jbosnukarni

This blog is written in a constructed language called Lojban. Lojban is based on predicate logic and is designed to have unambiguous grammar. The phrase "pretty little girls school" is often used as an example of ambiguous language. It couild mean a school for girls that are pretty and little. It could be a school for girls that are pretty little (as in very little). It could be a school that is pretty little for girls. It could be a pretty school for little girls. There are dozens of possible in interpretations. Lojban has ways of resolving the ambiguity.

Lojban's equivalent to adjectives, tanru, are by default left-associative. Each tanru is first modified by the tanru on its left before it is modified by the tanru on its right. So a Lojban translation of "pretty little girls school" would be parsed as (((pretty little) girls) school): "pretty" would first be applied to "little", then "pretty little" applied to "girls" then "pretty little girls" applied to school. It would be a school for pretty little girls.

There are small words that could be added to a sequence of tanru to modify the order applied: "je" which would translate into English as "and", the words "ke" and "ke'e" are equivalent to left and right parenthesis, and the word "bo" joins two tanru as though there were parenthesis around both of them. A page on The Complete Lojban Language document specifies many ways to disambiguate the phrase "pretty little girls school" using these small Lojban words.

Some external links to learn more about Lojban:

• Main Lojban Page
• Lojban Wave Lessons
• jbovlaste: a lojban dictionary