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Re: [engelang] Xorban: Termsets



I'm very short of time to contribute. Brief comments:

1. "The benefits would be: getting rid of the �ne�V� series and using �jV� as they were intended to be used; a considerable amount of nonsense productions removed from the language; termset productions that would be close to underlying logical form.
The drawbacks would be a more complex grammar, including a new part of speech."
Other things being equal, the simpler grammar is to be preferred, but only when other things are equal. Simplicity of grammar is not one of the prime goals; rather, usability is. In this particular instance, it looks like the pros outweigh the cons.

2. All connectives are essentially abbreviations of an extensionally-defined set defined by explicit listing of members in combination with quantification over members of the set (e.g. "or" = at least one (is true); "and" = each (is true)), and quantificational predicates don't form a naturally closed class. For termset coordination, what is required is a list of ordered n-tuples, plus quantificational predicates, plus method of expressing an open proposition (i.e. property/relation), plus predicate (ck-, iirc) relating the open proposition to what binds the unbound variables within the open proposition. The special bits of grammar required for this are:
* method of listing -- doesn't exist yet
* method of listing ordered n-tuples -- doesn't exist yet (we had a method for ordered pairs, but not n-tuples).
* method of expressing open proposition -- we have this, but I can't remember now how we did it; at any rate, it's the method for doing "who loves who", either something like "la fa xi smi xu smu prmiku" or maybe "xiku prmiku".

E.g. "Some-but-not-all of {<Alice, Alfie, anemones>, <Bertha, Bill, begonias>, <Chloe, Charlie, chrysanthemums>} are in-the-relationship who-gave-who-what"

Ordinary connectives are worth having special abbreviations for. But are termset coordinations? Are they frequent enough to warrant having special lexical and grammatical devices for abbreviating them? I'm doubtful. But at any rate, the priority must be first to ensure the underlying structure is expressible.

--And.

Mike S., On 23/09/2012 07:05:


I put some more thoughts and some technical stuff on my blog:

http://loglang.wordpress.com/2012/09/23/termsets-part-2/