Re: veridicality in grammar

[bob@GNU.AI.MIT.EDU]

David Bowen <dmb@ironwood.cray.com> said:

    My definition is that "well-formed" is equivalent to "is
    syntactically correct".  In other words, if I can build a parse
    tree for it using the current Lojban grammar it's well-formed.  I
    would categorize errors in the usage of "lo" and "le" as semantic
    errors.

Yes.  That is what I thought until Halloween.  Then I wondered how a
Lojban parent would respond to little George reporting, `I saw a
real ghost!'  Doubtless, at Halloween, {mi pu ze'i lo ru'izukte} is
OK, but what about other times?

A parent would make the correction ... but the correction is to
grammar!  It is the same as correcting `I saw three ghost!'.

It is grammatically incorrect to put a value into the wrong
grammatical category.  In English it is grammatically incorrect to put
a plural value into a singular grammatical category.  Among the
Dyirbal, it is correct to put cigarettes and edible fruit into the
same grammatical category and incorrect to put them into the same
category as meat and fire, which are in two other categories.  In
Lojban, it is grammatically incorrect to put a `for real' value into a
`I designate as' category.

You are right, this Lojban parse goes against the way a grammar works
that is based on parse trees.  I run the parser program on both
utterances, and both are OK.  Nonetheless, a fluent speaker should
*feel* that the grammar are wrong, just as you *feel* the grammar
error I just made.

As far as I can see, this means either that Lojban has a grammar that
cannot succeed in practice (meaning that fluent Lojban speakers will
not be able to distinguish {le} and {lo} by `feel' as I am
hypothesizing), or it has a grammar that has more characteristics than
a contemporary computer programming language.

I suspect the latter, but rather surprised and saddened by it, since I
did not expect it, and was hoping for language with a `complete'
definition.

    Robert J. Chassell               bob@gnu.ai.mit.edu
    25 Rattlesnake Mountain Road     bob@grackle.stockbridge.ma.us
    Stockbridge, MA 01262-0693 USA   (413) 298-4725