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Jordan:
> On Sun, Dec 15, 2002 at 09:27:39PM -0000, And Rosta wrote:
> > Jordan:
> > > On Sun, Dec 15, 2002 at 02:27:58PM -0000, And Rosta wrote:
> > > > Jordan:
> > > > > Ok; you ignored the main point though: people almost *never* need
> > > > > to repeat these things in practice
> > > >
> > > > None of us have very much basis for judging this, seeing as we have
> > > > all of us written and read so little, but you have had more
> > > > experience than me. All the same, in what I have read and written
> > > > I have noticed that other people are generally happy to use anaphora
> > > > that relies on glorking, while I am not and consequently find the
> > > > problem to be a severe one. (It's not that I think glorking is bad,
> > > > but the very thing that attracts me to a logical language is the
> > > > extent to which it can feasibly reduce reliance on glorking.)
> > >
> > > Ok I can just tell you, that I see ka stuff a lot, and probably 1
> > > in 100 (or less) have more than one ce'u in it. You can take my
> > > word for this (I have about a conversation a day in lojban on irc)
> > > or not
> >
> > But at no point was I talking about ka with multiple ce'u. I
> > was talking about a bridi containing two sumti (not necessarily
> > sumti of the same selbri) that are intended to be interpreted as
> > coreferential
>
> Ugh, you know what I mean. Whether it means saying ce'u more than
> once or not, people almost never need it. And when they do, they
> can *usually* use "le nei" and such things
>
> > My own intuitions do tell me that ka with multiple ce'u will be
> > rare. But they tell me that coreferential sumti will be frequent
>
> I believe that there's enough text already to proove you wrong about
> that, though
I don't need to look at Lojban text. I know from English how common
coreference is, and I know that even in my infrequent writing in
Lojban issues of how best to handle coreference have loomed large.
> > > Anyway; I don't find "goi ko'a" particularly difficult. I would
> > > use ce'uxipa though
> >
> > Think about how your usage and others' handles coreference, and
> > how much of it requires no glorking. Or, as an exercise, try
> > writing in a way such that coreference is handled in a glorking-
> > free way. I'd be interested to see the results and to see whether
> > you are happy with the mechanisms Lojban provides
>
> I very rarely use glorking anaphora. I use goi ko'a, ri, and lerfu
> sumti the majority of the time. I do use "ra", but not nearly as
> frequently. I also use vo'a (but vo'[eoiu] not very often)
I'm not sure whether ri involves glorking. What is the antecedent
of ri in {le mamta be la djan ri}, and in {le mi mamta ri}? And is
the antecedent of {le broda} = {ro da poi cmima le'i broda} {da}
or is it {ro da poi cmima le'i broda}? I don't know. If those
questions have settled answers, then ri may be glork-free.
As far as I know, lerfu sumti require glorking. Hang on while I
check CLL.... Not clear from the book how recentness is ranked
when sumti are within sumti, nor is it clear whether the antecedent
is always the recentest sumti containing a name or description or
whether it can be lerfu sumti ("le nanmu ... ny ... le ninmu ...
ny"), nor is it clear whether the lerfu sumti repeats the
quantification of the antecedent... and so forth.
Vo'V has one ambiguity that Nick intends the BF to resolve (sumti
in root vs local bridi), and another ambiguity as to whether it
repeats the quantifier of the antecedent, which ideally will also
get settled. So ideally, the BF will make it glork-free.
> > It is not that "goi ko'a" is horrendously difficult, but are you
> > happy to use it every time you introduce a new referent in a
> > text or a paragraph or a sentence?
>
> Yes. It or lerfu sumti (which are also glork-free)
>
> If I am only refering to it once or twice I'll just use things like
> "ri", "le go'i", etc though
Does {le go'i} repeat the quantifier of the antecedent?
Anyway, hopefully the BF will remove all this indeterminacy.
One place where ko'a assignment is often required is in prenexes,
which are currently underused (that is, we are not yet, I think,
very careful about which bridi a sumti is quantified in).
> > > > > WRT to subscripting; those are obvious and (afaik) uncontroversial
> > > > > conventions which may very well be standard in a while
> > > >
> > > > Is your subscripting scheme on the wiki? I remember us discussing
> > > > subscripting schemes (for nei/no'a) on one of the lists a while
> > > > back and not reaching agreement on the details of the scheme or
> > > > on what counts as a bridi (though iirc it was pc who disagreed
> > > > with others about what counts as a bridi, so maybe that disagreement
> > > > can be considered defunct)
> > >
> > > I was speaking of ce'u. Subscripting on nei is probably useless,
> > > since you can just script no'a (which *is* book specified I think)
> >
> > There was no call for subscripting of ce'u previously, but I agree
> > that your unofficial proposal is straightforward
>
> Funny. I think I read it on the wiki..
Maybe I'm forgetting something. But all I remember is it as an
inferior solution to the ka within ka problem.
