Re: Simple Lojban questions

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

>>> "skami pilno" can mean a user of computers, or it can mean a computer
>>> that is also a user.  Why is this ambiguity allowed in a supposedly
>>> unambiguous language?
>> Lojban's semantics are not unambiguous, I don't see how they could be.
>> What is supposedly unambiguous is its syntax, so that you can't have
>> things like "time flies like an arrow" where you don't know whether "flies"
>> is working as a verb or a noun, etc.
>Perhaps I'm missing something, but I don't see the difference between
>something like "time flies like an arrow" or "pretty little girls
>school", and the phrase "skami pilno", as far as ambiguity goes.
>Whether you call it semantics or syntax doesn't make a difference; the
>point is that I don't know whether I'm referring to some king of
>creature called a "time fly" that enjoys the presense of an aerodynamic
>object or the fact that time goes by very quickly, whether I'm referring
>to the fact that the girls are pretty or the fact that the school is
>pretty, or whether I'm referring to a person who uses computers or a
>computer that uses some (currently unknown) object.  All three are
>ambiguous constructs; two are English, one is Lojban.  The difference is
>that Lojban is supposed to eliminate such ambiguity.

You clearly understand that there are ambiguities in these constructs and
what they are, but appear not to see the difference between syntactic
and semantic ambiguity.  The syntactic ambiguity of "time flies ...
is special because youy do not know what the verb is in the sentence - "flies"
or "like".  If you have ever done sentence diagramming, the diagram for each
of the two versions would be different.  This type of amnbiguity primarily
affects lomger or more complex English sentences.

Lojban does not have such sentences that can be broken up different ways.

With "pretty little girls school", you do not know whether "little" modifies
the girls or the school.  Lojban removes this ambiguity - you know what
parts modify other parts.

What Lojban does not do for you is tell you what "school" means, or what it
means for a school to be "little".  To indicate how a school can be little,
you need to explicitly fill in the places of little and perhaps of school
- there will be standards of normaldom in schools by which one can render
the opinion that a particular school is smaller than that normality.  But
you still have to understand "little".  IN the case of a "little school", I
can envision a school that is miniature - a model only 3 inches high for
example.  But it could also be a "little school" in that it only has 20
students, instead of a more normal several hundred.  A little school in an
urban area might be a big school in a rural area because the standards of
normality in student bodies would vary by area.

Lojban cannot fix this because you are omitting information when you say
"little school" to mean miniature or relatively low student body for some
locale.  So the Lojban cmalu ckule is semantically ambiguous.

Now Lojban makes it easy to recognize that there is ambiguity here, and
even leads you to understanding what information is needed to remove the
ambiguity.  But it does not reveal the contents of your mind if you don't
actually provide that information.

You can this in Lojban provide the standards by which you are measuring
smallness, and indeed the place structure of Lojban calls out for you to do so.
But LOjban does not compel you to provide that information, and without it
your phrase "cmalu ckule" is vague and therefore ambiguous.

But if you try to provide the information, you must do so with additional words
and those words will themselves have place strutures that have to be filled in.
Thus you cannot eliminate all ambiguity due to vagueness, nut only render
your statements to whatever degree of precision that you deem necessary for
communication.  Lojban allows that variable degree of precision and makes
it clear what information is being omitted.

Now with tanru, you also have the modifier/modificand relationship unspecified.
How are "little" and "schhol" related?  You probably can always answer this
by rephrasing the statement into a bridi that uses both words but does not
use tanru modification.  This rephrasing would eliminate that particular form of
 ambiguity.  But if you use a tanru, you are sacrificing unambiguity for
brevity.

The result of all this is that - if you use Lojban, you automatically eliminate
syntactic ambiguity,.  If you use Lojban without ever using tanru, you
 automatically eliminate semantic ambiguity due to modifier-modificand
 relationship.
But even then, you still have an arbitrrary degree f vagueness that can only
be resolved by infinitely expanding upon the place strutures of the words you
are using.

Thus Lojban prohibits one kind of ambiguity, but does not claim to eliminate
the other kind of ambiguity, though it reduces it and makes it eveident when
such ambiguitry is present.  We do not claim that Lojban eliminates alll
ambiguity of all kinds in language.

lojbab
----
lojbab                                                lojbab@access.digex.net
Bob LeChevalier, President, The Logical Language Group, Inc.
2904 Beau Lane, Fairfax VA 22031-1303 USA                        703-385-0273
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