From Ti@fa-kuan.muc.de Fri Oct 06 13:51:26 2000 Return-Path: X-Sender: Ti@fa-kuan.muc.de X-Apparently-To: lojban@egroups.com Received: (EGP: mail-6_0_3); 6 Oct 2000 20:51:26 -0000 Received: (qmail 31381 invoked from network); 6 Oct 2000 20:51:26 -0000 Received: from unknown (10.1.10.27) by m3.onelist.org with QMQP; 6 Oct 2000 20:51:26 -0000 Received: from unknown (HELO mv.egroups.com) (10.1.1.41) by mta2 with SMTP; 6 Oct 2000 20:51:26 -0000 X-eGroups-Return: Ti@fa-kuan.muc.de Received: from [10.1.2.43] by mv.egroups.com with NNFMP; 06 Oct 2000 20:51:26 -0000 Date: Fri, 06 Oct 2000 20:51:21 -0000 To: lojban@egroups.com Subject: Re: Why place structure? Message-ID: <8rle09+b76q@eGroups.com> In-Reply-To: <46.b8411aa.270f3aa6@aol.com> User-Agent: eGroups-EW/0.82 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Length: 2036 X-Mailer: eGroups Message Poster X-Originating-IP: 193.149.49.79 From: "=?iso-8859-1?q?Alfred_W._Tueting_(T=FCting)?=" --- In lojban@egroups.com, pycyn@a... wrote: > In a message dated 00-10-05 23:01:01 EDT, daishin writes: > But I felt that the "place-structure" is quite difficult > to memory and use. > << (3) What is the advantage of the "place-structure," Although once myself programming in a language of type "predicate logic" (Prolog), I'm still having my difficulties with the Lojban system of place structures one has to memorize along with each single brivla. Yet, since the morphology of gismu (IMHO the "kernel" of Lojban) being given, there is hardly a way to alter the place structure to be more "predictable". I do not conceal that I'm pretty fond of Rick Morneau's (see at http://www.srv.net/~ram/essays.html with furter links) pretty straightforward concepts. Since "some" time ;-), I'm dealing with his huge draft on "The Lexical Semantics of a Machine Translation Interlingua" which is based on his ideas of the different "case roles" capable to be expressed in the "valency" of different kinds of verbs: he (in quite "natural" and intuitive way) classifies verbs' valencies (place structures) according "agent", "patient", "focus" etc. as different kinds, e.g. P-d (the window broke), A/P-d (John broke the window), A/P-s (He kept the door open), P/F-s (the boy wanted the money), AP/F-s (John looked at the mouse), P/F-d (John noticed the mouse) etc. etc. - or just P-s (She's beautiful). Due to this concept, he proposes the special structure of each verb being designed according to its type of valency respective by adding special prefixes to the root, thus unambiguiously determinating each verb (and creating a whole bunch of related expressions - as I see it, in a still more powerful way than with gismu or lujvo place conversion in Lojban. I don't miss realizing that Morneau's concept is pretty close to African (Bantu type) languages - yet, that must not at all be a draw- back, the more since the pronounceability - to me - seems pretty easy (that of many lujvo or even fu'ivla doesn't at all!). .aulun.