Lojban In General

Lojban In General


vagueness vs ambiguity

posts: 493

So I've heard people say in the past "lojban is vague, but it is not
ambiguous". But what is the difference exactly?

"John and Jim played a game. He lost". I've heard this example used to
explain how english is "ambiguous". But how is this different from {la djan
joi la djim kelci lo lo nunkei .i ra toljinga} which I guess is "ambiguous"?

The old logic joke is that ambiguity means having too many meanings and vagueness means not having enough. That is, an ambiguous expression has two or more clear cut meanings where as a vague one has one very murky meaning (no sharp boundaries, lots of wiggle room). As for Lojban, it is not markedly more vague than other languages nor less semantically ambiguous either (like your case below). What it is is monoparsed, that is, there is only one grammatically correct way to read a sentence. All other attempted readings are ultimately ungrammatical. Within that framework, however, any level of vagueness or semantic ambiguity is possible (and probably occurs). (The questions of whether there is a language that speakers actually speak or writers write that has this property of monoparsing which the theoretical language of the grammar has is somewhat open still.)





From: Luke Bergen <lukeabergen@gmail.com>
To: lojban-list@lojban.org
Sent: Thu, October 22, 2009 5:36:56 PM
Subject: lojban vagueness vs ambiguity

So I've heard people say in the past "lojban is vague, but it is not ambiguous". But what is the difference exactly?

"John and Jim played a game. He lost". I've heard this example used to explain how english is "ambiguous". But how is this different from {la djan joi la djim kelci lo lo nunkei .i ra toljinga} which I guess is "ambiguous"?




On Thu, Oct 22, 2009 at 7:36 PM, Luke Bergen <lukeabergen@gmail.com> wrote:
> So I've heard people say in the past "lojban is vague, but it is not
> ambiguous".

Don't believe everything you hear! Lojban is syntactically
unambiguous, which means any grammatical utterance can be parsed in
one and only one way. Semantically unambiguous? I don't think so.

> But what is the difference exactly?

An ambiguous sentence is one that can have two or more distinct
meanings, a vague sentence is one that doesn't have a precise meaning.

> "John and Jim played a game.  He lost".  I've heard this example used to
> explain how english is "ambiguous".  But how is this different from {la djan
> joi la djim kelci lo lo nunkei .i ra toljinga} which I guess is "ambiguous"?

Not very different, except I would tend to interpret the last part of
the Lojban as "They lost".

(Shouldn't the x2 of kelci be lo selkei rather than lo nunkei?)

mu'o mi'e xorxes


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posts: 493

>(Shouldn't the x2 of kelci be lo selkei rather than lo nunkei?)

probably, but {... kelci lo sekelci } seemed... redundant, but I wanted to
be able to use {ra} so I needed another sumti between la djim and {ra}.

And yeah, you're right, I guess {ra} would refer back to the mass created by
{la djan joi la djim}. I would want {la djan .e la djan nunkei ...}

2009/10/22 Jorge Llambías <jjllambias@gmail.com>

> On Thu, Oct 22, 2009 at 7:36 PM, Luke Bergen <lukeabergen@gmail.com>
> wrote:
> > So I've heard people say in the past "lojban is vague, but it is not
> > ambiguous".
>
> Don't believe everything you hear! Lojban is syntactically
> unambiguous, which means any grammatical utterance can be parsed in
> one and only one way. Semantically unambiguous? I don't think so.
>
> > But what is the difference exactly?
>
> An ambiguous sentence is one that can have two or more distinct
> meanings, a vague sentence is one that doesn't have a precise meaning.
>
> > "John and Jim played a game. He lost". I've heard this example used to
> > explain how english is "ambiguous". But how is this different from {la
> djan
> > joi la djim kelci lo lo nunkei .i ra toljinga} which I guess is
> "ambiguous"?
>
> Not very different, except I would tend to interpret the last part of
> the Lojban as "They lost".
>
> (Shouldn't the x2 of kelci be lo selkei rather than lo nunkei?)
>
> mu'o mi'e xorxes
>
>
> To unsubscribe from this list, send mail to lojban-list-request@lojban.org
> with the subject unsubscribe, or go to http://www.lojban.org/lsg2/, or if
> you're really stuck, send mail to secretary@lojban.org for help.
>
>

posts: 324

On Thursday 22 October 2009 18:36:56 Luke Bergen wrote:
> So I've heard people say in the past "lojban is vague, but it is not
> ambiguous". But what is the difference exactly?
>
> "John and Jim played a game. He lost". I've heard this example used to
> explain how english is "ambiguous". But how is this different from {la
> djan joi la djim kelci lo lo nunkei .i ra toljinga} which I guess is
> "ambiguous"?

"kelci" isn't playing a game, it's playing with a toy. How about "la djan. la
djim. jivna la baduk .i ra toljinga"?

mu'omi'e .pier.

--
lo ponse be lo mruli po'o cu ga'ezga roda lo ka dinko


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with the subject unsubscribe, or go to http://www.lojban.org/lsg2/, or if
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