Re: [lojban] the myth of monoparsing

2015-02-06 14:07 GMT+03:00 And Rosta <and.rosta@gmail.com>:

On 6 Feb 2015 06:56, "Gleki Arxokuna" <gleki.is.my.name@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
>
> 2015-02-03 21:42 GMT+03:00 And Rosta <and.rosta@gmail.com>:
>>
>>
>> On 3 Feb 2015 17:29, "Gleki Arxokuna" <gleki.is.my.name@gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> >
>> > I only started this to understand how monoparsing in Lojban is different from English.
>> > If one sentence can be expanded into two distinct syntactic trees by applying precise numbers instead of imprecise {mo'e zo'e} then it's still monoparsing of course.
>> >
>> > What makes me wonder is why English can't be called monoparsed. May be because those who described it that way felt that polyparsing was the only reasonable explanation?
>>
>> I wouldn't necessarily say that Lojban is monoparsing, but certainly lots of people wish it to be, and indeed take it as a basic principle of the language, even if the actual monoparse of a given sentence is often unknown. Monoparsing means that to a given sentence phonology there corresponds no more than one sentence meaning (encoded logical form).
>>
>> I find it hard to answer your question about why English can't be called monoparsed, since you and everyone else knows that to a given English sentence phonology there usually corresponds more than one sentence meaning -- the Zurich examples showed this.
>
>
> I'm not going to argue over terminology.
> If you call this syntactic ambiguity then Lojban can also be ambiguous.

I call it syntactic ambiguity. I, like most others, deny that Lojban can be syntactically ambiguous. For syntactic ambiguity you need two sentences with different logicosyntactic forms and the same phonological form. That doesn't occur with Lojban.

It's not fair game when you are comparing two things using different tools.

> If you call this vagueness then Lojban is similarly vague.
>
> If something looks like a cat, walks like a cat, smells like a cat may be this is a cat?

But if you lack the ability to discriminate between cats and dogs then you're going to think that dogs look, walk and smell like cats.

What is the dog here?

>
> Shall we rephrase the statement into the following?
>
> "Lojban is one of the few languages (along with e.g. gua\spi) that has such interesting syntactic parsers that they perceive some sentences as syntactically vague whereas as of 2015 most English parsers perceive them as syntactically ambiguous. However, the humanity hopes that in future even English parsers will reach the level Lojban has now".

I recognize that that is your view. To me it currently seems as though you don't understand what syntax is, given that you think there is such a thing as "syntactic vagueness".

oh, sorry. Let me try to clarify.

I mean that there are several clauses floating in space and to which haeds they are attached is not known.

This is what happens both in the English and in the Lojban examples.

When you apply standard ways of dealing with the English sentence you get syntactical ambiguity.

When you apply Lojban parsers you get monoparsing.

Or, let me phrase that more charitably: your understanding of the notion "syntax" appears to differ from other lojbanists' and linguisticians'. I think you might be calling "syntax" not the encoded logicosyntactic form but the enriched "logical explicature" derived from the encoded logicosyntactic form, which is a complete proposition. A single logicosyntactic form might, due to underspecification of logical relations, be interpreted as any of many logical explicatures, and in such a case you could call the sentence "logically vague". The monoparsing claim is that every sentential phonological form corresponds to no more than one logicosyntactic form, not that the logicosyntactic form it corresponds to can be interpreted as no more than one logical explicature.

Yes, and this is how I view the English sentence in question.

To avoid misunderstanding: I recognize that Lojban syntax doesn't exist in any formal or explicit form, and that the claim that it is unambiguous is based simply on the design principle that no ambiguity is permitted and hence any syntax that allows ambiguity must be incorrect.

It can't even be shown how Lojban syntax could be ambiguous.

It is just explained in such a way that the question of polyparsing never raises.

It's all a matter of different terminology.

--And.

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "lojban" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to lojban+unsubscribe@googlegroups.com.
To post to this group, send email to lojban@googlegroups.com.
Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/lojban.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.