Simple Lojban questions

[Andrew Sieber <absieber@eos.ncsu.edu>]

Regarding what is and isn't sentactically or semantically ambiguous in
English or Lojban, and the idea of decreasing levels of ambiguity
without ever reaching _zero_ ambiguity, I think I need to wait until
after I've spend some time reading over the reference grammar before I
continue.  I need to have at least a basic understanding of the language
before I try to talk about its pros and cons.
That said, I understand the point that was made about the level of
ambiguity involved in communication relying on people's ideas of
"normalcy"; ie. a "small" school would (normally) be considered bigger
than 3 inches tall.  I understand perfectly well that this type of
ambiguity _must_ be present in all but the most boring, detail-laden
communication; if I am having a "normal" conversation with a "normal"
person, it is reasonable for me to comment that the school across the
street is "small", without having to go into detail about the physical
dimensions of the school, or even the fact that I am indeed referring to
physical dimensions rather than some other characteristic, such as
number of students.  This, I understand, is semantic ambiguity (to a
degree), since the person I'm talking to doesn't necessarily have the
same ideas of what a "normal" size is for a school.  A thought I just
had is that we can break the ambiguity into two parts: dimension and
quantity.  A _general_ quantity is given (small), but _no_ dimension
information is given; only the object whose dimension is being
described--the school.  Whether the dimension is physical size, student
body count, faculty count, annual budget, etc. is not specified.  I
thought that I was referring to something different when I mentioned the
difference between the Lojban versions of "a person who uses computers"
and "a computer which uses [stuff]", but perhaps I wasn't.  I was under
the impression that there was syntactic ambiguity involved, but since I
don't yet know how Lojban syntax works, I'm not sure.  In any case, as I
said, I'll wait until I've read some of the book before I comment
further.  Looking forward to November...

--Andrew
absieber@eos.ncsu.edu