2015-02-21 2:32 GMT+03:00 ianek
<jan...@gmail.com>:
On Friday, February 20, 2015 at 2:24:22 PM UTC+1, la gleki wrote:
2015-02-13 0:04 GMT+03:00 ianek
<jan...@gmail.com>:
On Thursday, February 12, 2015 at 8:00:17 PM UTC+1, la gleki wrote:
2015-02-12 21:42 GMT+03:00 ianek
<jan...@gmail.com>:
On Thursday, February 12, 2015 at 7:11:12 AM UTC+1, la gleki wrote:
2015-02-12 1:20 GMT+03:00 ianek
<jan...@gmail.com>:
On Wednesday, February 11, 2015 at 1:50:49 PM UTC+1, la gleki wrote:
2015-02-09 23:22 GMT+03:00 ianek
<jan...@gmail.com>:
On Monday, February 9, 2015 at 11:54:41 AM UTC+1, la gleki wrote:
2015-02-08 4:34 GMT+03:00 ianek
<jan...@gmail.com>:
On Friday, February 6, 2015 at 8:13:30 AM UTC+1, la gleki wrote:
2015-02-04 15:45 GMT+03:00 v4hn
<m...@v4hn.de>:
On Tue, Feb 03, 2015 at 11:42:32AM +0300, Gleki Arxokuna wrote:
> "Fred saw a plane flying over Zurich" can have several meanings
Yes.
However, for me, the issue here is that we (hopefully..) agree
that there are different parse trees (which yield the different meanings).
No, several trees arise after you interpret the sentence.
But if you had an English parser, it would yield several trees without any interpreting.
Sure! Because English parsers lack the ability to find something common in all of the parse trees.
No. It's because words in an English sentence can be parsed as different syntactic structures. That's what parsing means: determining structures formed by words. Not "finding something common".
You yourself just showed several parses of the same sentence.
This is how usual English parsers are constructed.
However, there is another option to monoparse this English sentence.
You mix English language and one current theory of how to parse it.
Like this:
"Fred saw a plane flying over Zurich"
NAME VERB-PAST ARTICLE COUNTABLE-NOUN VERB-ING PREPOSITION NAME
Some (much simplified) rules could be:
Sentence ::= Noun-Phrase Verb Noun-Phrase
Sentence ::= Noun-Phrase Verb Noun-Phrase Adverbial-Phrase
Noun-Phrase ::= NAME | ARTICLE COUNTABLE-NOUN | Noun-Phrase VERB-ING Prepositional-Clause
Verb ::= VERB-PAST
Adverbial-Phrase ::= VERB-ING Preposition-Clause
Preposition-Clause ::= PREPOSITION Noun-Phrase
This simple grammar yields two parse trees for that sentence:
Sentence
----Noun-Phrase
--------NAME
------------Fred
----Verb
--------VERB-PAST
------------saw
----Noun-Phrase
--------Noun-Phrase
------------ARTICLE
----------------a
------------NOUN
----------------plane
--------VERB-ING
------------flying
--------Prepositional-Clause
------------PROPOSITION
----------------over
------------Noun-Phrase
----------------NAME
--------------------Zurich
Sentence
----Noun-Phrase
--------NAME
------------Fred
----Verb
--------VERB-PAST
------------saw
----Noun-Phrase
--------Noun-Phrase
------------ARTICLE
----------------a
------------NOUN
----------------plane
----Adverbial-Phrase
--------VERB-ING
------------flying
--------Prepositional-Clause
------------PROPOSITION
----------------over
------------Noun-Phrase
----------------NAME
--------------------Zurich
Formal grammars for natural languages do exist, although they're not perfect, but the problem with multiple grammatically sensible parses (often millions of trees and more) is much greater than the problem with nonsensible trees or correct sentences that don't parse at all.
Lojban was carefully designed to avoid this problem. And it doesn't have anything to do with {xi PA}. The Lojban grammar specifies XI clauses unambiguously. Parse trees are unique. Monoparsing is not a myth. XI clauses may add semantic ambiguity on a different level then, say, simple {zo'e}, but it doesn't have anything to do with syntactic ambiguity.
It specifies to which head a clause should attach. And since it's {mo'e zo'e} it's vague to which head it attaches. If the parser you use doesn't allow for that the only thing that can be done is to provide several possible trees.
It's a feature of a language, not a parser. If English had a pronoun, say, 'lar', which would mean 'the subject or the object of the main sentence', you could say "Fred saw a plane as lar flew over Zurich", which would be ambiguous semantically, but not syntactically.
Even in current English theory there are a lot of zero morphemes. What I'm proposing is just another zero morpheme.
This is what And agreed with me.
{la fred pu viska lo vinji do'e lo se xi vei mo'e zo'e nei poi vofli ga'u la tsurix} has only one syntax tree, regardless of the number of possible semantic interpretations.
If you applied {mo'e zo'e} to the English sentence you will still get the only syntax tree.
You can't "apply" {mo'e zo'e} to the English sentence, because it's not there. Likewise you don't "apply" {mo'e zo'e} to the Lojban sentence. You just parse it, because it's there.
In English you can have phrases like 'X of Y of Z' which could be parsed as '(X of Y) of Z' or 'X of (Y of Z)'. In Lojban it's not possible, but you can say ''either (X of Y) of Z or X of (Y of Z)", which is not syntactically ambiguous. You can't apply "either... or" to the English sentence, because you can't parse words which aren't there.
As I just said English parsers use this "add words that aren't there" all the time.
I was searching, but I haven't found any English parser (but I know a Polish one). What parsers do you refer to?
Probably most. Since this concept (of adding words and morphemes of zero length) is present in most modern theories:
This doesn't answer my question. Name at least one working English parser. I haven't found any.
Which requirements do you need? Take Stanford's parser.
But if you want an English parser that would insert zero morpheme to reach vague syntax I'm not aware of any although it's obvious (I hope so) that it's possible to create one (although probably useless since no one including me suggested any possible advantages apart from purely theoretical ones).
It's far from obvious. Natural languages have countless types of syntactic ambiguity, and I'm not sure all of them could be overcome on the parser level.
That's why I asked for examples. For those that by far been presented I used an alternative understanding.
But what if there could be infinitely many examples? It's possible, as there's no upper limit to the length of a sentence. You can't have infinite grammar (technically you could, but it's pointless).
Yes, technically it's unfalsifialbe since you can't be sure that example No. 1256 won't fail to prove or disprove monoparsing in English.
However, note that
1. I don't consider syntactic ambiguity and vague syntax (vague '=' operator) as methods complementing each other. In fact they are rival methods. I consider both of them fine. But this is what can make the claim that Lojban is the only monoparsing language false. It of course means that parsers of Lojban are monoparsing.
2. The grammar of English although is large probably not infinite.
Of course, I respect hundreds of years grammarians put into studying English.
But what I respect more is the English language itself that has thousands of years of development.
In Lojban the natural grammar yields a monoparsing parser (no artificial zero words etc.). To make a polyparsing one, you'd have to do some weird stretches. In English it's the other way around.
When one says "I like Lojban for monoparsing" that person doesn't love Lojban but loves the way it is presented.
Monoparsing is natural in Lojban. You'd have to be really stubborn to polyparse Lojban.
No, it won't be stubborn and monoparsing isn't natural to Lojban.
It's natural to textbooks, learning resources and parsers of this language.