Re: [lojban-beginners] A question about the sentences understanding in Lojban

[v4hn]

On Wed, Mar 27, 2013 at 01:52:26PM -0700, libi...@gmail.com wrote:
> When I see a sentence like "mi zdani", why shold I understand it as "this
> house is mine" instead of "i'm a house"?

You should not and if you do, you misunderstood it.

"mi zdani" -> I'm a home. (probably for lots of bacteria for example)

> I mean, I know it doesn't make
> sense, but I understood this language should be understood even by
> computers, and this means that it does not require thinking or knoledge
> (like the knowledge that that meaning doesn't make sense) for understaning
> sentences.

That conclusion is not entirely true. _Understanding_ regular lojban of people
talking to each other is probably not that much easier than understanding english.
However, at least lojban is not as ambiguous, so you don't have to deal with
the problem of parsing the sentence before trying to understand it. (I mean,
people don't know what "understanding" really means)


v4hn

[MorphemeAddict]

On Wed, Mar 27, 2013 at 4:52 PM, <libi...@gmail.com> wrote:

When I see a sentence like "mi zdani", why shold I understand it as "this house is mine" instead of "i'm a house"? I mean, I know  it doesn't make sense, but I understood this language should be understood even by computers, and this means that it does not require thinking or knoledge (like the knowledge that that meaning doesn't make sense) for understaning sentences.

I'm looking forwards to your answer!

How did you come to the conclusion that "mi zdani" means "this house is mine"? 

x1 is a nest/house/lair/den/[home] of/for x2

"mi" is in the x1 place, and the x2 place is empty, so "I am a home". 

Now I wonder how to say "this home is mine". "ti du lo mi zdani" is 'this is my home'. Would it start with "lo vi zdani ..."?

stevo 

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[mudri]

Maybe you've seen {le mi zdani}, or some such. That does indeed mean “my house” (or “the house associated with me”). It comes about through a bit of syntactic sugar, in which “LE SUMTI SELBRI” is equivalent to “LE SELBRI pe SUMTI”. I don't mean to shout, by the way, I'm just using BNF conventions ;-).

{le mi zdani} = {le zdani pe mi}

{le le jurme ku zdani} = {le zdani pe le jurme [ku]}, though no-one ever uses the first form if it requires a {ku}. In fact, I don't know whether it's correct with non-KOhA sumti.

[Jonathan Jones]

On Wed, Mar 27, 2013 at 2:52 PM, <libi...@gmail.com> wrote:

When I see a sentence like "mi zdani", why shold I understand it as "this house is mine" instead of "i'm a house"?

You shouldn't. {zdani mi} is "a house of mine". Or more accurately, "a house for me".
 

I mean, I know  it doesn't make sense, but I understood this language should be understood even by computers, and this means that it does not require thinking or knoledge (like the knowledge that that meaning doesn't make sense) for understaning sentences.

I'm looking forwards to your answer!

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--
mu'o mi'e .aionys.

.i.e'ucai ko cmima lo pilno be denpa bu .i doi.luk. mi patfu do zo'o
(Come to the Dot Side! Luke, I am your father. :D )

[selpa'i]

la'o me. MorphemeAddict .me cusku di'e

> Now I wonder how to say "this home is mine". "ti du lo mi zdani" is
> 'this is my home'. Would it start with "lo vi zdani ..."?

Apart from the simple {ti mi zdani} "This is my home", if you do not
want to say that it's the house you actually live in, but that it's
related to you otherwise (or if you just want to be vague), you can say:

ti me mi moi lo zdani
"This is mine among the houses."

Or as a tanru:

ti zdani me mi moi
"This is a house type of mine." (sounds weird in English, but normal
in Lojban)

Of course, you can also use {srana} or {ckini}:

lo vi zdani mi ckini
"This house is associated with me (by some relationship)."

Lots of flexibility!

mu'o mi'e la selpa'i

[MorphemeAddict]

On Wed, Mar 27, 2013 at 7:09 PM, selpa'i <m...@plasmatix.com> wrote:

la'o me. MorphemeAddict .me cusku di'e

Now I wonder how to say "this home is mine". "ti du lo mi zdani" is
'this is my home'. Would it start with "lo vi zdani ..."?

Apart from the simple {ti mi zdani} "This is my home",

Yeah, I missed this one, with "mi" as x2 before "zdani". 

stevo

 

if you do not want to say that it's the house you actually live in, but that it's related to you otherwise (or if you just want to be vague), you can say:

   ti me mi moi lo zdani
   "This is mine among the houses."

