'case' and Lojban

[lojbab (Bob LeChevalier)]

jimc has several times made a big deal of my avoidance of the term 'case'
for sumti tcita - the tags that specify the roles of non-place-structure
sumti.  Some comments of the last couple of days have clarified in my mind
what the reasons are.  Let us see if I can explain.

Linguistic case theorists postulate as few as 3 or 4 cases are necessary
and sufficient to analyze language usefully.  We have gismu with 5; this
would seem to contradict the linguists if we say that each of the 5 is a
separate 'case'.  The reason, of course, is that these linguists use a
broad and abstract view of case, and see absolutely nothing wrong with
having more than one argument of a predicate having the same case.

I am most wary about defining something contradictory to linguistic
theory when it is not necessary, especially since the contradiction is
due to different uses of the term 'case'.

Natural language processing theorists use a slightly different
definition of case, one closer to what jimc is thinking of, close to
what Jim Brown came up with for Loglan, and close also to what we tried
to allow for with BAI.

These researchers define a number of cases as basic, usually between 5
and 20.  Some of these cases are defined rather broadly - the case
'patient' or 'passive' in particular is typically a hodge-podge of
semantic roles.  For example, (and I think Jim Brown used this one but
am note checking), if a bridge is across the river, the river is a
'patient'.

Jim Brown analyzed all of his gismu in the mid-80s, and with another
never-named person came up some large number like 31 or 47 cases.  By
sufficiently broadening the metaphorical definitions, he was able to
reduce that number to 13, which is the number of words in his DIO case
tag selma'o.  The Procrustean bed of these compressions is truly
torturous - the case tags prove to be fully as broad in meaning as
English prepositions, and indeed his language with case tags in use
looks like a prepositional language.

Jim recognized that there were other roles/cases that were not part of
any gismu place structure.  This is known becuase he retained his
equivalent of BAI, his 'modals'.  Some of these overlap his case tags
and some cover roles that never occur in a place structure.  He then
grammatically defined these as something separate from the DIO tags.
DIO tags can only go on place structure sumti, 'modals' can go only on
the added non-place structure sumti.

We did not accept this scheme for Lojban for a couple of reasons:

1. Why should the set of possible case tags and the set of possible
added sumti tags be different?  This in effect suggests two different
case systems are at work in one language.

2. Why should the set of cases be artificially constrained to a small
number of cases, so broadly based that they are no longer intuitive?

Thus we researched the current state of case theory (actually pc did).
His conclusion was that there was no single case theory that had
achieved predominance, and that researchers could not agree on any set
of cases that was necessary and sufficient for all aspects of language
analysis.

Can Lojban, which stresses a minimum of metaphysical assumptions, impose
a big one by specifying a limited number of cases that semantically
covers all language needs?  No!  Especially when the sassumption would
be one that neither linguists nor AI researchers can agree on.  Not only
is this philosophical against the underlying spirit of the language, but
a simple demonstration shows it to be unworkable.  I believe that jimc
will find it equally unworkable for his diklujvo.

Given that each gismu has a set of places, each of certain cases, what
happens when you make a lujvo of any two.  You get a place structure
that in some way combines the two place strcutures of the separate
gismu.  Some places will be eliminated because the lujvo-making in
effect allowed some variety of one of the terms to fill a place in the
other term's place structure.  In general, however, the place structure
is likely to end up longer than either original.

Now make a 3-term lujvo by combining this two-termer with a gismu.  The
result:  still more places.  Since there is no theoretical limit on the
number of terms in a lujvo, then for any finite number of cases, you
will eventually come up with a lujvo that have more places than there
are cases.  THus for Lojban, either there is no sufficient set of cases
or you have to use one case for more than one place of some lujvo.  I
contend that this makes any case theory unworkable when applied to
Lojban as a human language, because the primary use of cases would be to
help keep the semantics of the place structures straight.

(AI processing can probably allow for multiple places of the same case,
and indeed Lojban can grammatically do so using subscripting.  But this
becomes a mechanical method of labelling and tracking places in
manipulation more than it does a direct access to the semantics.)

I'm willing to be told or proven wrong on this, but I still think the
avaoidance of metaphysical assumptions is important.  When we are so
unsure of the place structures that alone of all features of the
language we do not intend to baseline them - if for no other reason
simply because of the impossibility of a comprehensive and consistent
place structure analysis to be completed before we put out a dictionary.

But a better reason is that we don;t yet really know what the Lojban
words mean.  If Lojban is not to be an encoded English, then the last
stage of determining the meanings of each word will have to be done IN
LOJBAN, without translation to English.  Until then, we won;t know what
the exact range of meanings covered by each word should be, and hence
will not know the exact range of meaning of each place structure place.

How can we before then, perform any systematic analysis of the places
that will be binding after that in language analysis.

And of course meanings will drift, and so probably will place
structures.  If so, then a pre-analysis of the places will inevitably be
wrong, possibly before the 5 year 'freeze' is over.  Indeed, I can say
that I HOPE this is the case.

lojbab