No Subject

[Logical Language Group <lojbab@ACCESS.DIGEX.NET>]

& r
Subject: Lojban

UC> So I guess one part of the Lojban learning observation is to see which
UC> kind of deep structure the users would define.  This choice would
UC> reflect the actual human internal deep structure, right?

Basically so.  I think rather that we will see if the language is
learnable as it is defined.  If so, then we know that there exists a
human-internal set of transformations from any deep structure that is
ingrained into our heads to the Lojban surface structures.  This then
would suggest some type of isomorphism with the Lojban
defined-deep-structure.

UC> The case tag system has some advantages, so I wonder if there are
UC> case tags for prepositions like "to" and "from", which are usually
UC> already expressed by mandatory arguments.  How do you say "What did
UC> you do to her?" in Lojban?

We don't have anything corresponding to the whole of English preposition
"to" or "from", especiallly including the example you give.  There is a
case tag for destination, and another for origin, but neither applies to
the example, nor to most uses of "from" and "to", only those with a
specific motion.  I would do the example as one of two versions
depending on emphasis.

Assuming ko'a represents "her":
do gasnu ma ri'i ko'a
You are agent in what-action, with-this-agency experienced by her.
or
do gasnu ma poi se lifri ko'a
You are agent in what action that is experienced by her
(which uses no case tags at all)

or
gau do ko'a lifri ma
With-agent-you, she experiences what?

ri'i is a generic experiencer case tag
gau is a generic agent case tag (the do-er of the action)

UC> >There is no exact equivalence of "of".  The words be/bei are just gram
UC> >separators to attach any arguments onto the'sheriff' argument.
UC>
UC> I thought "pe" is quite similar to "of".  So are there any differences
UC> between "le pulji pe la NATinxem" and "le pulji be la NATinxea bei"?

"pe" is similar to the generic "of" which is often the "genitive case"
in those languages that have such a thing.  But that is equating apples
and oranges - they are not grammatically similar and you cannot therfore
use them in nearly the same way (pe is not in any way a preposition, but
rather a binding word between two arguments).

le pulji be le NATinxem  (no "bei")
the police of-organization Nottingham
(be is serving to label the following argument as the 2nd place of pulji
which is the organization the police are associated with.

le pulji pe la NATinxem  (that should have been a "la" in the last one too)
The police that are in some way associated with Nottingham; i.e.
the police of Nottingham

Both versions can be translated to English "of", but that is not the
"meaning" of either, just the closest English colloquial approximation.

UC> >didn;t
UC> >have a good dictionary, or failed to check himself, because there are
UC> >of strange word choices fro his Chinese (I say this since I did the Ch
UC> >dictionary work for Lojban myself.
UC>
UC> Well, the problem of choosing between synonyms when making
UC> Loglan/Lojban words exists for not only Chinese.  I recall that for
UC> "see/view" the word is vinci/viska.  I guess "view" instead of "see"
UC> was chosen because it would be more consistent with words from other
UC> (especially European) languages.

Not quite that frame of mind.  We used several English synonyms and let
the computer decide which one matched up with phonemes from other
languages best.  In this case, you are correct that "view" was the word
chosen, but that may or may not have been because of similarity with
European language words.  We tried "see" as well.

Your guess on blood was correct - it is "ciblu".  Another word is a bit
harder, but highly recognizable once you think about it "blue" is
"blanu" bLANu and BLanU.

But I have heard that "brown" is not a color commonly used in Chinese.
I can't remember the word I obtained from the dictionary, but the result
was "bunre".  This may be a little less recognizable, especially if the
Chinese root we used is not well-known.

Also the algorithm might give a strange result because the word I got in
Chinese was a digraph, and the word making algorithm might have taken
part of each component resulting in something with no real recognition
at all.

