Theiling Online    Sitemap    Conlang Mailing List HQ   

Re: Unambiguous languages (was: EU allumettes)

From:Ray Brown <ray.brown@...>
Date:Saturday, May 8, 2004, 19:45
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. ===================================================================== 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 :) ========================================================================= 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 =============================================== http://home.freeuk.com/ray.brown ray.brown@freeuk.com (home) raymond.brown@kingston-college.ac.uk (work) =============================================== "A mind which thinks at its own expense will always interfere with language." J.G. Hamann, 1760 Ray =============================================== http://home.freeuk.com/ray.brown ray.brown@freeuk.com (home) raymond.brown@kingston-college.ac.uk (work) =============================================== "A mind which thinks at its own expense will always interfere with language." J.G. Hamann, 1760

Replies

John Cowan <cowan@...>
Benct Philip Jonsson <bpj@...>