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*ery intemperate response to Lojbab on Fifafuban
>From: ucleaar <ucleaar@UCL.AC.UK>
>Subject: very intemperate response to Lojbab on Fifafuban
>> Rearranging sumti seemingly at random has NO apparent expressive
>> purpose, and that is precisely why it is stylistically dead.
>
>They're not rearranged. They're merely arranged. The sumti must be in
>some order. That they are usually given in 1-2-3-4-5 order is mere
>habit, mere laziness, or mere caution.
>
>> >Your questions imply that fi-fa-fu is analogous to OSV in English and to
>> >passive. It isn't.
>> I agree - the English usages have stylistic meaning. fi-fa-fu does not.
>> There is neither recognized convention nor implicit Gricean or other
>> linguistic basis to give reader any idea what you intended by the
>> placement of each sumti.
>
>Right. And this absence of convention means the writer can proceed with
>impunity. I did only what was permitted by the grammar, and nothing I
>did clashed with any rules of information structure.
The convention of course is 1-2-3-4-5 order. This is the normal
understanding of a sequential numbering.
Writing in a different order is permitted (no language police will stop
you so "impunity" applies), but those who bother to read will have some
amount of question as to why the nonstandard order was used. As you
seem to agree, there is no convention for interpreting fi-fa-fu - so
what have you communicated by doing so: only perhaps that you are an
iconoclast who likes to violate conventions for no obvious reason.
If you write enough material in the language where the stylistic
principles become clear, then you are in a sense explaining your own
convention. But in a single sentence, there is simply insufficient data
to figure out what expressive purpose is served by the unusual order.
You've used a marked form and gotten (some) people's attention, but it
is not clear what you are marking or why, and it therefore comes across
as merely tugging our chain.
>> Now the fact that in addition you used the still-unusual constructions
>> of "jai" and "me" added insult to injury, but I do consider their usage
>> to be a valid sort of stylistic experimentation.
>
>oioioioioi! "insult to injury"! Why take the trouble of designing them
>into the language, if you don't want them used? Why does using certain
>cmavo amount to "stylistic experimentation"?
Using unusual cmavo/constructs in an otherwise normal sentence allows
people to focus on that which is unusual. "jai" and "me" are still
unusual enough that there are no patterns and insufficent explanation
for most people to be sure they know HOW to use them correctly. Thus,
using them requires making a presumption that 1) you are using them
correctly and 2) that the readers will be able to figure out what you
mean. To use the construction is in effect an experiment that tests
these hypotheses.
Using two or more unusual constructs in one sentence means that there
may be some interaction of of semantic or stylistic effects. Using as
many unusual tricks as you did in one sentence presents such a jumble of
novelty and non-convention that all one can try to do is transform it
into a more normal order and ignore that you painstakingly deviated from
that order, since we have no basis on which to extract meaning/intent
from that change in order.
I do not believe that anyone is yet skilled enough as a reader or writer
of lojban that their stylistic experiments will always be valid usages.
We are thus for now limited to "baby talk" or something only one notch
above it, until we have people sufficiently skilled at the given level
that increasing the stylistic complexity can rely on most of the
stylistics being understood so that that which is new can then be
identified and examined.
>> The result of your usage included a string of 16 consecutive cmavo. I
>> dare say it would not be easy to write an understandable English
>> sentence that used 16 consecutive English function words (i.e. words
>> that are not nouns/verbs/adjectives/adverbs). Lojban WILL have more
>> cmavo than English, but I think it still requires SOME content to be
>> understandable.
>
>Could you, but not each of us, ever, with so very much of this and so
>very little of that, so much down here or so little up there, ....
>
>- embed that in some suitable context and there's not an iota of difficulty.
On the contrary, I had to read that twice in order to figure out what
the structure was, and even with that I cannot think of any example
where I could use this construct fluently (i.e. without pauses to let my
listeners figure out what I am saying), and have it be understood.
Indeed, grasping the whole, I can get a general idea what you are trying
for, but I cannot come up with a context that fits those words and is
understandable. Moreover, I am sure that if I could come up with such a
context, I am quite sure that I could never figure out why you chose
that complex phrasing rather than something simpler to understand.
>> Adding one word is quite understandable and acceptable. Adding words
>> and changing order is less so
>> "Down inside the back which was a part of the seat some coins were by
>> me found."
>> would probably be considered stylistically unacceptable English.
>
>I see no problem with that. The preposing of "by me" probably adds
>extra syntactic complexity, and for this or other reasons is marked, but
>it's still okay.
