Ooops! and re Chris Handley 12/9/91

[Logical Language Group <cbmvax!uunet!pucc.princeton.edu!lojbab>]

Dave (misquoting Nick, who didn't leave it out)
>Nick (in story):  le maxri lei manti    se sudri'a
                                      cu
                                      --

lojbab (.oiro'a), who should know better (.ianaise'i), doubles, and
    redoubles the error in two successive sentences:
>lenu le solri    dirce glare le terdi    sudri'a lei maxri
               cu                      cu
               --                      --
>The Sun radiatingly-warming the Earth dried the wheat.

>lei manti    sudgau lei maxri
           cu
           --
>The ant(s) (agentively doing something) dried the wheat.

Maybe I should make sure I'm awake when posting.  Apologies. .e'o fraxu

lojbab

Side note in response to Chris Handley:

Computers will have to learn Lojban at least partially the way they learn
any natural languages - initially with lots of help from humans.  At this
point in Lojban's evolution it is ridiculous to claim that the language has
reached the goals of stability and 'logicalness', because no one yet
really thinks in the language.  To teach computers, we will need at least
the following steps:

1. Teaching the computer a large number of Lojban words, including their
place structures, probably in addition with a substantial knowledge base
showing how these concepts are related (AI frames or whatever).

2. Teaching the computer to make intelligent guesses about place structures
of words it doesn't know.  This is more than merely coming up with guidelines
like dikyjvo - it means having a capability to analyze the stuff that is found
in a given place, determining its category among concepts (not sure yet what
I mean by that but it may suggest something to others).

3. Most important - teaching the computer to recognize human errors becasue the
human beings won;t be perfect at remembering place strutures, or in applying
any rules or guidelines that are developed.  The computer must therefore
recognize nonsense for what it is, be able to make an attempt using the
processes of 2. to ascertain what place strcture the human WAS using, and,
because Lojban must allow a speaker to speak nonsense intentionally, the
computer must be prepared to ask the human whether indeed the analysis is
correct; i.e. whether to choose the apparently erroneous/nonsensical
interpretation, or the 'corrected' version.

For a long time to come, speaking nonsense in Lojban will be difficult
because listeners will generally assume that the speaker has made an error
and will tend to modify the speaker's statement into one that is not nonsense.
This is a hypothesis, of course, because that is what we do in English and
other languages, including conlangs and some computer languages even.  At
some point there will hopefully be this level of competence.  (A Lojban
speaker can metalinguistically assert correctness using the discursive
affirmation "jo'a"; pragmatically, this should tell a computer to presume that
the place structures are being filled according to the rules even if this
seems nonsensical.)

lojbab