From jimc@MATH.UCLA.EDU Fri Mar 23 08:57:12 2001 Return-Path: X-Sender: jimc@math.ucla.edu X-Apparently-To: lojban@yahoogroups.com Received: (EGP: mail-7_0_4); 23 Mar 2001 16:57:11 -0000 Received: (qmail 27745 invoked from network); 23 Mar 2001 16:57:08 -0000 Received: from unknown (10.1.10.26) by l7.egroups.com with QMQP; 23 Mar 2001 16:57:08 -0000 Received: from unknown (HELO simba.math.ucla.edu) (128.97.4.125) by mta1 with SMTP; 23 Mar 2001 16:57:08 -0000 Received: from localhost (jimc@localhost) by simba.math.ucla.edu (8.10.2/8.10.2) with ESMTP id f2NGv8700395 for ; Fri, 23 Mar 2001 08:57:08 -0800 X-Authentication-Warning: simba.math.ucla.edu: jimc owned process doing -bs Date: Fri, 23 Mar 2001 08:57:08 -0800 (PST) To: lojban@yahoogroups.com Subject: Re: [lojban] Re: [humanmarkup] Lojban personal experience In-Reply-To: <01032310092901.28193@neofelis> Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII From: "James F. Carter" On Fri, 23 Mar 2001, Pierre Abbat wrote: > On Fri, 23 Mar 2001, John Cowan wrote: > >But in general, *syntactic* ambiguities do not exist in Lojban... > > It is possible to create a syntactically ambiguous sentence with {zo'u}. For > instance: {la carlyt. zo'u mi klama} can mean "I'm going to Charlotte", "I'm > coming from Charlotte", "I'm going by way of Charlotte", or "I'm taking the > Charlotte" (if Charlotte is a vehicle). Anything that appears in the prenex can > be put in any unfilled place in the bridi... Is this really true? I'd interpret it idiomatically as ``speaking of Charlotte, I'm coming'' (and the listener might pick up a clue for the missing places of klama, but not by any rule of the language). With the example of computer languages, it's like declaring a variable [*in such language] and then not using it: the formal effect is the same as if the variable (or prenex item) had never been mentioned. That last sentence might be taken as a counterexample, but I'm taking it as a reminder that there are steps beyond semantics in interpreting a sentence, namely taking context into account, and unless the language includes some pretty strong algorithms for interpreting context (and Lojban doesn't), you're going to miss a lot of the meaning if you stop at semantics. In this example I originally was going to say "it's like declaring a variable and not using it"; then I said "the context is obvious to me but maybe not to others, so I need a prenex to suggest the context"; and than I said "this duplicates Pierre's sentence; I'd better actually use the prenex symbol within the main sentence." James F. Carter Voice 310 825 2897 FAX 310 206 6673 UCLA-Mathnet; 6115 MSA; 405 Hilgard Ave.; Los Angeles, CA, USA 90095-1555 Email: jimc@math.ucla.edu http://www.math.ucla.edu/~jimc (q.v. for PGP key)