I don't know any examples of this off hand, but I have the old Loglan
dictionary in front of me.  For the concept regular/cyclical/periodic,
Dr.  Brown used the Chinese "i lyu" by some Romanization, taking the
"il" to score as part of "rilri".  The Lojban word for the concept is
"diknu", by the way, and I know that the English component in the "ik"
from "cyclical".  Dr.  Brown's word for "powerful" is "lilpa" from
Chinese "li liang".  The Lojban word is "vlipa".  Dr.  Brown's word for
"screw/bolt" is "skori" from Chinese "lo so ding"; the Lojban word is
"klupe" where I do not know any of the etymology.  In the latter case,
the Chinese contribution appears to be the s and 2 vowels.  There are
probably comparable Lojban examples.

lojbab


Date: Thu, 19 Aug 93 21:12:44 CST
From: u7911005@cc.nctu.edu.tw
Apparently-To: <lojbab@grebyn.com>

> Both versions can be translated to English "of", but that is not the
> "meaning" of either, just the closest English colloquial
> approximation.

I see.

> Not quite that frame of mind.  We used several English synonyms and let the
> computer decide which one matched up with phonemes from other languages
> best.  In this case, you are correct that "view" was the word chosen, but
> that may or may not have been because of similarity with European language
> words.  We tried "see" as well.

Did you also choose from synonyms in the same way for other languages?
(esp. Chinese)

> But I have heard that "brown" is not a color commonly used in Chinese.
> I can't remember the word I obtained from the dictionary, but the result
> was "bunre".  This may be a little less recognizable, especially if the
> Chinese root we used is not well-known.

Well, the choice doesn't really matter much, except the similarity-with-
other-languages issue.  There two synonyms for "brown" in Chinese are
"tzun" (literally, brown) and "kafe" (literally, coffee color).  Most
Native Chinese know *both* of the synonyms since age 8 or so.  Either
are well-known, but "kafe" is more often used, especially in informal
text/speech.  (Of course, there are also other cases in which some of
the synonyms are more well-known than others.  And obviously, not every
concept translate to a simple Chinese phrase.)

When I use the Lojban/Chinese resemblance to help memorize the Lojban
vocabulary, I *first* try to identify the Chinese part of the selbri,
*then* it acts like a mnemonic.

> Also the algorithm might give a strange result because the word I got in
> Chinese was a digraph, and the word making algorithm might have taken part
> of each component resulting in something with no real recognition at all.

The same reason also causes languages with generally shorter words (like
Chinese) to be more prominent in Lojban words.

> I don't know any examples of this off hand, but I have the old Loglan
> dictionary in front of me.  For the concept regular/cyclical/periodic,
> Dr. Brown used the Chinese "i lyu" by some Romanization, taking the "il"
> to score as part of "rilri".  The Lojban word for the concept is "diknu",
> by the way, and I know that the English component in the "ik" from
> "cyclical".  Dr. Brown's word for "powerful" is "lilpa" from Chinese
> "li liang".  The Lojban word is "vlipa".  Dr. Brown's word for "screw/bolt"
> is "skori" from Chinese "lo so ding"; the Lojban word is "klupe" where I
> do not know any of the etymology.  In the latter case, the Chinese
> contribution appears to be the s and 2 vowels.  There are probably comparable
> Lojban examples.

The learnability-score word-making method does have its limits.  Every
language places its own importance on different parts of pronunciation,
so what's acceptable as a simple misspelling of one word in one language
might be regarded as a big difference in another language.  And when
these differences are merged together in the word-making process, there
will always be problems.  But generally this method does help in learning
the vocabulary, and choosing better synonyms for one concept certainly
helped in recognizing the "similar parts" in the words.


& r
Subject: Lojban
UC> > Not quite that frame of mind.  We used several English synonyms and l
UC>  > computer decide which one matched up with phonemes from other langua
UC>  > best.  In this case, you are correct that "view" was the word chosen
UC>  > that may or may not have been because of similarity with European la
UC>  > words.  We tried "see" as well.
UC>
UC>  Did you also choose from synonyms in the same way for other
UC> languages?
UC>  (esp. Chinese)

Yes and no.  Since I am a native English speaker, I have a much broader
knowledge of my language's vocabulary, and the tolerable limits of
memory hook than I do for other languages.  On the other hand, for other
languages, I sometimes was limited in synonym ability simply because the
dictionary did not list multiple possibilities that I could check on.
Also, different people did different languages, and one person was very
prone to only trying for a single word for each concept especially in
Hindi, which he could barely read.  (Arabic was a particular mixed bag,
since in addition to synonyms, you have to deal with various infix
vowels which affect recognition scores but often make little difference
in the concept as seen by an Arabic speaker - but of course we never
knew which forms the algorithm would prefer, so Arabic almost certainly
got shortchanged in the word making.  Chinese and Spanish probably had
the best representation among non-English, with Russian not too far
behind, though suffering from misunderstandings of Russian morphology
and phonetics.