Or as a tanru:

   ti zdani me mi moi
   "This is a house type of mine." (sounds weird in English, but normal in Lojban)

Of course, you can also use {srana} or {ckini}:

   lo vi zdani mi ckini
   "This house is associated with me (by some relationship)."

Lots of flexibility!

mu'o mi'e la selpa'i

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[Ian Johnson]

{du} is essentially never what you want. {ti zdani mi}, very simple.

mi'e la latro'a mu'o

[v4hn]

On Thu, Mar 28, 2013 at 01:19:19AM -0700, libi...@gmail.com wrote:

> > On Wed, Mar 27, 2013 at 01:52:26PM -0700, libi...@gmail.com <javascript:>wrote:
> > > I mean, I know it doesn't make
> > > sense, but I understood this language should be understood even by
> > > computers, and this means that it does not require thinking or knoledge
> > > (like the knowledge that that meaning doesn't make sense) for understaning
> > > sentences.
> >
> > That conclusion is not entirely true. _Understanding_ regular lojban of people
> > talking to each other is probably not that much easier than understanding english.
> > However, at least lojban is not as ambiguous, so you don't have to deal with
> > the problem of parsing the sentence before trying to understand it.
> > (I mean, people don't know what "understanding" really means)
>

> So, you mean that the only advantage of Lojban is that you don't need to
> parse the sentences, but the meaning is indeed ambigous. This does not look
> so big advantage. Isn't it? or did I miss some another advantages of Lojban?
>

As unambiguous as possible. It's very vague though, as all natural languages are.
But that's not what I meant to say. Assuming we would have solved parsing and
disambiguation issues for english, it is still hard to "understand" both,
disambiguated english and lojban. We are still stuck with the thousands of years
old question of what the meaning of an utterance is.
Just wanted to take away your illusion of lojban being "the language you can use
to talk to computers". Lojban makes that much easier on the interface (language) level,
but that doesn't solve semantics and scientifically we are not there yet. .u'iru'e


v4hn

[Jonathan Jones]

On Thu, Mar 28, 2013 at 1:22 PM, <libi...@gmail.com> wrote:

Thank you! I think I catch it!

I was mistaken because I didn't pay attention to the order of the components in the sentece.

But now I need to say that I still didn't understand the correct order of the words:

Is there any rule that determines what each placement (x1, x2, etc.) means, or maybe it should be learned for each word, or maybe there is no any accurate rule but understanding is done in anoter way (for example: according to the context), so that maybe there exist some different meanings to the same placement in different sentencs?

There's no rule, the order of the place structure for each gismu was determined by what the founder(s) thought was the best.

That said, gismu in the same semantic family typically have similar structure, with the same type of place (eg. "of species", "by standard", etc.) usually being in the same xN spot. There are, however, exceptions to this, which is why many of us have the desire to enumerate and then expel the exceptions.

In other words, there's no rule currently, but many of us want to make one, of a sort.
 

By the way, I was in a doubt wheather or not to ask this question in a new post...

Thank you for the help!!

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[mudri]

Lojban place structures are defined and fixed in position (with the SE cmavo swapping places in a fully defined way). They can be found here. You can usually guess place structures fairly accurately, even as a beginner, though some knowledge of the general patterns improves things. A simple example is that almost all living things have a place structure of “x1 is an A of species/breed x2”, where A is the thing (dog, apple, tree, germ &c). vidru (virus) has an extra place, “[...]capable of infecting (at) x3”, which you would probably have to know somehow.

{gerku} = “x1 is a dog/canine/[bitch] of species/breed x2”

{lo gerku} = “a dog”

{se gerku} = “x1 is the species/breed of dog/canine/[bitch] x2” (NB: the placings of x1 and x2 in this are important. In {fa ko'a se gerku}, ko'a is a breed, not a dog.)

{lo se gerku} = “a breed of dog”

On Thursday, March 28, 2013 7:22:04 PM UTC, libi...@gmail.com wrote:

Thank you! I think I catch it!

I was mistaken because I didn't pay attention to the order of the components in the sentece.

But now I need to say that I still didn't understand the correct order of the words:

Is there any rule that determines what each placement (x1, x2, etc.) means, or maybe it should be learned for each word, or maybe there is no any accurate rule but understanding is done in anoter way (for example: according to the context), so that maybe there exist some different meanings to the same placement in different sentencs?

[v4hn]

On Thu, Mar 28, 2013 at 02:04:31PM -0600, Jonathan Jones wrote:
> There are, however, exceptions to this, which is why
> many of us have the desire to enumerate and then expel
> the exceptions.

