Subject: Re: [lojban] measuring semantic space

From: Robert LeChevalier <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 06 May 2003 21:29:07 -0400

At 03:37 PM 5/6/03 -0400, [email-masked] wrote:
>In a message dated 2003-05-06 5:56:54 AM Eastern Daylight Time, 
>[email-masked] writes:
>
>>How does one demonstrate that? (Or, for starters, measure semantic space?)
>
>my first thought is: by starting with everything and successively dividing 
>it into smaller spaces. rick morneau (creator of katanda/nasendi) does 
>this or very similar.
>
>second thought: use concept lists (e.g. roget's thesaurus).

A Roget's analysis of the gismu list was performed in the early history of 
the language
http://www.lojban.org/publications/wordlists/roget.txt
http://www.lojban.org/files/history/ROGETNEW.TX1

>i don't know what the 35 minimal concepts that have been mentioned here 
>are (any pointers, anyone?), but if i choose 5 concepts, something is 
>likely to get left out. if i choose 50 or 500, i think the same is 
>true: something will get left out. btw, toki pona comes to mind as a 
>minimalist language.

The concept of "blanketing semantic space" was important when we designed 
the gismu list, and several approaches were used to ensure completeness, 
erring on the side of redundancy. On the other hand, new concepts are 
always being invented, and thus there is the potential need to cover an 
expansion of semantic space, so we have fu'ivla which can be used for 
borrowings and coinings, as well as additional potential to add gismu (but 
hopefully not for a generation or so).

There has been at least one attempt to map semantic space with only 30 
roots. Somewhere in my deep archive (paper only), I have a letter 
describing this. The guy who devised it was selling his tome defining all 
English words in terms of these roots for something like $100. (I may have 
mentioned it in an early JL - likely before issue 7) It was pretty gross 
(and rather naive in its interpretation of English words as if they had 
only one meaning).

lojbab

-- 
lojbab [email-masked]
Bob LeChevalier, President, The Logical Language Group, Inc.
2904 Beau Lane, Fairfax VA 22031-1303 USA 703-385-0273
Artificial language Loglan/Lojban: http://www.lojban.org

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From: Robert LeChevalier <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 06 May 2003 21:29:07 -0400

lojbab