Re: TECH: fuzzy: <xoi> vs. <fihuhi>

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

>I am trying to piece together how
>the selmaho work from the terse descriptions in the cmavo list

The terse descriptions are not really meant to be tutorial, but rather as
reminders assuming that you have learned the words and selma'o elsewhere.
Once youhave learned how a given selma'o works grammatically, then the cmavo
definition is usually lenty clear  at showing you the semantics of that
particular cmavo within the selma'o.

>nd from
>trying to puzzle out the BNF grammer

Something I have never been able to do either.  I use the YACC grammar.
It is harder to understand the "big picture" with the YACC grammar, but
you build pieces that are the equivalent of constructs you already undersytand
like, "sumti", "selbri", "sentence", and then try to understand them as wholes
of that type.

You have the additional advantage of using JCB's old books if you choose,
provided you can related the selma'o to JCB's selma'o.  In the case of
MOI, JCB's equivalent is "-ra" and "-ri" suffixes.

> Which of the refgrammer
>papers explains how the selmaho classes relate to the YACC grammer or the
>BNF?

Hunh? THat is the WHOLE refgrammar.  Not just one piece, but every single
paper.  That is in essence what the refgrammar is for, specifically to relate
the selma'o to the grammar, and to incidentally provide a little semantics.


> There seems to be a set of knowledge out there that people like jorge
>have somehow mastered that I can't find.

Jorge first mastered the basics of the language by writing a lot of simple
stuff.  He read  and reviewed the refgrammar over a year and a half ago, and
has been writing more stuff, and more complex stuff, since then.  His
knowledge didn;t spring magically from reading a document , but from using a
language.  Nick mastered the language without any refgrammar, just from the
diagrammed summary and the textbook (which covers only part of the grammar,
though in greater detail).  But he did even MORE writing in the language,
and revised everything as he learned more.

The people who use the language learn the language, and that is why I think
they alone are qualified to say where the language should go post-baseline.
Jorge has an immense PRACTICAL knowledge of the language through his heavy use,
and when you have that, the selma'o just fit naturally into place.

>The predicate so reusulting could be used in tanru, in sei/se'u phrases,
>>etc.  There is a predicate equivalent to negation/affirmation: jetnu/jitfa
>>so you can use a predicate with jetnu to get the equivalent of ja'a with a
>>subscript.  There are all manner of other areas, some unexplored, where
>>predicates can pop into unusual grammatical locations.
>>
>
>Are the precedence orders worked out for all the metalinguistic operators?
>I suppose that they are implicit in the BNF and YACC. But it appears that
>sei...sehu phrases, for example, would not have the right scope to be very
>general.

sei/se'u, like all "free modifiers" have a specifically defined scope.  You
can put the modifer in various places to vary the scope.

z>Also, it seems like an ugly kluge to resort to metalinguistic
>commentary to implement fuzziness, which should be about as easy to use as
>discrete description, in my opinion.

Use of loaded vocabulary: "kluge", "resort", suggest tyhat you don't understand
that this is a major and basic mechanism in Lojban in order to carefully
control scope.  The free modifiers were added based on an idea by Carter
in order to allowsuch things at various levels.  The reason for labelling
what you are describing for fuzziness as "metalinguistic" is that all of the
examples that you have presented have analyzed down to metalinguistic
statements about an otherwise simple predicate.  The core of the language is
a simple predicate relationship.  All of the bells and whistles are either
metalinguistic expansion or modification of the simple predicate, or
abbreviations of such expansions. Thuse for example, almost every relative
clause can be expressed in a separate sentence metalinguistically linked
to the original sentence.  Likewise every tense and negation.  Why should
fuzziness be treated DIFFERENTLY is the question.  And the other issue is
how much abbreviation is to be designed in.  If you keep requirements
simple, we can use very succinct abbreviation.  But what you have generally
presented for fuzziness is such a broad and unrestricted concept that there
IS no single abbreviated form possible.

For example, as I understand what you have written, a measure of fuzziness
CAN involve 1) a number indicating a position on a scale, or memebership in
one of a number of discrete categories 2) a number indicating the total
number of categories, or the range of the scale 3) an indication whether the
categories/scale is ordered 4) an indication of what is being scaled (truth,
baldness, red vs. green-ness).  You could potentially need to express all of
these things, which grammatically constitutes two MEX expressions, a connective,
and a ni-abstract bridi perhaps with lambdas.  And each of those constructs
in Lojban is potentially a hairy mess in itself.  And you want to be able to
glue this mess to pretty near any grammatical unit in a sentence.  The ONLY
construct that can glue to pretty near any construct in a sentence is a
free modifier, or an attitudinal, and attitudinals cannot have subgrammar of
the sort that I mentioned above.

The ONLY way you will get something brief will be to give up flexibility.
You cannot express every possible tense construct, but must expand into
multiple sentences with metalinguistic links between them, using the brief
tense forms.  If you want comprehensive coverage of a realm of logic, you
will have complex constructs and few short forms - the only brief stuff in
logical expression in Lojban is stuff that has been honed for 40 years since
JCB started, and we aren't going to be able to do more than a "kluge" in
abbroievauted forms in a few months or even years at devising corresponding
 short forms for the less well-defined requirements of fuzziness.

To do the best we can, thereofre, we need to understand what the requirements
are, not in language feature terms, but traced back tot the literature on
fuzzyiness that all of us can read, and that some like pc, already understand.
There are many things called "fuzzy logic", and pc  has said that he thus far
cannot clearly identified what you have talked about as being exactly identical
with any of the levels and categories of fuzzy logic that he knows, but rather
that you are overlapping definitions in way thatmake it hard to see what you
are trying for.

If you define your requirements ONLY in terms of "how can I say this", then you
 will get constructs that allow you to say "this", but which may not exapnd
to cover what is to you the similar problem "that", because we will not have
seen that "this" and "that" are related problems, since you haven't described
 the problems generally enough.  But beware of being TOO general, because as I
said above, what the most general interpretation of your requirements now seems
to need is a free modifier that can have an extremely rich grammar, but which
has no need for any specific-to-fuzziness grammar because extreme complexity in
Lojban can ONLY be handled in one way.

>How does all this impact <xoi> vs. <fihuhi>?

And seems to be saying what we have said before, that as your reqirements
become clearer (and more broad), fuzziness just becomes another kind of
predication, and is expressed using a predicate attached in some subordinate
way to the main bridi.  Only free modifiers, and in particular the SEI/SEhU
metalinguistic or TO/TOI parenthetical are of the order necessary to handle
 everything you seem to be asking to do.

SO far, the ONLY thing I am willing to add is Cowan's MOI for fuzzy scales,
and as I said that is only because I so long misworded cu'o that people no
longer recognize that it was intended to be just that sort of fuzzy-MOI.
Otherwise, existing constraycts and cmavo can handle everything you have
asked for in sufficiently succinct forms.

lojbab