Lojban: Constructed language to eliminate ambiguity from communication • Hacker News Board

Re: Lojban: Constructed language to eliminate ambiguity from communication

#11

Post by Decabytes » Sat, May 20, 2023, 6:16 AM UTC

I wonder if LLM entirely in lobjan would require less text to train to be just as good as the models we have today due to its higher clarity in expression.

I also feel the same way about Esperanto due to its high regularity in syntax.

Part of me also wonders if an ai model could be optimized by training it on a language specifically invented to be both easy for the ai to understand and the human to communicate in. Maybe the language was made up of lots of 4 letter words bringing the number of words to tokens closer to 1:1, or injecting more context per word so sentences could be shorter and use less tokens

Re: Lojban: Constructed language to eliminate ambiguity from communication

#12

Post by adastra22 » Sat, May 20, 2023, 6:17 AM UTC

I like the idea of Lojban. I hate the implementation. It’s basically spoken math notation for predicate logic, which falls flat well short of the goal. There are much better logical frameworks that have been developed for computational semantics (e.g. Davidsonian event semantics). Lojban’s formalism was out of date already when it was proposed as Loglan half a century ago.

If there is anyone out there who likes the idea of Lojban but want something more practical and with a firmer foundation to boot, contact me. I’ve got ideas and I’d love to find some people to work on this with.

Re: Lojban: Constructed language to eliminate ambiguity from communication

#13

Post by jmillikin » Sat, May 20, 2023, 6:18 AM UTC

yosito wrote: post #6

I don't know if eliminating ambiguity is even possible, much less a key feature of the language. There's even prominent ambiguity on this page: > Lojban means different things to different people

The goal of Lojban is to eliminate syntactic/grammatical ambiguity:

  Time flies like an arrow, fruit flies like a banana.

In this example, "flies" could be either a noun or verb depending on context. That sort of construct isn't possible in Lojban.

Of course, it's still possible to use Lojban to express statements that have an ambiguous or unclear meaning.

Re: Lojban: Constructed language to eliminate ambiguity from communication

#14

Post by vidarh » Sat, May 20, 2023, 6:24 AM UTC

lez wrote: post #3

I like this point very much: "You can be as vague or detailed as you like when speaking lojban. For example, specifying tense (past, present or future) or number (singular or plural) is optional when they're clear from context.". LMBTQ movement has came into my mind immediately. I think they would have more success by introducing a new, 'don't care about your sex' pronoun to the language instead of adding a third one…

They/them already exists and have centuries of use for that use-case. The people objecting to that are just as likely to object to an entirely new one.

There also are already multiple "neopronouns" [1], and they are frequently ridiculed by those taking issue with "unexpected" (to them) pronoun use). This is also not a new debate, with variants (other than singular they) being in use in limited contexts since the late 18th century. None of the attempts have met more than very limited success, as you can tell from the fact this is still a debate.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neopronoun

Re: Lojban: Constructed language to eliminate ambiguity from communication

#15

Post by baby » Sat, May 20, 2023, 6:27 AM UTC

After learning toki pona (the simplest conlang perhaps?) I got attracted by Lojban due to the machine-parsable aspect of the conlang, but I found it really tedious and not fun to learn.

I started working on a conlang with similar ideas a while back (emojis in the language, machine parsable) but less strict and nicer sounding. Never ended up with anything though :)

Re: Lojban: Constructed language to eliminate ambiguity from communication

#16

Post by adastra22 » Sat, May 20, 2023, 6:30 AM UTC

baby wrote: post #15

After learning toki pona (the simplest conlang perhaps?) I got attracted by Lojban due to the machine-parsable aspect of the conlang, but I found it really tedious and not fun to learn. I started working on a conlang with similar ideas a while back (emojis in the language, machine parsable) but less strict and nicer sounding. Never ended up with anything though :)

Re: Lojban: Constructed language to eliminate ambiguity from communication

#17

Post by djtango » Sat, May 20, 2023, 6:30 AM UTC

jmillikin wrote: post #13

yosito wrote: post #6

I don't know if eliminating ambiguity is even possible, much less a key feature of the language. There's even prominent ambiguity on this page: > Lojban means different things to different people

The goal of Lojban is to eliminate syntactic/grammatical ambiguity: Time flies like an arrow, fruit flies like a banana. In this example, "flies" could be either a noun or verb depending on context. That sort of construct isn't possible in Lojban. Of course, it's still possible to use Lojban to express statements that have an ambiguous or unclear meaning.

Ah, classic HN Saturday morning - finding myself dreaming up Hungarian notation in English to disambiguate grammatical types

    nTime vFlies avLike an nArrow, nFruit vFlies avLike a nBanana

It's ugly but if we all adhere to this convention and haze our juniors, we'll eliminate most our problems

Re: Lojban: Constructed language to eliminate ambiguity from communication

#18

Post by adastra22 » Sat, May 20, 2023, 6:32 AM UTC

jmillikin wrote: post #13

yosito wrote: post #6

I don't know if eliminating ambiguity is even possible, much less a key feature of the language. There's even prominent ambiguity on this page: > Lojban means different things to different people

The goal of Lojban is to eliminate syntactic/grammatical ambiguity: Time flies like an arrow, fruit flies like a banana. In this example, "flies" could be either a noun or verb depending on context. That sort of construct isn't possible in Lojban. Of course, it's still possible to use Lojban to express statements that have an ambiguous or unclear meaning.

Which is a bit ironic, because in the year 2023 it turns out that correctly parsing sentences is an easier problem to solve than extracting meaning from context, even when given a known correct parsing. Lojban solved the wrong problem.

Re: Lojban: Constructed language to eliminate ambiguity from communication

#19

Post by bradrn » Sat, May 20, 2023, 6:33 AM UTC

adastra22 wrote: post #12

I like the idea of Lojban. I hate the implementation. It’s basically spoken math notation for predicate logic, which falls flat well short of the goal. There are much better logical frameworks that have been developed for computational semantics (e.g. Davidsonian event semantics). Lojban’s formalism was out of date already when it was proposed as Loglan half a century ago. If there is anyone out there who likes the i…

I’d be interested in hearing more about this. Don’t know much about formal semantics (and in fact am somewhat skeptical of the whole field), but I do have a background in language construction, and would say I have a fairly good knowledge of linguistics more generally.

Re: Lojban: Constructed language to eliminate ambiguity from communication

#20

Post by Beltiras » Sat, May 20, 2023, 6:33 AM UTC

adastra22 wrote: post #12

I like the idea of Lojban. I hate the implementation. It’s basically spoken math notation for predicate logic, which falls flat well short of the goal. There are much better logical frameworks that have been developed for computational semantics (e.g. Davidsonian event semantics). Lojban’s formalism was out of date already when it was proposed as Loglan half a century ago. If there is anyone out there who likes the i…

I wonder if you could get the intended result for any language with a simple ruleset. You don't need a language to reduce/eliminate miscommunications, you need intent and understanding.