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



Well, I assume you will improve on the morphology as things get squared away, so that it won't be just vowels tring, but rather thing attached to relevant information, that will be used to carry through on the binding. 



From: And Rosta <and.rosta@hidden.email>
To: engelang@yahoogroups.com
Sent: Monday, September 10, 2012 7:53 PM
Subject: Re: [engelang] Xorban: Semantics of "l-" (and "s-" and "r-")

 
Mike S., On 09/09/2012 20:27:
> 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.

The problem is that it requires the hearer to remember the most recent restriction for every vowel morpheme. That's a huge burden on memory. Most of the memory effort is wasted. And it violates the way human language works, because the mind throws away nonsemantic info as soon as it's been processed.

The forethought version of this, where you give a V'u name to a restriction, is more acceptable, though still crude and memory-taxing.

For reference tracking we have dV, and can introduce new devices if necessary. The implicit binding scheme doesn't substitute for he/she/it/they, since the pronouns pick out a previous referent, not a previous restriction.

--And.