By the way, is there already a documented list of outliers
which should be changed? People go on and on about that
issue, but I didn't see a real list yet (though I also didn't search
for it - There is just never a link in any of the respective posts).


v4hn

[Jacob Errington]

http://www.lojban.org/tiki/BPFK+Section%3A+gismu+Issues

Although this page has a lot of old, irrelevant content now.

If you're talking about the regularization within semantic categories, such a list hasn't yet been produced, I think, probably due to the lack of a complete semantic categorization of gismu.

.i mi'e la tsani mu'o 

[Jonathan Jones]

Last I heard, gleki was working on building that.
 

.i mi'e la tsani mu'o 

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[Ian Johnson]

selpa'i linked a pretty decent list of this sort a while ago, though I've lost the link since.

--

[Annie]

That's acbbually a good question! I guess because the meaning doesn't make sense, you should assume that the sentence is saying, "This is my house." In case you don't know, the word mi also can mean me, my, and mine.

Sent from my iPod

On Mar 27, 2013, at 3:52 PM, libi...@gmail.com wrote:

When I see a sentence like "mi zdani", why shold I understand it as "this house is mine" instead of "i'm a house"? I mean, I know  it doesn't make sense, but I understood this language should be understood even by computers, and this means that it does not require thinking or knoledge (like the knowledge that that meaning doesn't make sense) for understaning sentences.

I'm looking forwards to your answer!

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[la gleki]

On Friday, March 29, 2013 12:40:44 AM UTC+4, aionys wrote:

On Thu, Mar 28, 2013 at 2:29 PM, Jacob Errington <nict...@gmail.com> wrote:

On 28 March 2013 16:25, v4hn <m...@v4hn.de> wrote:

On Thu, Mar 28, 2013 at 02:04:31PM -0600, Jonathan Jones wrote:
> There are, however, exceptions to this, which is why
> many of us have the desire to enumerate and then expel
> the exceptions.

By the way, is there already a documented list of outliers
which should be changed? People go on and on about that
issue, but I didn't see a real list yet (though I also didn't search
for it - There is just never a link in any of the respective posts).

http://www.lojban.org/tiki/BPFK+Section%3A+gismu+Issues

Although this page has a lot of old, irrelevant content now.

If you're talking about the regularization within semantic categories, such a list hasn't yet been produced, I think, probably due to the lack of a complete semantic categorization of gismu.

Last I heard, gleki was working on building that.

No one can sto you from building alternative lists which is even  preferable.

[la gleki]

On Friday, March 29, 2013 1:54:05 AM UTC+4, Ian Johnson wrote:

selpa'i linked a pretty decent list of this sort a while ago, though I've lost the link since.

That's very interesting given that we have only http://jwodder.freeshell.org/lojban/vlagri.html, next what zort made out of it in lojban.org wiki and my continuation (of the same list). There also used to be a semantics list by Evgeniy Sklyanin (there is even an android app for it) and Roget's thesaurus.

[Jonathan Jones]

On Thu, Mar 28, 2013 at 10:57 PM, la gleki <gleki.is...@gmail.com> wrote:

On Friday, March 29, 2013 12:40:44 AM UTC+4, aionys wrote:

On Thu, Mar 28, 2013 at 2:29 PM, Jacob Errington <nict...@gmail.com> wrote:

On 28 March 2013 16:25, v4hn <m...@v4hn.de> wrote:

On Thu, Mar 28, 2013 at 02:04:31PM -0600, Jonathan Jones wrote:
> There are, however, exceptions to this, which is why
> many of us have the desire to enumerate and then expel
> the exceptions.

By the way, is there already a documented list of outliers
which should be changed? People go on and on about that
issue, but I didn't see a real list yet (though I also didn't search
for it - There is just never a link in any of the respective posts).

http://www.lojban.org/tiki/BPFK+Section%3A+gismu+Issues

Although this page has a lot of old, irrelevant content now.

If you're talking about the regularization within semantic categories, such a list hasn't yet been produced, I think, probably due to the lack of a complete semantic categorization of gismu.

Last I heard, gleki was working on building that.

No one can sto you from building alternative lists which is even  preferable. 

You mean other than my complete lack of desire to do so?

[la gleki]

Lojbanic syndrom of laziness? .i'u 

[Jonathan Jones]

More like programmer's symptom of not-duplication of effort.

[Jonathan Jones]

Oh yes, coupled with precedence-taking obligations and lack of interest.

[la gleki]

ju'o every time you categorise gismu you get a totally new result due to the nature of semantics.