Talk:BPFK Section: Anaphoric Pro-sumti

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Posted by rlpowell on Sat 17 of Apr., 2004 18:58 GMT posts: 14214

On Fri, Apr 16, 2004 at 09:57:50PM -0700, [email protected] wrote: > ;vo'a: The x1 of this bridi.

How about "Repeats the x1 of the bridi in which it appears"?

You'll need to talk about scope, as well. IIRC this is somewhat controversial; check the mailing list logs.

-Robin

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Posted by rab.spir on Sat 17 of Apr., 2004 18:58 GMT posts: 152

On Fri, Apr 16, 2004 at 10:20:45PM -0700, Robin Lee Powell wrote: > On Fri, Apr 16, 2004 at 09:57:50PM -0700, [email protected] wrote: > > ;vo'a: The x1 of this bridi. > > How about "Repeats the x1 of the bridi in which it appears"? > > You'll need to talk about scope, as well. IIRC this is somewhat > controversial; check the mailing list logs.

Sure - I was saving that for the interpretation section.

I seem to remember a general consensus that vo'? has long scope, backed up by lots of usage. -- Rob Speer

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Posted by pycyn on Thu 24 of June, 2004 02:26 GMT posts: 2388

In fact there is a kind of scope leaping in most languages. English has "any" (universal) and "a certain" (particular) and most other languages have the same. But English (and most other languages, I think) can also do it with something like anaphora (because some of the cases are not typical anaphora: same referent. But one that is is the "If a boy comes to the dance, all the girls will dance with him" which means (inter alia, to be sure) "For all x, if x is a boy and comes to the dance, all the girl (scl. at the dance) will dance with x" ( the alia include insisting that this holds only if exactly one boy comes — stress on the "a" — and the preselection of the boy "If a certain boy comes ..." which is the conditional with a particular rather than a universal quantifier). The universal here is the result of the context where the "a" occurs: verso — in the scope of a single negation (so a short for "any") Logics other than Pierce's existential graphs don't show this at all well, since they read scope too early in the game,. as we might say. In fact, pierce's system would suggest that the best way to get a leaper would be just this: pick it up outside the apparently overlying scope. But it would be nice to do it in any case, just to avoid terribly twisted sentences occasionally needed to get the quantifiers right — at the cost of intelligibility. [email protected] wrote:ko'a viska re nanmu goi ko'e joi ko'i

Assigning pro-sumti with quantified expressions can be tricky. If the quantifier is under the scope of another quantifier, a negation, or perhaps something else, the assigned ko'a won't make much sense outside of that scope, or else it will force the quantifier out. Example:

mi na viska re nanmu goi ko'a joi ko'e i ko'a cu clani i ko'e cu tordu

Does that mean "It is not the case that I saw two men, ko'a and ko'e. Ko'a is tall and ko'e is short."? If it does, then {re nanmu} is gaining scope over {na}, thanks to {ko'a joi ko'e}. Otherwise the sentence is meaningless, because "It is not the case that I saw two men" does not provide any referents for ko'a and ko'e outside of the scope of {na}.

It actually migh not be a bad idea to have this possibility for scope leaping.

mu'o mi'e xorxes

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rlpowellPosted by rlpowell on Fri 27 of Aug., 2004 19:53 GMT posts: 14214

I just had a really good idea, if I do say so myself.

vo'a == vo'a xi pa == outermost; increasing numbers work inward. vo'a xi no == current, decreasing numbers work outward.

This saves us from the rather less pleasant "le nei", and friends.

-Robin

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Posted by pycyn on Tue 09 of Nov., 2004 00:39 GMT posts: 2388

While the systems for anaphoric prosumti in Lojban are not as bad as possible (we could for example pick references by counting the number of syllables since the beginning of the last same-referring expression), they are pretty dreadful — certainly for spoken conversation but even for written. The problem areas are at least two-fold, reference identification and word individuation.

To take the latter first, prosumti tend to come in clumps: {ko'V}, {dV}, {Cy} and so on, differing one from another by typically one phoneme, often a final vowel. It does not take a very noisy channel to reduce a clump of these to an indistinguishable mumble, at least in theory. Considering that some effort was put into making the nodes in gismu space as widely separate as possible (under certain other constraints), the cavalier dumping of prosumti is hard to figure out (except, of course, for the bad examples set by other constructed languages, especially logic itself). Ease of learning is also offered as a reason, but hardly counts for much of one, since the gismu are meant to be learned and are far less systematic than the prosumti. Using the same stock of words but mixing them in different ways, so that there are two — even three -- points of difference between two items in the same category would have been more practical in the end. (Of course, we then get similarlities across categories, but that seems to be less of a problem, since context ought often to tell what kind of prosumti is due).