I dare say that I will never see a newspaper, a publisher, or an English
professor accept that sentence. Indeed I cannot think of any context
when such a sentence would be appropriate, unless one invokes undefined
poetic aesthetics. The average person will say "I found some coins down
inside the back part of the seat.", and would view someone using the
above as simply perverse.
>> Likewise
>> "That it will is doubtful to me".
>
>There exist conventions in english that disfavour clausal subjects.
>There is nothing analogous in Lojban, - if, that is, we go by the
>refgrammar documentation rather than by whatever rules you care to pluck
>out of the air to justify your prejudices.
The convention is that anyone using a significantly more verbose
phrasing when a short one will do, has a stylistic or semantic reason
for doing so. i.e. using a longer form is by definition marked. What it
is marked for is not conventionally determined.
>> or
>> "There was this man that she had about him to us been telling that I met."
>
>Do you think that "She had been telling about him to us that I met this
>man" is normal? I don't understand your example.
The unmarked version is "I met the man that she had been telling us
about." English has no topical prenexes, unlike Lojban. I would accept
in Lojban: The man that she had been telling us about zo'u I met him,
and I think that the Lojban place structure would actually lead to the
long-winded English that I used above, given an SOV native speaker.
le nanmu poi le fetsi tu'a ke'a mi'a skicu zo'u mi penmi ny
would translate literally to the above English (I think).
>> Your usages seem to me as strainedly abnormal as these.
>
>I reject the basis on which you form your impressions. In English there
>exist conventions of style and usage. Not in Lojban.
There is one - the onus on the speaker is to make clear what it is that
s/he is trying to communicate.
>Further, in most cases in english the syntactically more marked
>construction is also syntactically more complex. This is not so in
>Lojban.
Well I just showed that there was some English which was so complex that
you couldn't understand it, which was quite straightforward in Lojban.
But in any event you original sentence that started this thread WAS
syntactically more complex than the less marked form.
> > > [fi la pou lojbab ralju]
> > > [fe lei jai fau skicu
> > > [be fo lo jbovla]
> > > [bei fe maa]
> > > [bei fai ro da poi kea me maa]
> > > [bei fi da]]
> > > [fa diu]
> > >tinbe
Start with the fact that "fa di'u" is syntactically more complex than
"di'u" alone. It invokes an additional rule of the grammar.
After correcting one grammatical error, the following is the parse:
fi la po'u la lojbab ralju fe lei jai fau skicu be fo lo jbovla bei fe
ma'a bei fai ro da poi ke'a me ma'a bei fi da fa di'u tinbe
({<[fi (la {<po'u [la lojbab] GE'U> ralju} KU)] [fe (lei {<jai fau skicu>
1234 5 67 8 4 5 67
<be [fo (lo jbovla KU)] [bei (fe ma'a) (bei {fai <[(ro BOI) da] [poi (ke'a
8 9 8 9 0 123 3
{<me ma'a ME'U> VAU}) KU'O]>} {bei <fi da>})] BE'O>} KU)]> <fa di'u>} {
45 5 43 2 1098 76 54 3
tinbe VAU})
21
I could have miscounted, but I think that "me ma'a ME'U" is inside 15
nested sets of parens. Now here is an alternate phrasing of the same
information:
di'u cmima le'i nu ro ma'a skicu ma'a da lo jbovla kei la ralju po'u la
lojbab
(di'u {cmima <[(le'i {nu <[(ro BOI) ma'a] [skicu ({<ma'a da> <lo jbovla KU
1 2 345 6 789 901
>} VAU)]> kei} KU) (la {ralju <po'u [la lojbab] GE'U>} KU)] VAU>})
10 987 6 5 8 76 54 321
which has "ma'a da" and "lo jbovla KU" inside 11 sets of parens.
Looking at the parse trees makes the relative complexity even more
clear. the first sentence has 72 nodes (32 words, 10 elidable
terminators, 30 non-terminal rules), and the second has 42 nodes (17
words, 7 elidable terminators, 18 non-terminal rules.
