From cowan@xxxxx.xxxx.xxxx Sat Jan 1 09:16:29 2000 X-Digest-Num: 326 Message-ID: <44114.326.1772.959273825@eGroups.com> Date: Sat, 1 Jan 100 13:29:20 -0500 (EST) From: John Cowan And very probably it was easier to work out > the mapping from natlangs to Esperanto than from natlangs to something > as stark as predicate logic form. IIRC, the main advantage was that it was easier to check the interlingua for correctness, becasue that merely required people who understood Desperanto (Esperanto + small number of hacks). > Given that pred logic notation differs from natlangs in its extreme > simplicity, it would be interesting to find if some system can be so > simple it is unlearnable. JCB believed that Loglan '60 (the version documented in Scientific American, which was really really close to speakable-predicate-logic) was indeed too small to be learnable; he described it as "rattling around in learners' heads like a pea", IIRC). > I was assuming that for patents, all that counts is an unambiguous encoding > of truth-conditional meaning. That of course is a very restricted set > of goals. IMNSHO, having read or rather decoded a fair number of patents, I believe that what counts is to disclose everything, thus claiming legal protection, while in fact revealing nothing to one's competitors. For these purposes, what is wanted is a language which is a mass of ambiguity and can be twisted into meaning, post hoc, almost anything one wants it to mean, while remaining utterly unintelligible on the surface to anyone except the writers. -- John Cowan cowan@ccil.org I am a member of a civilization. --David Brin