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RE: Relatives and quantifiers
- To: John Cowan <cowan@snark.thyrsus.com>
- Subject: RE: Relatives and quantifiers
- From: cbmvax!uunet!viikki21.helsinki.fi!VILVA
- Date: Mon, 13 Jul 1992 06:28:43 -0500
- Reply-To: cbmvax!uunet!viikki21.helsinki.fi!vilva
- Sender: Lojban list <cbmvax!uunet!pucc.princeton.edu!LOJBAN>
coi lo piro le finti be la lojban
NB di'u is a deliberate gimmick to catch your attention -
not something I plan to use eventually.
My initial reaction to Colin's paper was to agree with him
but Iain's cautionary note about Anglocentrism sent me
thinking (as the only non-Indo-European in this group).
I thought of Colin's example sentences and their close
relatives in view of the current Finnish pragmatics and
after a while I wasn't too happy anymore. The original
parses also seemed quite necessary and changing the parsing
would have necessitated the introduction of new alternate
ways of similar simplicity to express the original
'grammatical' meaning.
At first I thought of some additional extensions to the
syntax to make it possible to handle all the alternatives
I felt were necessary but things seemed to get out of hand.
Then I started to test out various alternatives using the
BNF and YACC grammars and soon found some new (to me)
possibilities in the existing grammar and also found new
ways to interpret the more familiar material.
I offer my conclusions mainly in the form of short comments
and clues as I think most of you can work out the implications.
2. Mixed relatives
le prenu goi ko'a zi'epoi mi viska ke'a
le prenu poi mi viska ke'a zi'egoi ko'a
These are not - and MUST NOT - be equivalent. Take the one which
links KO'A with the desired subset. All the other solutions
lead to clumsy structures.
The rules at the end of the section:
Let's choose the 1st alternative as it gives more
expressive power (and agrees with my intuitive way
of semantically parsing the concatenated abominations).
3. External quantifiers
Let's accept the current parse and use an internal
quantifier to get '[three out of all sleepers], who
are beautiful':
[lo ci sipna] noi melbi
some three sleepers who are beautiful.
lo ci sipna goi ko'a zi'epoi mi nelci ke'a
or lo ci sipna poi mi nelci ke'a zi'egoi ko'a
depending on where you want the KO'A to refer
I think one function of the internal vs. external quantifiers
separation is to handle the scoping of the relatives
irrespective of the apparent semantics of the quantification.
In general I find that properly combining le/lo, internal/
external quantifiers and restrictive/incidental relatives
gives about all the semantic variants I might want. It may
take some juggling at the natural language level to get
just the wording you are accustomed with - but often
finding the proper wording to express just the shade of
meaning you are after in a natural language expression in
general may be more difficult and even beyond the capabilities
of most people.
I think we ought to get away from translating and to start
taking Lojban as is. It has it's own ways of expressing ideas
and it is very important to avoid imposing an alien strait
jacket upon it.
4. Internal quantifiers
I should use the following structure allowed by the present
grammar:
le ci [le sipna poi mi nelci ke'a]
The three of [the sleepers that I like].
i.e. the sleepers that I like, of whom there are
in fact three.
(Produced from: LE_562 [quantifier_300 sumti_90] gap_450)
=[ sumti_tail_113 ]
The meaning is quite obvious - in fact it matches exactly the
first English gloss.
This produces kind of a intermediate quantification - it is
internal in the total structure but external to the restrictive
relative clause. The only blemish I can see is that it is
occasionally necessary to use a double KU terminator.
Colin's example for solution (c):
*so'a lo panono cukta poi mi nelci ku poi dopa'a nelci
ku'o noi cfika*
would become:
so'a lo panono le cukta poi mi nelci ku poi dopa'a nelci
ku'o noi cfika
Neither is a candidate for casual conversation but I prefer the
latter one (conforming with the present syntax).
And the ones in the discussion:
Colin the present grammar
le ci cukta poi mi nelci => le ci le cukta [ku] poi mi nelci
le ci cukta ku poi mi nelci => le ci cukta [ku] poi mi nelci
To me the present way is in this case more obvious.
5. Indefinite sumti
(Here we have a slight problem in nomenclature as the 'Diagrammed
Summary' uses the term 'indefinite description sumti' to refer to
the 'lo selbri [ku]' construct in general.)
I agree. There are some real problems here.
6. Preposed possessives
Here solution (c) is one possibility but I should greatly prefer
the following change:
sumti_tail_113 : sumti_tail_114
| sumti_E_96 sumti_tail_114
| sumti_E_96 sumti_tail_113a <=== add
| quantifier_300 sumti_90
;
sumti_tail_113a : quantifier_300 sumti_E_96 <=== add
(the division into 2 rules is just to keep the bracketing right.
If that doesn't matter, the line added to _113 would be:
| sumti_E_96 quatifier_300 sumti_E_96 )
thus allowing the transformation of
lo ci le panono cukta pe mi /* quite legal now
to
lomi ci le panono cukta /* not legal now
my three of the hundred books
which would enhance the orthogonality of the grammar, would be
quite clear and would allow some quite useful elaborations without
leading to semantic problems. The form 'lomi ci cukta' would keep
the present syntactic meaning:
lomi ci cukta = [lo ci cukta] pe mi
I considered also many other possibilities but all the others
(which I checked) seemed to lead to loss of regularity.
Lojbab's examples would be:
ci le la djan. vo le pu jibri ku
(ci le vo le pu jibri ku pe la djan.)
3 of John's 4 previous jobs
ci le la djan. pano pu jibri ku
(ci le pano pu jibri ku pe la djan.)
3 of John's portion of the previous 10 jobs
3 of the previous 10 jobs such that they were John's
ci le le re la djan. ku vo le pu jibri ku
(ci le vo le pu jibri ku pe le re la djan. ku)
3 of the 2 Johns' 4 previous jobs
Note that in the last example the LE in front of the quantifier
preceding la djan is mandatory otherwise this structure will not
be parsed. Not very pretty but undestandable - and the pseudo-
possessives will mostly be of the LEMI type after all.
I think that in the last case Colin would be after a structure
like:
*ci le vo [[le re la djan. ku] pu jibri] ku*
(ci le vo pu jibri ku pe le re la djan ku)
where 'le re la djan. ku' would be the pseudo-possessive like in
*le vo [mi cukta] ku*
BTW. the last production in the present definition allows
constructs like:
le paboi ciboi ze cukta
so the indefinite sumti cause trouble also here. Perhaps
we ought to prune them off totally as the easiest solution?
-----------------
Suggestions:
1. check out the internal sumti problems. I have no clear
preference here, only a slight inclination to prune them
off.
2. modify the rule for sumti_tail_113
The sumti_E_96 in sumti_tail_113b could be replaced by any
later non-terminal up to description_112 (but not with any
earlier ones). I found, however, the possibilities offered
by E_96 quite useful:
lemi panono na'e ... = [le panono na'e ...] pe mi
vs. lemi panono le na'e ... = le panono [le na'e ... pe mi]
NB this relatively minor change is only required to allow
the insertion of a preposed possessive into an otherwise
legal construct which can adequately handle the scoping
problems of the restrictives (as far as I can see)
3. otherwise, keep to the present syntax.
to'u
The present syntax will almost do but ...
The addition of the single line to sumti_tail_113 and perhaps the
pruning of the indefinite sumti construct will do much to improve
the clarity and orthogonality of the present grammar and all the
scopings Colin was after will also be available, pe'i.
ma pinka la'edi'u .i.oi mi ka'e srera
co'omi'e vei,on
------------------------------------------------------------------
Veijo Vilva vilva@viikki21.helsinki.fi