Re: [lojban] the myth of monoparsing

2015-02-06 15:01 GMT+03:00 And Rosta <and.rosta@gmail.com>:

On 6 Feb 2015 11:24, "Gleki Arxokuna"
>> > "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.

From the point of view of the parser, this is true. The possible attachments licenced by the grammar are known, but the parser must choose among them (which is disambiguation).

The parser must choose???? But then this is a very critical limitation of the parser?

Since when parsers HAVE TO attach to heads that aren't vague or can be derived from context?

If an English parser used an analog to {zo'e} as some zero morpheme then a lot of (may be all but nobody knows) allegedly ambiguous sentences would become vague.

If the theory of strictly applying relative clause to head of exact numbers isn't sufficient then a new theory that allows attaching to head No. {mo'e zo'e} has to be developed.

Similarly, if you disallow parsing {se xi vei mo'e zo'e nei} then one could devise a workaround that would split such sentences into several like it currently happens to parsers of natlangs.

It seems that Lojbanists created a parser and a language that is too powerful to be easily adopted to parsing natlangs. (Which is probably to the lack of information about Lojban in the world but that's another story).

So if you call this syntactic vagueness and everybody else calls it syntactic ambiguity, let us agree to tolerate your terminological eccentricity.

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

It could be that that is what happens with Lojban -- since no explicit grammar of Lojban exists, we can't say for sure -- but Lojban's design principles are committed to the principle of no syntactic ambiguity (which, following John Clifford, we call 'monoparsing'), and if that principle is respected then the Lojban example does not work in the way the English one does.

Then this is a useless term that only states that parsers for other languages lag behind in their development.

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

Yes.

> When you apply Lojban parsers you get monoparsing.

Yes.

>
>> 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.

Most English sentences are probably logically vague in some way, but the standard view is that the English Zurich sentence is syntactically ambiguous.

I'm fine with that! Then this is yet another useless term whereas

"logicosyntactic form" is potentially a USEFUL term.

You know that that's the standard view, of course. I don't mean to try to crush you with an argument from authority, but pretty much every expert on English would consider the Zurich sentence syntactically ambiguous.

But they can't compare to Lojban. May be they don't realize of find not illuminating adding a zero morpheme similar to {zo'e} that allows for {se xi vei mo'e zo'e GOhA}.

And while the mere weight of authority alone should not suffice to make you change your opinion, at least you'll understand why you're unable to persuade anybody else that monoparsing is a myth.

>
>> 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.

The same standards, terminology and analytical framework are being applied to both languages.

For the Zurich sentence, there are no rules of English that say "this phonological form can correspond to any of these n logicosyntactic forms".

Haven't you assumed that the logicosyntactical form can be only one, not several of them?

It's accidental that the rules for assigning phonological forms to logicosyntactic forms happen to assign certain logicosyntactic forms the same phonological form. For your Lojban example, the conjectural rules of logicosyntax generate this single logically vague form, and assign it a phonological form that corresponds to no other logicosyntactic form.

You are starting from theory. But note that both sentences produce the same interpretation, the same 4 possible interpretations.

If this happens then it might be that either the problem is in terminology and/or in theory that is unable to find the same structure in both sentences.

Of course one sentence isn't enough but I can try translating other examples e.g. for one type of syntactic tree to avoid delving into numerous issues.

--And.

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