEG, despite all the work you've
done with it. AFAIK linguists in the last half century haven't found
BNF necessary or sufficient for their rules, but my meagre knowledge
doesn't extend to knowing the mathematical properties of BNF and other
actually used formalisms, and the relationships between them.

In denouncing the suitability of PEG/YACC/BNF, I was really meaning to
denounce treating phonological stuff (e.g. phonological words) as
constituents of terminal nodes in syntactic structures. You said that
terminal nodes are actually selmaho and (iirc?) that the 1--1
correspondence between phonological words and selmaho terminal nodes
is not essential. So in that case my objection would not be to CS
grammars per se but only to the idea that a CS grammar can model a
whole grammar rather than just, say, the combinatorics of syntax. So I
reserve judgement on PEG et al: if they can represent logicosyntactic
structure in full, then they have my blessing.

--And.

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