On Mon, Sep 10, 2012 at 8:53 PM, And Rosta
<and.rosta@hidden.email> wrote:
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.
Remembering or noticing that "a" explicitly loses its restriction outside the formal scope of its binding - which would happen routinely in even relatively simple Xorban sentences - seems a greater burden on human abilities, and is a far greater violation of the way human language works, than remembering simply that "a" is bound by "la mlta" after someone says "la mlta". Imagine if we had to remember or notice that "he", "she" and "it" changed meaning based on something like the scope of its referent (and only scope) instead of based on introducing a newer, more salient referent (i.e. rebinding).
ra je frmra se xsle pnsake drxake.
It's hard to imagine that the average human has the mental parsing acuity to automatically take that to mean "Every farmer who owns a donkey beats things", especially since this is available:
ra je frmra se xsle pnsake drxa[ko'e].
The pragmatic effect of the {free var => "o'e"} interpretation rule is simply to make "ra je frmra se xsle pnsake drxake" a violation of the non-gluteality principle.
The forethought version of this, where you give a V'u name to a restriction, is more acceptable, though still crude and memory-taxing.
Well, I agree with you somewhat. I anticipate that in practice primarily "a" and "e" would be bound to topics and focuses which would appear freely within one or two subsequent sentences, and otherwise would be explicitly rebound. The other variables perhaps would be implicitly bound only more rarely (outside the current sentence, that is). So most of the time, my idea of good Xorban style would mean that *most* variables are bound at least once per sentence. There could be some series of variables set aside for marked forethought persistent bindings. too. I admit that this is guesswork on my part, because Xorban variables really don't have much precedent among languages, natural or constructed. But my best guess based on the reasoning above is that they're destined to be part of the language.
For reference tracking we have dV, and can introduce new devices if necessary.
And for every new device introduced, one still has to bind a variable to use it.
The implicit binding scheme doesn't substitute for he/she/it/they, since the pronouns pick out a previous referent, not a previous restriction.