1 mod_head_490 fi
2 LA la
3 GOI po'u
4 LA la
5 cmene_404 lojbab
6 term_81 4 5
7 GE'U GE'U
8 relative_clauses_121 3 6 7
9 sumti_tail_A_112 ralju
10 sumti_tail_111 8 9
11 KU KU
12 sumti_90 2 10 11
13 terms_80 1 12
14 mod_head_490 fe
15 LE lei
16 JAI jai
17 BAI fau
18 tanru_unit_B_152 skicu
19 tanru_unit_B_152 16 17 18
20 BE be
21 mod_head_490 fo
22 LE lo
23 sumti_tail_111 jbovla
24 KU KU
25 sumti_90 22 23 24
26 term_81 21 25
27 BEI bei
28 mod_head_490 fe
29 sumti_90 ma'a
30 term_81 28 29
31 BEI bei
32 mod_head_490 fai
33 PA ro
34 BOI BOI
35 quantifier_300 33 34
36 sumti_F_96 da
37 sumti_E_95 35 36
38 NOI poi
39 terms_80 ke'a
40 ME me
41 sumti_90 ma'a
42 ME'U ME'U
43 selbri_130 40 41 42
44 tail_terms_71 VAU
45 bridi_tail_50 43 44
46 sentence_40 39 45
47 KU'O KU'O
48 relative_clauses_121 38 46 47
49 sumti_90 37 48
50 term_81 32 49
51 BEI bei
52 mod_head_490 fi
53 sumti_90 da
54 term_81 52 53
55 links_161 51 54
56 links_161 31 50 55
57 links_161 27 30 56
58 BE'O BE'O
59 linkargs_160 20 26 57 58
60 sumti_tail_111 19 59
61 KU KU
62 sumti_90 15 60 61
63 term_81 14 62
64 terms_80 13 63
65 mod_head_490 fa
66 sumti_90 di'u
67 term_81 65 66
68 terms_80 64 67
69 selbri_130 tinbe
70 tail_terms_71 VAU
71 bridi_tail_50 69 70
72 text_0 68 71
1 terms_80 di'u
2 selbri_130 cmima
3 LE le'i
4 NU_425 nu
5 PA ro
6 BOI BOI
7 quantifier_300 5 6
8 sumti_F_96 ma'a
9 terms_80 7 8
10 selbri_130 skicu
11 terms_80 ma'a
12 term_81 da
13 terms_80 11 12
14 LE lo
15 sumti_tail_111 jbovla
16 KU KU
17 term_81 14 15 16
18 terms_80 13 17
19 VAU VAU
20 tail_terms_71 18 19
21 bridi_tail_50 10 20
22 sentence_40 9 21
23 KEI_gap_453 kei
24 sumti_tail_111 4 22 23
25 KU KU
26 terms_80 3 24 25
27 LA la
28 selbri_130 ralju
29 GOI po'u
30 LA la
31 cmene_404 lojbab
32 term_81 30 31
33 GE'U GE'U
34 relative_clauses_121 29 32 33
35 sumti_tail_111 28 34
36 KU KU
37 term_81 27 35 36
38 terms_80 26 37
39 VAU VAU
40 tail_terms_71 38 39
41 bridi_tail_50 2 40
42 text_0 1 41
>> >I venture that there is no usage for which you can expressly state the
>> >rule. That does not matter. What matters is that you know the rule,
>> >and we can tell that you know the rule because we can observe you using
>> >it. Working out what the rule actually says is what keeps academic
>> >linguists employed.
>> A ball falls to the ground. By the above logic, the ball "knows" the
>> law of gravity.
>
>I don't see that. The ball falls because acted on by gravity. There is
>no external force acting on your usage; or at least that is a reasonable
>assumption.
You cannot prove or disprove that I am "using" the rule, any more than
you can prove or disprove that the ball is "using" gravity in order to
fall. There is no external "force" involved other than the so-called
rule. Working out what the law of gravity actually says is what keeps
academic physicists employed. I cannot state the rule for my usage just
as the ball cannot state the rule of gravity. (If you make the example
one of a person falling rather than a ball, the nonsense elements are
eliminated). Therefore the ball knows the rule of gravity just as well
as I know the rules of grammar.
>> The rules we attribute to English are a model of the way our minds
>> behave when faced with examples that we label with the name of the
>> language. It is NOT clear that the model is reality,
>
>It is not clear that any model or anything is reality. This, therefore,
>is a pointless objection.
I should have said more strongly that the rules of grammar that academic
linguists come up with are clearly NOT reality because they explicitly
do not explain many real usages that violate the rules. It cannot be
said merely that they are an incomplete model, because it is perfectly
plausible (probably likely) that a totally contradictory model could
come just as close to predicting what is actually acceptable.
>> The rules may be (and I think ARE) an
>> illusion, and probably at best only an approximation.
>
>If a machine is able to say whether any given sentence is or isn't
>grammatical, then it shall count as knowing the rules of grammar.
Except for artificial languages like Lojban, being "grammatical" has
nothing to do with reality. Let us stick to "acceptable" which seems to
be defined outside of the scope of the model. Chomsky can predict
BETTER than any native speaker whetehr a sentence is "grammatical" since
the theory of what is grammatical has no provable connection to anything
that the native speaker uses.
