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Lojban: Constructed language to eliminate ambiguity from communication

mw.lojban.org

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Re: Lojban: Constructed language to eliminate ambiguity from communication

#21

Post by transfire »

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 Lojban’s formalism was out of date already when it was proposed as Loglan half a century ago.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 believe there is a variation supported by the language to use semantic predicates instead of argument order. But, since argument order is the standard approach it doesn’t much matter — I think this is the biggest flaw in the language.

I was also a little disappointed to learn that it is morphologically ambiguous without proper inflection (syllabic emphasis).

Other than that its an amazing language, as is Loglan.

I only wish it sounded a bit better. It sounds a bit slavic, where as I find languages like Arabic and Italian much more pleasing to the ear.

Re: Lojban: Constructed language to eliminate ambiguity from communication

#22

Post by prerok »

djtango wrote: post #17
jmillikin wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

avLike still has two different meanings ;)

Actually, I am not sure that having different meanings of the same word in different contexts is really the problematic part causing ambiguity in conversations.

For example, sarcasm is a much more difficult problem. The words are the same, the meaning of the sentences is the same but the author's intent, the meaning behind those sentences is opposite if they are being sarcastic or not.

Re: Lojban: Constructed language to eliminate ambiguity from communication

#23

Post by ftxbro »

Decabytes wrote: post #11

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. Ma…

you should check TinyStories if you didn't know of it already https://arxiv.org/abs/2305.07759

Re: Lojban: Constructed language to eliminate ambiguity from communication

#24

Post by sgtnoodle »

tagyro wrote: post #9

I vaguely remember a TNG* episode in which humans encounter an alien race that found our language too ...inaccurate, and spent a lot of time going over each word and sentence, to precisely define its meaning. * Was it TNG or am I dreaming? *edit: Thank you everyone, but it wasn't "Darmok". The humans and the aliens were working, for a long time, on a treaty of sorts because the human language was so confusing and amb…

I believe I've seen every TNG episode at least once, and that's not ringing any bells. Maybe it was an original series episode? Despite my best efforts, I haven't been able to make it through more than one or two episodes of the original.

Re: Lojban: Constructed language to eliminate ambiguity from communication

#25

Post by detrites »

djtango wrote: post #17
jmillikin wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

  > nFruit nFlies vLike a nBanana
vFprTprpFprY.

Re: Lojban: Constructed language to eliminate ambiguity from communication

#26

Post by pwnmonkey »

tagyro wrote: post #9

I vaguely remember a TNG* episode in which humans encounter an alien race that found our language too ...inaccurate, and spent a lot of time going over each word and sentence, to precisely define its meaning. * Was it TNG or am I dreaming? *edit: Thank you everyone, but it wasn't "Darmok". The humans and the aliens were working, for a long time, on a treaty of sorts because the human language was so confusing and amb…

Shaka, when the walls fell?

Re: Lojban: Constructed language to eliminate ambiguity from communication

#27

Post by adastra22 »

Beltiras wrote: post #20
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.

Having a better language helps. Every language has some pain points that are responsible for more than their fair share of miscommunications. Just to use English as an example, although this is true of most natural languages, the overuse of the copula "is/are" is a consistent source of mistakes whether accidental or purposeful. So much so that computer programmers learning object oriented programming have to be taught the difference between "is-a" vs "has-a" relationships.

If you say "My coworker Taro is a samurai", what does that mean? Did he dress up as a samurai for the office costume party? Does he study older forms of Japanese martial arts? Was he descended from a noble family from the Japanese feudal era and have claim to an actual samurai title?

There are controlled dialects of English, like E-Prime, which forbid the use of the copula "to be" as ungrammatical, or at least heavily restrict it. You can say your coworker "dressed as a samurai", "trains in the arts of a samurai", or "traces ancestral lineage from a samurai clan", but you can't say he "is a samurai" in E-Prime.

Would this make communication more clear with fewer mistakes? I don't think this has been adequately studied enough to say for certain. But at least in certain domains like military speech and air traffic control we have examples of such enforced language simplification resulting in measurable decreases in miscommunications. I'm very curious to see if we can generalize those results to a full, general-purpose dialect or entirely new language.

Re: Lojban: Constructed language to eliminate ambiguity from communication

#28

Post by xavivives »

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

Ambiguity is an intrinsic quality of language. The first words that an infant learns are exclusively learned through ostensive definitions (defining by pointing). This implies that the meaning of those words is fundamentally different to each of us, as it's founded on our phenomenological experience and not through the dictionary. Further words are learned to combine previous definitions and more ostensive definition, so ambiguity is carried on.

Lojban does not eliminate the ambiguity of the meaning of the words, but the ambiguity of its syntactical structure.

To me, the ambiguity of language, and the impracticality to change the meaning of words are the fundamental issues preventing humans to enhance the innate cognitive abilities, and the root cause of most human conflicts around communication.

Any profession and culture has its own jargon, this enables them to express the particular quality of their reality with much more accuracy than common language.

So, instead of trying to build a shared language, what we can do is to create a personal Language for each of us. Not for the purpose of communication, but for the purpose of improving our reasoning and internal model of the world, so we can describe and make sense of our particular reality with much more accuracy.

I've been dedicated to building "Interplanetary mind-map", a tool that supports making your language by making your meaning more explicit. [0]

At the same time, I've been using a prototype of it, to build my personal Language. You can browse into each word and see my particular understanding of it. [1]

[0] - https://github.com/interplanetarymindmap/docs

[1] - https://xavivives.com/#?expr=[%22i12D3KooWBSEYV1cK821KKdfVTH...

Re: Lojban: Constructed language to eliminate ambiguity from communication

#29

Post by msla »

Beltiras wrote: post #20
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.

Yes, you could, because any natural language can be used to teach mathematics. Lojban is, like any notation, a convenience for people who understand the concepts, but the concepts can be expressed in a natural language just as precisely, albeit less concisely.

In fact, as Florian Cajori stated in his book "A History of Mathematical Notations", the rise of mathematical notation was opposed by people who preferred the older, natural language style of doing mathematics, what Cajori termed the "struggle between symbolists and rhetoricians."

So, yes, logic is mathematics, and humans did mathematics in natural language for a very long time before we invented the conlang of mathematical notation. Moving more of the ideas into what is, ultimately, a more expressive notation is not a fundamental shift.

Re: Lojban: Constructed language to eliminate ambiguity from communication

#30

Post by bradrn »

adastra22 wrote: post #27
Beltiras wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Having a better language helps. Every language has some pain points that are responsible for more than their fair share of miscommunications. Just to use English as an example, although this is true of most natural languages, the overuse of the copula "is/are" is a consistent source of mistakes whether accidental or purposeful. So much so that computer programmers learning object oriented programming have to be taugh…

> the overuse of the copula "is/are" is a consistent source of mistakes whether accidental or purposeful

I’m not sure I’d characterise these as ‘mistakes’, per se. They’re just a consequence of the fact that the copula is multifunctional — just like every other English word. In fact, you could similarly criticise almost any common word: ‘go’, ‘from’, ‘good’, ‘like’, ‘not’…

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