When you come across an anaphoric prosumti, how do you know what earlier reference it repeats? In Lojban the clues are all (with one largely useless exception) superficial features of the utterance stream: a count back of sumti, a grammatical analysis of sentences with references by placement of nodes, the initial letter of the main word of the original referring expression, and so on. The exception is the system of forethought anaphorics, {ko'V}, {fo'V}, which require foreseeing the course of a conversation -- even a monolog — beyond what is normally possible. And, of coure, remembering what is assigned to what.

If we look at natural languages, we find that anaphoric pronouns are categorized not by featurees of the *expression* they repeat, but by features of the *referent* of that expression: gender and number (and randomly a few other things) in English and most SAE languages, other categories and number in other languages (references to a book or books are ki- or vi- in Swahili, following "ki/vitabu," "book/s.") Of course, Lojban "metaphysical neutrality" (snort) means that there are not many classes of things overtly recognized — and no singular or plural. Roughly, Lojban recognizes individuals, groups, sets and maybe abstraction (of various sort). And any given conversation is likely to be heavy on one sort or antoher (usually thing). Dropping back to "natural" categories (as English has to do) would help a bit — if we decided what the natural categories were. The SAE M/F/N helps somewhat, but rapidly loses the accuracy which the Lojban system — when it works — gives.

Of course, none of this grousing helps here at all; we cannot overhaul the system or get it to work as it stands, we can only explain how it would work if it did (OK, does work when it does). The rest goes into notes for LoCCan 3.

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Posted by rab.spir on Tue 09 of Nov., 2004 01:01 GMT posts: 152

On Fri, Aug 27, 2004 at 12:53:16PM -0700, [email protected] wrote: > Re: BPFK Section: Anaphoric Pro-sumti > I just had a really good idea, if I do say so myself. > > vo'a == vo'a xi pa == outermost; increasing numbers work inward. vo'a xi no == current, decreasing numbers work outward. > > This saves us from the rather less pleasant "le nei", and friends.

I'm confused what you mean on two counts:

  • Does that mean that the x1 of the next outer bridi ("le no'a" is what I think

I'd call it) is "vo'a xi ni'u pa"?

  • How in the world is "vo'a xi no" more pleasant than "le nei"?

-- Rob Speer

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Posted by xorxes on Tue 09 of Nov., 2004 01:01 GMT posts: 1912

Robin: > vo'a == vo'a xi pa == outermost; increasing numbers work inward. vo'a xi > no == current, decreasing numbers work outward.

Something similar was proposed by And here: On unglorkative anaphora

mu'o mi'e xorxes


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rlpowellPosted by rlpowell on Tue 09 of Nov., 2004 01:49 GMT posts: 14214

On Tue, Aug 31, 2004 at 10:56:50PM -0400, Rob Speer wrote: > On Fri, Aug 27, 2004 at 12:53:16PM -0700, [email protected] wrote: > > Re: BPFK Section: Anaphoric Pro-sumti > > I just had a really good idea, if I do say so myself. > > > > vo'a == vo'a xi pa == outermost; increasing numbers work inward. > > vo'a xi no == current, decreasing numbers work outward. > > > > This saves us from the rather less pleasant "le nei", and > > friends. > > I'm confused what you mean on two counts: > > * Does that mean that the x1 of the next outer bridi ("le no'a" is > what I think I'd call it) is "vo'a xi ni'u pa"?

Either is fine, but yes.

> * How in the world is "vo'a xi no" more pleasant than "le nei"?

It's not, but no-one knows whether, in

mi broda le nu do brode le nei

"le nei" == "mi" or "do".

-Robin

-- http://www.digitalkingdom.org/~rlpowell/ *** http://www.lojban.org/ Reason #237 To Learn Lojban: "Homonyms: Their Grate!" Proud Supporter of the Singularity Institute - http://singinst.org

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Posted by xorxes on Tue 09 of Nov., 2004 01:49 GMT posts: 1912

> > > I just had a really good idea, if I do say so myself. > > > > > > vo'a == vo'a xi pa == outermost; increasing numbers work inward. > > > vo'a xi no == current, decreasing numbers work outward.

Another (more logical?) possibility is xi no, xi pa, xi re... in one direction and xi ro (=xi da'a no), xi da'a pa, xi da'a re ... in the other. It takes the same number of syllables.

{xino} makes a nicer default.

I think "outermost" can be well defined, but what exactly counts as "current"? For example, in:

broda lo brode be vo'axiro

Can {brode} count as the "current" selbri?

How about {lo brode pe vo'a xiro} vs. {lo brode ku pe vo'a xiro}? Does the fact that the sumti is still open or already closed make any difference when attaching a {pe}?

I suppose that sumti in different subordinate branches are inaccessible. For example, in {ko'a noi ko'e broda cu brode lo nu ??? brodi} there is no way to refer to the position where ko'e is with these creatures.

mu'o mi'e xorxes


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