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Re: Unambiguous languages (was: EU allumettes)

From:And Rosta <a.rosta@...>
Date:Thursday, May 6, 2004, 3:02
Ray:
> On Tuesday, May 4, 2004, at 12:43 PM, John Cowan wrote: > > The price of infinite precision is infinite verbosity. > > I agree.
That dictum of John's is true, but it doesn't follow that greater precision always entails greater verbosity. This is especially the case when precision is not potentially infinite but is rather a matter of selecting from a small number of clearly discrete alternatives.
> But if And is interested in highly disambiguated communication, > then Classical Yiklamu's claims should surely be examined: > > "Classical Yiklamu is an artificially constructed language. Its purpose is > to enable interested users to explore the possibilities of highly > disambiguated verbal communication."
I may have mixed CY up with another conlang in my memory, but my recollection is that it adopts Word Net as the inventory of its word senses. By so doing, it gets rid of ambiguity arising from polysemy. My feeling is that the most egregious and problematical ambiguities are syntagmatic ('logical') ones so I would tend to look more towards the likes of Lojban than CY. But that is not to say that CY does not deliver on its claims. --And.

Replies

Mark P. Line <mark@...>
taliesin the storyteller <taliesin-conlang@...>