Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: version B 2.10.1 6/24/83; site allegra.UUCP Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!burl!ulysses!allegra!alan From: alan@allegra.UUCP (Alan S. Driscoll) Newsgroups: net.ai Subject: Re: Sastric Sanskrit Message-ID: <2855@allegra.UUCP> Date: Mon, 15-Oct-84 18:25:11 EDT Article-I.D.: allegra.2855 Posted: Mon Oct 15 18:25:11 1984 Date-Received: Tue, 16-Oct-84 06:29:30 EDT References: <12975@sri-arpa.UUCP> Organization: AT&T Bell Laboratories, Murray Hill Lines: 37 I don't understand a number of points that Rick Brigg has made: > I did not mean to imply that lack of word order is a sufficient > condition for unambiguity, only that it is an indication. Why is lack of word order an indication of unambiguity? Unambiguity means one meaning per utterance, right? That says nothing about how meaning is conveyed. > My comments about English stem from its lack of case. Why is it better (less ambiguous, clearer) to communicate meaning by case inflection than by word order? Can you back this assertion up? > "There is an activity(vyaapaara:) , subsisting in the pot, > with agency residing in one substratum not different from > Caitra, which produces the softening which subsists in rice." A bit verbose, isn't it? You could starve before explaining to your waitress, precisely and unambiguously, what you wanted... > I also disagree with "...structural ambiguity is not particularly > bad nor incompatible with 'logical' expression." Certainly ambiguity > is a major impediment to designing an intelligent natural language > processor. What is the connection between the quoted statement and your reply? In my opinion, an "intelligent natural language processor" would have to deal with ambiguity "intelligently". Ambiguity is there in language, whether computational linguists like it or not, and I would argue that, rather than being gratuitous, AMBIGUITY CARRIES MEANING in many cases. -- Alan S. Driscoll AT&T Bell Laboratories