From C.D.Wright@xxxxxxxx.xxxxxxxxx.xx.xx Fri Apr 2 07:10:20 1999 X-Digest-Num: 103 Message-ID: <44114.103.568.959273824@eGroups.com> Date: Fri, 2 Apr 1999 15:10:20 +0000 From: C.D.Wright@xxxxxxxx.xxxxxxxxx.xx.xx Subject: semantics ... coi rodo .i mi pu djica lenu mi cusku di'e rodo .iku'i mi na kakne lenu mi cusku lei pluja sidbo bau la lojban. la pablov. puzi cusku di'e: > First, sorry about the misspelling of lujvo. I guess > I confused the "jvo" with the "jbo" because of the > rafsi {jbo} for the gismu {lojbo}. (bad excuse!) Easy to do, easy mistake to make. I still push many, even most, of my lojban utterances through the parser and then through my lujvo splitter and lookup program to make sure that what I say is grammatically correct, and that the words mean what I think they mean. la robin. puzi cusku di'e: > Lojban, {ninmu} means "a female humanoid person" > English "woman" means "a female human adult" > Greek "gineka" means "a married female human" > Turkish "kadIn" means "a female human non-virgin" (snip) > Leaving _everything_ up to everyday use would result > in different meanings of {ninmu} similar to some of > the translation errors we see between natlangs. .ice'o la pablov. cusku di'e: > I would say the problem is that there's never an > exact definition for a lujvo, {pe'i} The stronger statement is that *all* words in *every* language can never have *exact* definitions. To a greater or lesser extent, the semantics associated with every word in every language will always be fuzzy. The only thing that we or anyone can ever hope for is that the fuzziness is not so great as to cause significant misunderstandings. How do we express to someone else the meaning of a word? We use more words, and the fuzziness can never disappear. > It's never perfectly clear what "xxx type-of yyy" > means. In fact, I believe the claim for semantic > precision is illusory, since, well, there's always > a level of "tolerance" for interpreting a certain > word. It's not clear to me that there has ever been a real claim that there is semantic precision. The explicit claim is that a tanru is always a metaphor, and that a lujvo is intended to have one meaning, not withstanding the fuzziness that will always accompany any word. It's likely to be the case that { relxilma'e } will always explicitly mean bicycle, rather than the more general concept of a two wheeled vehicle, which could include a dicycle (which has the wheels side-by-side, not inline (and yes, I have ridden one)). > Every word is, strictly speaking, a metaphor. Hmm. I think I disagree with that, because to me, the word "metaphor" means "an application of a name or descriptive term to which it is not literally applicable." As such, any word that *is* literally applicable in some situation cannot possibly be a metaphor. However, what I think you mean to say is effectively what I was saying earlier. Every word has a greater or lesser degree of fuzziness. Back to lojban, however. > if we want to stick to our claim of "unambiguity", to > go on and create new words ad infinitum. As I say above, I don't think the claim of a total lack of ambiguity is sustainable, and I think that anyone who thinks that such a claim has been made has misunderstood, as indeed has anyone who makes such a claim. The lack of ambiguity has always been in the realm of parsing, grammar, etc., and not in the field semantics. In essence, I'm saying that you're perfectly correct in almost every respect. I only disagree with your belief about what claims have actually been made, and the consequences of them. > the problem I perceive with lojban is that it gives > fixed definitions for words (gismu), a thing which > is just opposed to the essence of semantics, since > words are understood by their use, and at the same > time they are defined by their use, so that the real > meaning is the complex sum of all its everyday uses. Hmm. I do agree that lojban gives fixed definitions for gismu, but I don't believe that doing so is opposed to the essence of semantics. Words are understood by their use, yes, but why is that a problem? If the gismu in lojban are always used according to their original and intended definitions, then usage agrees with definition. Linguistic semantic drift will be an interesting thing to watch in the case of lojban. > A dictionary only tries to approximate that, but it's > always aimed to a person that have already learned his > vocabulary in a "natural" way. This isn't always true. I use both a French dictionary and a German dictionary, and I've learned neither sets of vocabulary in a "natural" way. Please note that I freely admit that this example is probably not very helpful in clarifying the situation, however. > So, we have a clear contradiction here: lojban - > defines the gismu from english words already in > existence, which were and are used in this "natural" > way; > wants to "freeze" the meanings and create new words out > of them (lujvo), which are supposed to have a priori > definitions. Let me say again that you're making valid and valuable points here, and much of what you say I agree with. However, I think the "contradiction" that you claim here is