Re: [lojban] A Simpler Connective System (blog article)

On Tue, Sep 27, 2016 at 9:07 AM, Gleki Arxokuna <gleki.is.my.name@gmail.com> wrote:

2016-09-27 15:56 GMT+03:00 Susannah Doss <susannah.j.d@gmail.com>:
My experience with lo nintadni is that the problem is definitely not in the system itself but in how it is taught.
CLL by design is not a tutorial, and other textbooks by far only tried to copy it, successfully or unsuccessfully.

The new system is much more intuitive than the old. I don't think that is entirely due to how it is taught. Having 5 words to remember instead of 26 is nice assuming 5 can do the work of 26.

I already tried this system and now hate it.

You can't judge by the number of words.

One important argument against this system is that people studying Lojban often incorrectly omit {lo} resulting in weird results under this system:
{lo nixli je nanla} means "someone who is a girl and a boy at the same time."

With the standard system an attempt to do that simply leads to an ungrammatical thing that can be easily detected without delving whether the text can be meaningful at all. The parser immediately warns of
{lo nixli .e nanla.}

The correct thing is {lo nixli .e lo nanla.}

The connective system is pretty simple:
.a, ja, gi'a, .i ja
.e, je, gi'e, .i je
etc.
One might say that
.ji, je'i, gi'i, .i je'i
makes complications but it doesn't really belong to the series of logical connectives. This is a series of question words.

Similarly, non-logical connectives like jo'u are used primarily to connect nouns (lo sumti). And when they connect other elements these are in majority of cases proposals to break their semantical/grammatical silliness.

Yes, you can't judge by the number of words.

The point is that there are indeed 5 distinct concepts and they simply cannot be replaced with one. {.e} connects nouns, {gi'e} connects tails of clauses etc.

They all are simple enough to remember since they all have the same "suffix" -e.
Variations of these mad proposals (initially proposed in year 1996) do not replace these 5 concepts but simply use the same word for some structures.
Please, note that this {je cu} is no difference from {gi'e}. It is still not {je}.

Other arguments include:
2. breaking the meaning of {cu} as pointe out by la tsani.
3. always keeping in mind where you can elide {cu} and where you cannot (as the paper with the proposal itself mentions)
4. always keeping in mind garden path sentences (what did I use {je} for? For a sumti or for something else?)

Interestingly, that the original proposals by la xorxes look even more elaborated. There you would use {gi je} instead of {gi'e}. In another proposal it was {vau je} instead of {gi'e}. Although of course it's no win. You still have to remember this construct {gi je} is a single entity just like you remember {lo nu} or {lo ka}.

I've been reading the CLL in various sections throughout the book and I haven't come across as much concept confusion as I have when attempting to make it through the section on the connective system. CLL is indeed not a tutorial, but I feel like I gain much more understanding out of it than reading the textbooks. It makes everything make sense and feel connected with the top-down view. I feel the theoretical basis for old connective system isn't great. It doesn't feel elegant.

What exactly doesnt feel elegant to you? there are only 5 endings. The rest is about syntax. How is {je cu} better than {gi'e}? I dont get it.

It doesn't seem to fit within the Lojban language as well as other concepts. I don't really notice others using the connectives too much either in the IRC. But errr, I may have not been paying the closest attention. I can at least speak for myself in that the old system confuses the hell out of me when reading about it in CLL compared to reading other concepts in CLL.

I want to use connectives but I don't know how!

But I suppose now after using this system you know perfectly what they are, do you?

On Tue, Sep 27, 2016 at 8:30 AM, Gleki Arxokuna <gleki.is.my.name@gmail.com> wrote:

2016-09-27 15:18 GMT+03:00 Susannah Doss <susannah.j.d@gmail.com>:
As a nintadni whose opinion arguably doesn't matter that much*, I've avoided using connectives because I was horribly confused by what I've read about the existing system. .i .ie ji'a lo frica nintadni cu tugni lo du'u mi'a cinmo lo xrani .uanmonai There were so many words to remember for different situations! When I read the new proposal, I immediately understood the proposed system. It seems much more elegant than the existing system. I really like it. .i lo mibypre cu pa'itce lo melbi selti'i

My experience with lo nintadni is that the problem is definitely not in the system itself but in how it is taught.
CLL by design is not a tutorial, and other textbooks by far only tried to copy it, successfully or unsuccessfully.

* to .i a'o lo mrilu mibziljmina cu nalkansa lo donynabmi toi

.i ki'e la zabna donpre
.i mi'e la .suzanys.

On Tue, Sep 27, 2016 at 7:34 AM, <gleki.is.my.name@gmail.com> wrote:

Em segunda-feira, 26 de setembro de 2016 21:31:11 UTC+3, aionys escreveu:
Aha, I found .xorxes.'s proposal. Apparently it overloads {gi}, while this one does not?

https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/lojban/ExtEumbYoQg

You can also find a boiled down version of it.