>When we judge which language a text is in, we are asking which set of
>linguistic rules is intended by the speaker to be used in decoding the
>text. We don't examine the text and ask "for which language is this
>text grammatical" - often there is no known language for which the text
>is grammatical.
Then either the text is not in any known language, or the definition of
"grammatical" is so hokey as to be worthless (not to mention the fact
that the common definition of the term "grammatical" happens to be what
linguists term "acceptable".
(Actually, of course, if I hear some words in a language, I DO decide
whether those words are in a language that I know, and whether they
follow the rules of that language that I know. But I think that is
different from what you are saying.)
>The upshot is that actual lojban use has no bearing on the issue of what
>the lojban rules are.
And there is a nutshell is the idiocy of Chomskyan linguistics. It has
no bearing on reality. I HOPE what you say does NOT turn out to be true
about Lojban, and that the rules and actual usage ARE related by
demonstrable and consistent principles.
>> But this is irrelevant. Languages with strong word order rules may
>> technically tolerate violations of that word order and still be
>> understandable, but it is also possible that they will NOT be easily
>> understood even by a native speaker. A poetic sentence like "To the
>> store via the main drag go I". is understandable, but at some level of
>> complication a similar sentence structure would cease to be
>> understandable even to a native speaker in real time.
>
>This is an underresearched area, so obviously you're inventing this as
>you go along. But nonetheless it does seem reasonable to suppose that
>at some level of complication a structure ceases to be processable even
>to a native speaker. It should be possible to measure this. But
>anyway, no sentences we've been discussing would stretch the processor
>to breaking point.
Since we have no native speakers, this is arguable. I think that they
would, and indeed that many sentences that are acceptable in printed
text are unacceptable in fluent spoken speech, because they are only
understandable by non-fluent analytical processes that require going
back and reanalyzing earlier text after later ambiguities are resolved
(i.e. garden path sentences are seldom understandable in speech).
>> >My purpose is not to be obfuscatory or ornery, or at least not for the
>> >hell of it. Lojban is defined as having syntactic capabilities far more
>> >complex than those that actually see use. What is actually used is
>> >pidgin lojban.
>> By that logic, then what gets used in real life is "pidgin English"
>> because deeply center-embedded sentences are not used or understood.
>
>If we could agree on some measure of syntactic complexity appropriate to
>both english and lojban we would find that the lojban sentence was by
>english standards not difficult. I have already illustrated this. The
>lojban sentence is not deeply centre embedded - at least not by english
>standards.
I presume that the trees used in syntactic analysis have some
similarities to those generated by YACC.
I doubt that I could at fluent speeds understand the English version of
what you wrote.
fi la po'u la lojbab ralju fe lei jai fau skicu be fo lo jbovla bei fe
ma'a bei fai ro da poi ke'a me ma'a bei fi da fa di'u tinbe
"As commanded by Lojbab the Leader, describing in Lojban words to you
from each of those who are you, in some form, the preceding sentence
obeys."
Try that, or any reasonable adjustment of it, in spoken fluent form, to
any English-native listener, and you will probably get stared at.
Indeed, the same may be true for the written form.
>How is it that you can read lojban text only with considerable effort
>(as evidenced by your failure to read it when posted on lojban list) yet
This is more from lack of vocabulary command than lack of grammar command.
>you assume that when you find a lojban sentence too difficult it is not
>because you do not have good command of the language but rather because
>that sentence would cause breakdown in even the most competent reader?
Well, I will gladly defer to a more competent reader when one claims the
title.
>> The level of nesting of Lojban's theoretically infinite nested
>> structures is an example of such a rule that will never be prescribed;
>
>Do you consider this a semantics rule or a pragmatics one? Why should it
>be either?
Certainly not semantic, so therefore pragmatic. Probably a Gricean
maxim that relates to making things too complex.
>> Are no English speakers fluent because no English speaker can understand
>> a 10-level center-embedding?
>
>No, I'd have thought. Your question implies someone would think Yes. Who?
If there is no grammatical or pragmatic rule prohibiting it, then a
speaker not being able to understand such an embedding means the
grammatical model is incomplete, or I should indeed expect fluent
English speakers to understand it. Otherwise the rule is invalid.
A theory that does not explain everything, and cannot account for
distinguishing what it can explain from what it cannot is worthless. It
is not a useful approximation, as Newton's Law has turned out to be for
a relativistic universe, because it is perfectly possible that what
matches up between false theory and reality is accidental, and a correct
and correct theory might need a completely different (i.e.
contradictory) paradigm.
lojbab