rather less clear than you seem to be saying. It seems that my understanding of these matters differs significantly from yours, so let me explain what I think is true, and we can see where the difference lies. I'll start with the basics that we all agree with, and develop my points as I go. Lojban has structure words, {cmavo}, and root predicate words, {gismu}. Cmavo have many purposes, from simple bracketing of linguistic constructions, through to the complex modifications of existing constructions to give new meanings. The root predicate words are each intended to occupy a single point in semantic space. In other words, they are intended to have one specific meaning. However, it is recognised that it is in the nature of language and its usage that there will always be a greater or lesser degree of "fuzziness" associated with each gismu. This fuzziness is inevitable, and is intended to be only as large as necessary for communication. Metaphorical use of gismu is generally to be discouraged. In order to warp or modify the meaning of a given gismu so as to to match the desired meaning, gismu (and more generally {brivla} ) can be gathered together into a {tanru}. Each of the brivla in a tanru modifies the next in a manner that depends upon the context. The order of modification is specifically defined by the grammar - the words in a tanru always associate to the left. B1 B2 B3 is always to be understood as (B1 B2) B3. This is one specific example of where lojban is completely unambiguous. The meaning of a tanru is largely determined by context, and a given tanru could have several potential meanings. The place structure is taken from the last brivla in the tanru, and the meaning is generally a restriction of the meaning with that brivla alone. Gismu can also be glued together to make a compound word, called a {lujvo}. In principle, a lujvo can have just as many possible meanings as the equivalent tanru. However, a lujvo is intended to enter the language with one of those meanings chosen as "the" meaning for that lujvo. Given this description we can see that it is not always possible /a priori/ to know for certain the one true meaning associated with a given lujvo. However, it is guaranteed that the meaning will be one of the possible meanings of the corresponding tanru. It is expected that it will usually be obvious, but perhaps not always. It is, however, expected that the meaning of a lujvo should be generally guessable, and if a listener knows that a guess has been made then no deep-seated misunderstandings should happen. What I do not know at the moment is how that one true meaning for a given lujvo will be decided. So far it seems to have been the case that a lujvo is coined, and then people have agreed that it's reasonable, and so it has been adopted officially. Er, whatever that means. Finally to return to your posting about lujvo: > we always get in trouble when we try to give a lujvo > for a certain word, because the definition must be > contained by the word itself. This is largely true, although not entirely. The definition must be one of those possible from the associated tanru, yes, and if that's what you mean then fine. > In this way, it will be never be possible to have > complex concepts, since we would need endless lujvos > to define them. Now, this seems to be your final conclusion, and while it has some merit (which I'll come to in a moment) I think it goes just a little too far. Complex concepts can be embodied in tanru with their meanings pinned down by the specific context. This is what happens with natural languages, and I think every usable language will have this same property. If I have an idea that you haven't ever come across, I will have to shape that idea in your mind using words you already know. In English we don't (often) create entirely words for ideas we have. Well, not often. It does happen on occasion, and I have explicitly used the idea in both my previous research as a mathematician and in my current work as principal researcher for a commercial company specialising in radar. ( Side note: the word "radar" originally came an acronym - "RAdio Detection And Ranging", but it is now a word that has come into English in its own right.) In my research I and my colleagues often discuss several complex ideas over a period of a few hours, or even days. To each of these complex ideas, constructions or concepts we give nonsense names, invented words. Concept builds upon concept, and we need to be able to refer to each one quickly and effectively, and so we deliberately build a dictionary of nonsense words. At the end of the session, those nonsense words whose definitions we can still remember magically correspond to the important concepts, because that's the way the brain works. We could do the same thing in lojban by inventing proper names all the time - la glob., la tat., la kanet., and so on, but in the end we may want a new word in the language to cover the new concept, a concept not easily covered by a tanru, and hence not easily covered by a lujvo. Tricky. mu'o co'o mi'e. sidirait. ==================== " If you never go off at a tangent you will forever run in circles. "