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On Tue, Dec 17, 2002 at 01:08:36AM -0000, And Rosta wrote:
> Jordan:
> > On Mon, Dec 16, 2002 at 05:41:37PM -0000, And Rosta wrote:
> > > Jordan:
[...]
> > > > 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
> >
> > We're not just talking about coreference. We're talking about
> > coreference within a ka abstraction at a subbridi level of more
> > than one. Otherwise there's no problem. Since that case is *so*
> > incredibly rare (I may even have not ever seen it), I don't think
> > there's an issue---especially since we can use subscripts or goi
> > ko'a if it ever happens
>
> We're talking at cross purposes. I had been saying that one advantage
> to using ke'a within poi'i rather than ce'u was that it then gives
> a nice way to do coreference, since the ke'a are coreferential when
> repeated. In subsequent messages the point I was trying to make is
> that glork-free anaphora is tricky in Lojban, but is frequently
> needed; hence the potential utility of poi'i ke'a. I no longer know
> what you were saying.
But, to that I said that if you use ce'u, there's no problem with
using either simple things like "le nei" or "le no'a" for 99% of
these (already rare) cases, or the glork-free anaphora or subscripted
ce'u or whatever for the complicated cases.
That said, poi'i would make sense with ke'a (or more preferably, a
distinct cmavo with the same behavior to avoid problems in relative
clauses), because there's only 1 thing for it. But seka would not,
because you can have N variables in a lambda expression.
[...]
> > > > 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
> >
> > In the first it is djan, in the second it is mamta, but in
> > "le la djan. mamta ri" it would be djan. See below for why
[...]
> > > questions have settled answers, then ri may be glork-free
> >
> > ri is intended to be glork free. The rule is that the referent of
> > the first "complete" sumti which you encounter when looking from
> > the ri leftwards, skipping all members of selma'o KOhA, is the
> > referent of the ri
>
> Why then would the antecedent be "la djan" in "le la djan mamta ri"?
> Isn't "le la djan mamta" the first complete sumti?
No. Look at the grammar and you'll see why. "la djan." is a
complete sumti.
> How about in "ge na broda lo brode gi ri brodo"? Would that be treated
> as gobbledygook?
No. The referent of the "lo broda" is referred to by the "ri" (so
it's the *same* broda, and not the same as repeating "lo broda").
[...]
> > > 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.
> >
> > Lerfu sumti are not supposed to require glorking. Xorxes has
> > indicated that he does not care to follow this rule, however
> >
> > The rule for lerfu is just like for ri except that it is based on
> > the first letter (you can use multi letters for tanru components
> > though) of the sumti and that it is overriden if someone explicitly
> > binds the lerfu using goi
>
> I take this as the rule you propose rather than what CLL says.
No. This is what CLL says. It says it in a semi-quishy way (like
its stuff about default ke'a positions), but I think it's clear what
the intent is:
"There is a special rule that sometimes makes lerfu strings more advantageous
than the regular pro-sumti cmavo. If no assignment can be found for a lerfu
string (especially a single lerfu word), it can be assumed to refer to the most
recent sumti whose name or description begins in Lojban with that lerfu."
(where "if no assignment can be found" is talking about if it hasn't
been bound with goi).
> So anyway, in "le nanmu ... ny ... le ninmu ... ny" the antecedent
> of the second ny is definitely le ninmu, then.
Provided that there's no "le ninmu" or "le nenri" or whatever in
between.
> > > 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
> >
> > vo'[aeiou] is glork-free, essentially. Knowledge that it is supposed
> > to be long distance is pretty widespread
>
> Knowledge about whether it repeats the quantifier is not widespread.
I think vo'a should behave just like "ri" on that issue (and in
fact CLL may have something to say on this; I can't remember and
don't feel like looking now though). "le go'i" is a different
issue, because it involves a "le".
Like you said, though, it's a minor issue, and doesn't change it
to non "glork-free" status.
> > > > > 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?
> >
> > My guess is no, it starts it over with a "ro"
>
> Some room for potential weirdness there, then, if x1 of go'i is
> da, or lo broda.
It'd be ro of the things refered to.
Actually this is a more consistent way to view the "ri" ones also,
and fits in with the brief statement on requantification that chapter
16 makes. So "ci le gerku cu klama .i vo ri xagji" is semantically
bad, because you're talking about 4 out of 3 dogs.
> > > Anyway, hopefully the BF will remove all this indeterminacy
> >
> > There's very little indeterminacy on these gadri. The quantifier
> > question is valid, though
>
> I'm glad to hear that so much is settled. It would be good to
> get all this written up in one place so that we can check it
> all works properly and all questions are resolved.
*cough*.
*tries really hard not to make smartass comment about CLL*
(oh wait I just did).
> > > 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)
> >
> > I'm not sure what you mean by that
>
> If, say, you have ka within ka or NOI within NOI, then the ke'a
> or ce'u belongs to the localmost clause it occurs in. If it
> belongs to an outer clause, then it has to move to the prenex
> of that clause and be assigned a ko'a, the ko'a recurring in
> the local clause. I found that this is not at all a rare occurrence.
I agree that that needs to be done in those cases.
I do not agree that this is not rare. In fact, I think it's very
rare.
[...]
> > > > > 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
> >
> > Huh? How's that? I still don't see the use of inward counting
> > instead of outward. To me (and I *think* the book says this in 18)
> > no'a xi ro means the outermost bridi
>
> No'a is redundant because it could be nei xi re, or nei xi something.
>
> I agree that no'a xi ro (or nei xi ro) is the outermost bridi.
>
> By counting inward I mean xi ro, xi da'a, xi da'a re.
Oh. I consider that counting outward. You go *out* "ro", not *in*
"ro".
no'a is redundant, but I'm suprised to hear you complain. You've
got about 50 kei'a-style, redundant cmavo on the wiki. Anyway it's
useful, i've used it, and I like not having to think subscripts for
the common case of just need 1-bridi out.
[...]
> > > > 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
> >
> > Ok you did say that (in parenthesis; it really didn't look like a
> > main claim). I don't think this really has anything to do with how
> > a parser (logically or actually) operates. If anything you could
> > argue that the size should be measured in kilobytes or something
> > But seriously, this is a language for people, and to a human (and
> > even to a computer parser, technically), the smallest lexical token
> > consists of the sounds in a syllable, stress information, and whether
> > there's a pause after it
>
> Syntactic complexity is a real psycholinguistic phenomenon, and to
> model it satisfactorily you have to allow words to be minimal units
> (which is not to say that phonological length doesn't affect
> processing difficulty).
I didn't claim anything about psycholinguistics. If you're going
to tell me that psycholinguistics somehow prooves that we should
count words instead of syllables when determining length, I'm going
to doubt you're giving me the whole picture.
> I always think of Lojban as a language for people, albeit abnormal
> people.
.u'i.ie
> I don't know what you mean by "lexical token" in the last sentence.
"Lexical token" as in the smallest unit of the grammar (in this
case the sub-word grammar[1]). What I was saying is that a sentence
in lojban is more fundamentally a string of syllables (with stress
and whether there's a pause counting as part of the information),
rather than a string of words.
[1] Jay was fooling with making a parser that unified the sub-word
level and word level of the grammar (it would fix a lot of bugs
jbofi'e has if you do things like leave out spaces), I think he ran
into some problems with doing it in the particular grammar-language-thing
he was using because the word-level grammar is most easily parsed
from right to left.
[...]
--
Jordan DeLong - fracture@hidden.email
lu zo'o loi censa bakni cu terzba le zaltapla poi xagrai li'u
sei la mark. tuen. cusku
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