On Mon, Sep 26, 2016 at 11:20 AM, 'John E Clifford' via lojban <loj...@googlegroups.com> wrote:
Since JCB through out the basic structure of FOPL on day one of the development of Loglan and decided to graft a pseudo form onto a SAE base, things like trying to simplify the conjunction system have been a matter of ever increasing complexity, interrupted occasionally by attempts to get back to the basic underlying simplicity -- with scarcely visible success. To be sure, Lojban has achieved the monoparsing with which it should have begun at the cost of Byzantine complexity (and questionable accuracy) But it seems unlikely that much reform can keep this result and cut through the mare's nest. There are those that love the complexity and the documented structure (the best documentation in the language business, after all) and -- despite occasional complaints about not getting more new people -- glory in their isolated mastery, and so they are not interested in "improvements". Mere improvers are also too tied up in the status quo to consider scrapping the mess and starting over on the right foot this time. So, changes, fueled merely be convenience or clarity, are not likely to occur. Changes that add to complexity are always welcome, of course.

On Monday, September 26, 2016 11:41 AM, And Rosta <and....@gmail.com> wrote:

On 26 September 2016 at 16:04, selpahi <sel...@gmx.de> wrote:
On 26.09.2016 16:43, And Rosta wrote:

Having given the matter about .0001% of the thought you have, I wonder
whether the gi'i terminator is optimal. Firstly it would not always be
easy to work out on the fly when it is and isn't elidable, so the
prudent strategy would be to leave it in except when certain it is
elidable. Secondly, when it isn't elided it adds an extra word and two
extra syllables. A better alternative would be to introduce medial
conjuncts with _go_ rather than _gi_, and use _gi_ only for introducing
final conjuncts: {ga JA A go B go C gi D}. (Or, one step neater, use
_gu_ for medial conjuncts and _go_ for the tanru coordination
introducer. Or _ge_.)

The only times {gi'i} would not be elidible is if another connective follows that is supposed to apply to the entire forethought connection to its left. In all other cases {gi'i} is elidible, because each {gi} can only devour exactly one sumti, after which the entire connection ends automatically.

Your strategy with {go} would involve much more forethought than this, because you would have to be absolutely certain that you only want to add exactly one more item.

Yes, but in designing an ergonomic loglang -- which okay, Lojban isn't and doesn't aspire to be, but we're kind of imagining if it were trying to be -- should minimizing speaker forethought be prioritized over, say, minimizing hearer backtracking, or minimizing verbosity? (I think no.)

Do you have any situations in mind where working out whether {gi'i} is elidible would not be easy?

I was thinking of {ga JA1 ga JA2 ga JA3 A gi B gi C gi D gi E gi F gi G gi H gi I gi J gi K}, which I presume would treat A--K as conjuncts of JA3, and would require two {gi'i}s (terminating JA3 and JA2) to mark the intended structure (whatever it is). Have I misunderstood? I suppose it's not hard to work out that gi'i is unelidable, so I will withdraw the first of my two objections. A reason for preferring the terminator over alternatives is that terminators are the Lojban way; but a reason for preferring terminatorless alternatives is that they can potentially involve incremental parsing without lookahead, which I think is psycholinguistically much less taxing, and that terminators are psycholinguistically alien.

--And.

Thank you for your comment.

~~~mi'e la solpa'i

--
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+un...@googlegroup s.com.
To post to this group, send email to loj...@googlegroups.com.
Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/grou p/lojban.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/op tout.

--
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+un...@googlegroups.com.
To post to this group, send email to loj...@googlegroups.com.
Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/lojban.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.

--
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+un...@googlegroups.com.
To post to this group, send email to loj...@googlegroups.com.
Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/lojban.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.

--
mu'o mi'e .aionys.

.i.e'ucai ko cmima lo pilno be denpa bu .i doi.luk. mi patfu do zo'o
(Come to the Dot Side! Luke, I am your father. :D )

--
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 https://groups.google.com/group/lojban.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to a topic in the Google Groups "lojban" group.
To unsubscribe from this topic, visit https://groups.google.com/d/topic/lojban/ewQLBEaH52s/unsubscribe.
To unsubscribe from this group and all its topics, send an email to lojban+unsubscribe@googlegroups.com.
To post to this group, send email to lojban@googlegroups.com.
Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/lojban.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.

--
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 https://groups.google.com/group/lojban.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to a topic in the Google Groups "lojban" group.
To unsubscribe from this topic, visit https://groups.google.com/d/topic/lojban/ewQLBEaH52s/unsubscribe.
To unsubscribe from this group and all its topics, send an email to lojban+unsubscribe@googlegroups.com.
To post to this group, send email to lojban@googlegroups.com.
Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/lojban.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.

--
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 https://groups.google.com/group/lojban.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.