> > Whether it is nei or no'a that is subscripted, one will want a way
> > to count inwards from the root bridi and outwards from the local
> > bridi. Even then it won't help for antecedents embedded within
> > sumti
>
> Outwards, yes (that's what no'a does). Inwards makes less sense,
> and probably isn't worth it
I remember now. I or someone else had proposed no'a xi ro, no'a
xi da'a, etc. for inwards. The root bridi and local bridi being
the two salient reference points.
{no'a} is redundant, therefore.
> > > > > > That said, if there are poi/poi'i embedded within poi/poi'i, ko'a
> > > > > > assignment remains necessary, which is what led me to propose a
> > > > > > range of experimentals to abbreviate KOhA-assignment
> > > > >
> > > > > Most of those abbreviation things are a bit of a joke though. You
> > > > > have things like "goi'a" IIRC, which saves *one* syllable, and needs
> > > > > preprocessor changes to work properly
> > > >
> > > > If any require preprocessor changes then that was inadvertent error
> > > > on my part, as I have striven to distinguish between what is and
> > > > isn't baseline-compliant. (Preprocessor changes obviously aren't
> > > > baseline-compliant.) I will check "goi'a" when I go online; my
> > > > recollection was that I had proposed such a thing but moved it to
> > > > the page for obsolete proposals, but I may have intended to move
> > > > it but forgotten to actually do it
> > >
> > > It would've required processor changes to do it right. Putting it
> > > into KU is a hack
> >
> > You have some notion of an aesthetic for the grammar of Lojban that
> > I am not aware of. I of course have a powerful aesthetic sensibility,
> > but it evidently doesn't coincide with yours
>
> It's not aesthetic, it's about doing it right.
What criteria do you use for rightness, if not aesthetic ones? You
can't be thinking of functional criteria, because the 'hack' works.
> If you weren't
> working around not changing the grammar/preprocessor, you'd do those
> things by having replacements at the preprocessor level before
> things go into the grammar. That way if the grammar is doing
> analysis of such things the code doesn't need to grok different
> lexer tokens for KU and such things which are supposed to be purely
> structural, and will instead just read a "goi ko'a" or whatever
I see. Yes, in an ideal world there'd be no distinction between
syntactic and logicosemantic structures, and the preprocessor
would mediate between logicosemantic and phonological structures.
But we're not an an ideal world, here in Lojbanistan.
> > > > Because the scope for introducing glork-free anaphora is so limited,
> > > > because of tight constraints on innovation, it is inevitable that
> > > > experimental cmavo can ameliorate the problem to only a slight
> > > > degree
> > >
> > > I'm not sure what the problem is?
> >
> > The problem of wanting to say explicitly what one means without relying
> > on glorking. If you don't have the urge to avoid glorking, then you
> > just need to accept that the urge to avoid glorking is a valid reason
> > to be interested in a logical language and is a reason for wanting
> > good ways to do glork-free anaphora
>
> I agree; glork-free stuff, along with avoiding metaphor, are things
> that I think are part of the point of the language. However, I
> don't think this is at all problematic currently in the pro-sumti
> system
>
> > > > Regarding the saving of a single syllable, there is a sense in
> > > > which the saving of words is desirable, regardless of whether it
> > > > saves syllables. There are two reasons for this. The first is that
> > > > since syllable-count was ignored in the design, the best way to
> > > > do justice to the design, when exploring it through usage, is to
> > > > ignore syllable-count. The second reason is that one can measure
> > > > length not only in syllables but also in words (which are the units
> > > > of input that the parser operates on)
> > >
> > > I highly disagree. Unless there are stops between the words for
> > > some reason it doesn't count. I see no benifit to being shorter
> > > in terms of words (esp. since a lot of words can get compounded
> > > together also ("goiko'a", "lenu"). And having a relatively hackish
> > > shorting cmavo just to save *one* syllable is pretty laughable
> >
> > You disagree, but you haven't argued against my reasons, so I note
> > that you disagree, but see no reason to change my mind
>
> You said:
> - It is desirable to save words instead of (just) syllables, because
> a) We can ignore syllable length ("like the original design[1]")
> b) We can count length in words, instead of syllables
> These are circular, so I don't consider them reasons...
Where is the circularity? The reason for ignoring syllable length
was given: honouring the design parameters. The reason for counting
words was given: they're the units of post-phonological processing.
From the perspective of the syntactic processor, utterance length
is measured in words; so in that sense a dodecasyllabic lujvo is
of equal complexity to a disyllabic gismu.
> [1] That the design ignored syllable length isn't even entirely
> true btw; length in syllables wasn't a *primary* concern, but it
> wasn't ignored---there's a reason why so many of the most common
> cmavo are 1 syllable
This is true. They were assigned based on the best guess, sans usage,
of the optimal assignment. Usage that heeds that assignment will
tend to entrench it. Usage that ignores it will test whether it
was in fact optimal.
--And.