So, Chinese is particularly well-covered, especially if you are finding
the synonyms we used relevant.  Probably not as well covered as English,
but there were probably two synonyms or more for manyif not most Chinese
contributions.

It is nice to know that you have chosen exactly the technique we would
prefer people to use (identify the language component, then use it as a
memory hook, rather than trying to go the other way).  Your testimony is
the most powerful statement for our approach I have had in a long time
(the recognition score technique has been under almost relentless attack
by American English speakers who would probably prefer the words to be
more recognizable.

lojbab
Cc: u7911005@[140.113.4.17] cowan


Date: Wed, 25 Aug 93 21:44:10 CST
From: u7911005@cc.nctu.edu.tw
Apparently-To: <lojbab@grebyn.com>

>UC>  Did you also choose from synonyms in the same way for other
>UC> languages?
>UC>  (esp. Chinese)
>
>Yes and no.  Since I am a native English speaker, I have a much broader
>knowledge of my language's vocabulary, and the tolerable limits of memory
>hook than I do for other languages.
> [...]  Chinese and
>Spanish probably had the best representation among non-English, with Russian
>not too far behind, though suffering from misunderstandings of Russian
>morphology and phonetics.

Well, you must be glad that finally there's a (potential) Chinese
Lojbanist. xu mi pamoi jungo lojbo (the first Lojban sentence I've made)

>So, Chinese is particularly well-covered, especially if you are finding
>the synonyms we used relevant.  Probably not as well covered as English,
>but there were probably two synonyms or more for manyif not most Chinese
>contributions.

The coverage is clearly related to the length of the words in each
language.  Most Chinese words are short.  And if a word in a language is
longer than usual, it probably isn't used a lot in that language, which
means that the word *should* not get as much coverage as usual.

>It is nice to know that you have chosen exactly the technique we would
>prefer people to use (identify the language component, then use it as a
>memory hook, rather than trying to go the other way).  Your testimony is
>the most powerful statement for our approach I have had in a long time
>(the recognition score technique has been under almost relentless attack
>by American English speakers who would probably prefer the words to
>be more recognizable.

If you used purely English (or purely Chinese) words to make Lojban
words, it will probably cause (native) English speakers to add some
cultural bias to the meaning of these words.  Perhaps it would be easier
to learn to English speakers (both native & secondary), but I think it's
also important to have non-English-speaking Lojbanists.

& r
Subject: Chinese Lojbanists, and dollar checks
do je'a pamoi jungo lojbo

Actually, there is another from Taiwan on our mailing list but inactive.
She is now living in Germany and is more interested in German than
Lojban, and I doubt that she'll ever learn the language (though having
another Chinese Lojbanist might inspire her).  Hopefully you will be
first of many.  Your testimony about learning the vocabulary easily
given our design should help, and it sounds like it might have been
something we would write as poromotional material, it so closely matches
our intended.

I will eventually be collecting this exchange between us into a summary
message, which I would like to post on Lojban List and conlang list.  Is
this OK with you?

lojbab


Date: Thu, 26 Aug 93 15:43:21 CST
From: u7911005@cc.nctu.edu.tw

>do je'a pamoi jungo lojbo

.i la'e di'u pluka mi

>Actually, there is another from Taiwan on our mailing list but inactive.
>She is now living in Germany and is more interested in German than Lojban,
>and I doubt that she'll ever learn the language (though having another
>Chinese Lojbanist might inspire her).  Hopefully you will be first of many.

I certainly hope so.

>Your testimony about learning the vocabulary easily given our design
>should help, and it sounds like it might have been something we would
>write as poromotional material, it so closely matches our intended.

Gee, it surprises me that I got it right the first time.  :)  (I'll try
to familiarize myself with attitudinals to get rid of these emoticons.)

>I will eventually be collecting this exchange between us into a summary
>message, which I would like to post on Lojban List and conlang list.
>Is this OK with you?

Yes, sure.