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Mike S., On 17/08/2012 14:49:
On Thu, Aug 16, 2012 at 8:47 AM, And Rosta <and.rosta@hidden.email <mailto:and.rosta@hidden.email>> wrote:
In Livagian I had one ogdoadic (iirc) predicate -- it was something like "x1 is the event of x2 being in ordinal position x3 in set x4 defined by property x5 ordered by property x6 with cardinality x7", maybe it was hebdoadic not ogdoadic -- and it required a ghastly amount of baroque machinery to accommodate it.
Regarding "event x1", I assume that event predicates are formed
regularly as Lojban NU expressions are formed?
No, every predicate has an event argument, the state of affairs in which the relation among the other arguments is the case.
Being a member of a set is not an event in the Lojban (or English) sense
The English sense of "event" is dynamic, tho the technical term "[Davidsonian] event argument" doesn't entail dynamicity, but the Lojban sense isn't dynamic.
I probably misunderstand this, but here's my interpretation of how your hebdoad works: I saw on television today the event (=x1) of John (=x2) becoming the third (=x3) (in set =elided x4 defined by being a) person to walk on Mars (=x5) (ordered obviously by time =elided x6) (with cardinality obviously now 3 =elided x7).
This predicate has a meaning that makes it unlikely to be an argument of "see", but it might be an argument of "not" or "believe".
I find that x4 and x5 are really the same thing said different ways;
the set is the group containing the members, not the property that defines it
the rest of the places are essential to the meaning, but as a whole it's too unwieldy: x3 and x6 are closely related to one another and might be managed by a separate predicate linked to x4/x5; likewise x7 is inherent in the x4/x5. In software terms this thing needs to be refactored.
It kind of depends on the syntax and morphology. The heptadic solution is economical in the number of predicates required (in the lexicon and in the sentence). If you can omit in the sentence any arguments you don't need to saturate explicitly, then there's not much downside.
But not all decompositions seem to adequately capture the sense of the gestalt. E.g. "X says Y to Z". And decomposition is itself cumbersome, of course.
Why not "X tells Z Y"?
I wasn't making a distinction between them. I meant that there doesn't seem to be a natural way to decompose this triadic predicate into dyadic predicates: X says Y, X addresses Z, Z hears Y, all in the one event -- pretty cumbersome.
> If all predicates are kept to 2 places, then we will be able to
> afford suppletive forms for the inverse/passive and reflexive of
> common predicates as you suggested. The rest can be formed regularly
> using particles. The number of possible operations is relatively
> small if one insists on 2-place predicates; it quickly starts to get
> complicated if you go even to 3.
I agree that even with 3 places things get more complicated, but reducing to only dyadic leads to verbosity. E.g. "X says Y to Z" could be "X is talker in event W, and Y is message in event W, and Z is addressee in event W". Likewise the megapredicate I mentioned above could be restructured so that instead of one predicate with 7 arguments, you could have six dyadic predicates each of which have an argument corresponding to the x1 and the other argument corresponding to one of x2--7.
Am I to understand that every predicate in your system has to have an
argument for event?
Yes.
In that case reducing predicates to only two places would probably make it not only verbose but unworkable.
But capping predicates at two (non-event) arguments is too much even for Xorban. Given the shape Xorban is taking, though, it's now clear that there's no upper limit to the number of arguments, but every argument adds add least one syllable (and maybe four or more).
I am uncertain of the function of your event arguments and why they can't be grammaticized more efficiently, but I am curious to find out more about it, so please feel free to shed some light on that if you would. If these events have all the related tense and modal logic worked out behind the scenes, I would especially like to see your notes.
For example, rather than "False(angry(x))" ("It's false that x is angry"), Livagian would have "false(x1[e],x2) angry(x2[e],x3)".
I see the triad "X says Y to Z" as most conveniently decomposed into
dyads strictly among X, Y, and Z, namely "X expresses Y" and "X
addresses Z". Here's the basic idea:
{say}: X says/expresses proposition/narrative Y
{tell}: X tells/addresses/communicates to audience Z
John {tell} Alice.
John tells Alice.
John {say} he is going to the store.
John says that he is going to the store.
John {tell} Alice {say} he is going to the store.
John tells Alice that he is going to the store.
John {say} the story {tell} Alice.
John tells the story to Alice.
Alice {inverse-tell} John.
Alice is told by John.
Alice {inverse-tell} John {say} the story.
Alice is told by John the story.
Alice {past} {inverse-tell} {say} the story.
Alice was told the story.
Interesting. I've never looked into a system like this before. what would you say its main virtues are?
> I think the best way to link the place structures of syntactically
> combined predicates is by simply adopting Richard Morneau's system of
> three archetypical thematic relations called agent (A), patient (P),
> and theme (T) (the last Morneau calls "focus"). These can represented
> by vowels a/i/u. Clauses can be composed of serial predicates as in
> the example above, or you can derive case tags like Morneau if you
> prefer; there is only one agent- and/or one patient-arguments per
> clause, each of which is governed by any number of co-predicates of
> the correct types; there are any number of theme-arguments, each
> governed by exactly one co-predicate. In my tinkering I have found
> that there are only four open-class predicate types needed: (A,P) "A
> does something to P", (A,T) "A does something using T", (P) "P is
> something", and (P,T) "P has something to do with T". There is also a
> need for a closed class of coordinating particles with arbitrary
> valency (P, T1, T2, T3,... ) but I'll leave that out for now.
Could you say a bit more about the syntax of serial predicates, and about why you need four (rather than just one) open classes?
The short answer is that the serial predicate syntax and
corresponding semantics under consideration do not treat all
predicate slots as interchangeable, which is what a one-open-class
system like Lojban's requires. Four appears to be the smallest number
of open classes required to make this version of Morneau's system
work. A description of the system follows for your curiosity.
Thanks. I read it with interest and thanks.
The syntax of this version is basically SVO and SV. As mentioned, an open class basic predicate has one of four types of argument structures, (P), (P, T), (A, P), (A, T). The A refers to an agent slot, P to a patient slot, T to a theme slot. Argument structure type is lexically determined.
_Theme_ is misnamed, I think. In "X enter Y", X is the theme in the standard sense of the term. Your reasoning about the need for no more than these four patterns seems sound, except if we can merge (A) into (P), why not also merge (A, T) into (P, T)? What do the three cases and four predicate types buy us? What about a system of binary serial verbs, forgetting about the 'cases': e.g. "John wield knife cut bread become slices"? --And.