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Re: [engelang] Xorban: Semantics of "l-" (and "s-" and "r-")



On Sun, Sep 9, 2012 at 2:26 PM, Jorge Llambías <jjllambias@hidden.email> wrote:
> As for speakability,
> Xorban is on the road to a serious memory problem, keeping all the variables
> straight over long stretches of conversation, so it will eventually have to
> consider some forms of redundancy to overcome this, whether reupping or some
> other device.

You shouldn't have to remember variables over long stretches of
conversation, since they will be constantly reused. The rule for the
binding of unbound variables would normally apply to a variable that
appeared in the previous sentence, or even the current sentence, not
one from several sentences ago since it's unlikely that the variable
would not have been used again.

This is a matter of style, but my guess would be two sentences at least, just so you can say things analogous to "the former... the latter...".  If it's much more than two sentences, a complimentary rebinding with explicit "la Ra" would seem appropriate.

I really don't see a problem with Xorban's implicitly bound variables, which provide such a simple, succinct and easy-to-understand means at leveraging the verbiage of previous restrictions. They are much better defined than "he/she/it/they" in English, and tend to obviate the problems found in things like "John helped his[=Bob's] father fix his=[John's] car."  Maybe there is some greater value that comes from repeatedly rebinding the same variables with the same restrictions sentence after sentence, but I am not seeing it.