Re: [Loglanists] (no subject)

[Randall Holmes]

It would be more economical in syllables to change all po's to long scope po (and guo would then close

po constructions rather than lepo constructions, because lepo would cease to be an independent word as it is now), and replace short-scope PO with a different word (POI, which is actually available in my grammar).

The disadvantage is that bits of ancient TLI Loglan text would need to be changed -- various PO's would become POI's (I have PUU and ZOO as short-scope PU and ZO).

It would make John very happy that LEPO words no longer had to be understood as a different class of word :-)

The off-the-shelf solution to Peter's problem (use MESUPO to construct grammatically fully privileged long scope PO predicates) has two virtues that I can see:  it actually works (always a virtue), and doesn't call for any changes in existing text.

The actions I would need to take to make a grammar covering the first alternative are not strenuous.  The actions I would need to implement the second alternative are of course nil (other than writing some examples).

I added the Keugru to this because I actually want an advisory opinion!

On Tue, Aug 5, 2014 at 2:49 PM, Randall Holmes <m.randal...@gmail.com> wrote:

Of course :-)

Thanks, Peter, for exhibiting an aspect of the LE(,)PO issue which hadnt occurred to me...

I suspected that Lojban did not have this problem.

I am amused though that we accidentally have a solution from the existing toolkit :-)

MESUPO is definitely an accident!

On Tue, Aug 5, 2014 at 12:24 PM, John Cowan <co...@mercury.ccil.org> wrote:

Randall Holmes scripsit:

> John, can one say the analogue of
>
> blanu (po mi cluva)
>
> in Lojban (run a parse check)...

Yes.  The equivalent of PO, which is NU, always takes the longest possible
scope, a full sentence, like LEPO in Loglan.  However, it has a dedicated
elidable terminator, "kei", which makes it possible to limit the scope as
tightly as you want.  A "NU ... kei" clause is grammatically equivalent
to a single predicate word, so it can participate freely in metaphors.

There is of course no LE PO / LEPO distinction.

--
John Cowan          http://www.ccil.org/~cowan        co...@ccil.org
"But I am the real Strider, fortunately," he said, looking down at them
with his face softened by a sudden smile.  "I am Aragorn son of Arathorn,
and if by life or death I can save you, I will."

--
Sincerely, Randall Holmes

Any opinions expressed above are not the
official opinions of any person or institution.

--
Sincerely, Randall Holmes

Any opinions expressed above are not the
official opinions of any person or institution.

[Randall Holmes]

This is a sufficiently complex issue that I suspect full deliberations will require that some examples of the offending phenomena be exhibited and discussed.

[Randall Holmes]

I should mention that actions on the existing corpus of TLI Loglan text would be nontrivial; various PO's would need to be reconstrued as POI.

[John Cowan]

Randall Holmes scripsit:

> The disadvantage is that bits of ancient TLI Loglan text would need to be
> changed -- various PO's would become POI's (I have PUU and ZOO as
> short-scope PU and ZO).

No need to introduce these: "po" would just become "po ... guo", etc.

--
John Cowan http://www.ccil.org/~cowan co...@ccil.org

Monday we watch-a Firefly's house, but he no come out. He wasn't home.
Tuesday we go to the ball game, but he fool us. He no show up. Wednesday he
go to the ball game, and we fool him. We no show up. Thursday was a
double-header. Nobody show up. Friday it rained all day. There was no ball
game, so we stayed home and we listened to it on-a the radio. --Chicolini

[Randall Holmes]

That is an interesting question.

I am rather inclined to do the engineering for this in my provisional parser, though I might try to maintain it in such a way that I can set it either way.

("This" being to restrict PO, PU ZO to long scope and make them construct long-scope predicates,

leaving in the short scope operators POI PUU ZOO that I have installed already in my provisional parser.  This would also require text changes:  any occurrence of short scope PO would need to be replaced with POI -- the other operators occur more rarely.   The terminator GUO would then close PO/PU/ZO predicates rather than LEPO descriptions -- it would still close these descriptions because they would be reparsed as including such predicates (there would no longer need to be a LEPO word class)).

I am hesitant about this because changes that actually require multiple changes in the corpus of existing text should always be approached with caution.   There are cases where I have done this, where I regard existing solutions as unsatisfactory:

    the elimination of unmarked vocatives (Keugru approved already) and other

        changes to serial names generally.

    complete change of strong quotation (as yet not discussed much)

    acronyms (I have fiddled with these extensively; they were causing pain to the previous

       Keugru, and recently this has been discussed)

There are other changes to the grammar which I have made quite happily because they are reasonable and do not actually affect any existing text (or only slightly).

I haven't been inclined to "fix" LE,PO because it struck me that occurrences of this exact problem were quite rare and perhaps exactly because it is a historical issue with the Lojbanists.   But the problem Peter points out is a further difficulty with the short scope/long scope distinction which is to my mind quite ugly (it is really nasty to have a family of predicates which cannot appear in metaphors for no clear reason) and which has a solution which is arbitrary seeming because it is actually purely an accident.

If I decide to so this, I will enter an official Proposal that we make the indicated change.

Whatever considerations of style led the founders to make the short-scope/long-scope decision would still be supported by the presence of the short-scope words as an alternative.  This would also make repairing old text easier.

Answering Peter's question directly, looking at the NB3 corpus I see a number of examples where POI would need to replace PO.  Most occurrences of PO are long scope in descriptions.   Most predicate occurrences of PO are applied to single words, which suggests reasons why TLI made the earlier decision.  I would rather replace PO SUCMI (short scope) with POI SUCMI than with

PO SUCMI GUO, on the whole.

Opinions from other members of la Keugru?

On Tue, Aug 5, 2014 at 11:31 PM, Peter Hill <cor...@westnet.com.au> wrote:

I should mention that actions on the existing corpus of TLI Loglan text
would be nontrivial; various PO's would need to be reconstrued as POI.

What is the actual frequency of occurence of short scope 'po' in existing texts?

Cheers,
Peter.

[Randall Holmes]

Implicitly, this means you are supporting the idea of making PO long scipe and adding short-scope alternatives?

On Thu, Aug 7, 2014 at 10:10 AM, Emerson Clark Mitchell <emer...@aol.com> wrote:

I prefer POI SUCMI 

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[Randall Holmes]

I am going to go ahead and do the engineering -- make at least an alternative version of my parser that  makes PO

long scope, eliminates LEPO as an independent word class, retains POI, PUU ZOO with their current grammar as short scope abstraction formers, and makes GUO close abstraction predicates instead of abstraction descriptions.

I will have a special eye on whether the last change causes any real trouble.   My belief is that it should not, but it should be a pragmatic rule in Loglan grammar (already!) that one *always* marks a predicate after an event description.   This will avoid the possible accident of a GUO intended to close an event description which does not succeed in doing so.

Comments on this from Cyril and la Selpahis welcome.

On Thu, Aug 7, 2014 at 10:42 AM, Emerson Clark Mitchell <emer...@aol.com> wrote:

Yes, I support that.

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[Randall Holmes]

My style manual actually avoids event descriptions in first position altogether, if necessary by using alternative sentence orders such as VSO.