Re: Unambiguous languages (was: EU allumettes)

On Friday, May 7, 2004, at 06:57 PM, And Rosta wrote:

[snip]
> What you describe matches my recollections. The CY design is very
> coherent & conceptually spare, but since it is intrinsically
> incapable of expressing any distiction of meaning that cannot be
> expressed lexically or morphosyntactically, it would *for me* not
> be a candidate for the holy grail of engelangs... A random example
> of a distinction hard to capture lexically:
>
> "Three men longed to fabricate idols in honour of two goddesses"
> Reading 1. 3 men, 2 goddesses.
Latin: tres homines ad duas deas honorandas idola fabricari desiderabant.

> Reading 2. 3 men, 2-6 goddesses.
Latin: tres homines ad binas deas honorandas idola fabricari desiderabant.

> Reading 3. 2 goddesses, 3-6 men.
Latin: terni homines ad duas deas honorandas idola fabricari desiderabant.

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On Friday, May 7, 2004, at 11:21 PM, Mark P. Line wrote:

[snip]
> Okay, I'm not understanding the parameters of the problem you're posing.
>
> Could you spell out for us the three readings you think this English
> sentence has?
The three Latin sentences mean:
(a) All three people were longing to make idols in order to honor just two
goddess (e.g. Juno & Minerva)

(b) The three aforesaid individuals were each longing to makes idols in
order that each might honor two goddesses per person (e.g. Aulus wants to
honor Juno & Minerva; Gaius wants to honor Venus & Diana; Decimus wants to
honor Ceres & Vesta)

(c) Three people were longing to make idols in order to honor one godddess
& three others were longing to make idols to honor a second goddess (e.g.
Aulus, Gaius & Decimus want to honor Minerva; Marcus, Publius & Quintus
want to honor Juno)

These are meanings I inferred from And's cryptic numbers  :)

>  We need to get some agreement on what readings there are
> before I can think about how the different readings would be expressed in
> CY. (And if this is about numbers, don't forget to include different
> readings for different numbers of _idols_ as well.)
Yes, And doesn't mention the number of idols; they might have ben wanting
to produce a whole set of idols, perhaps for pilgrims.

[snip]

> I think there's more going on (such as scope ambiguity) in your example
> sentence than just definiteness ambiguity, though, but I'll wait until
> you've had a chance to spell out the readings you're seeing before I get
> into that.
Indeed - and see if at least they match my Latin ones.

> By the time we've combined the scope ambiguity with the
> definiteness ambiguity already mentioned, there may be *hundreds* of
> possible translations of this sentence into CY.
I suspect that Classical Yiklamu will not prove more ambiguous than
Classical Latin  :)
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On Friday, May 7, 2004, at 10:26 PM, Mark P. Line wrote:
[snip]
> B. Philip Jonsson:
>> An unambiguous language would not be amenable to change, and since human
>> culture changes it would eventually be discarded.
>
>
> What makes you say that an unambiguous language would not be amenable to
> change?
Yes, indeed. Even to remain unambiguous it will need to change as human
knowledge & understanding develop. But once humans start using any such
language, it's bound surely to change - 'tis the nature of humans. A
language which didn't change would be well & truly dead IMHO.
 =======================================================================

On Friday, May 7, 2004, at 07:09 PM, And Rosta wrote:
[snip]

> One can never eliminate vagueness, because this is where the
> johannine dictum pertains -- that the price of infinite
> precision (i.e. freedom from vagueness) is infinite verbosity.
> But one can eliminate ambiguity & this would be a great boon
> for legal texts.......
...and put half the legal profession out of business   ;)

Ray
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Ray
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http://home.freeuk.com/ray.brown
ray.brown@freeuk.com    (home)
raymond.brown@kingston-college.ac.uk   (work)
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"A mind which thinks at its own expense will always
interfere with language."         J.G. Hamann, 1760

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