The Distribution Problem: An Ambiguity?

["Mark E. Shoulson" <shoulson@CTR.COLUMBIA.EDU>]

I don't know about historical grounds, but from my perspective of Lojban it
seems I must disagree with you, John.  I agree that the current state of
affairs, leaving it ambiguous, is less than acceptable: tanruic ambiguity
does not include grouping ambiguity within the tanru.

However, it seems to me that the default grouping for logical and
non-logical connectives alike should be the non-distributive grouping.
Distributive seems convoluted and non-obvious syntactically.  After all,
complex tanru, connectives or no, are interpreted as their components
modify each other as tanru elements, in the order of grouping.  You don't
usually see the nature of one element affect how modifies the next larger
one.  Just as {melbi cmalu nixli ckule} is {(((melbi cmalu) nixli) ckule)},
that is "((pretty type-of small [thing]) type-of girl) type-of school",
with each element modifying the next one out in "unmarked tanruic" form
(i.e. somehow having to do with), so too {cmalu je nixli ckule} must be
{(cmalu je nixli) ckule}, or "(small and girl) type-of school."  The nature
of the first tanru element, that it is a logical connective, ought to have
no bearing on the fact that it simply modifies the second one in umarked
method.  Thus, we have a school that is somehow associated with things that
are small-things and girlish.  Similarly, (here I may be weakening my
point), {cmalu je nixli ja ckule} would be {(cmalu je nixli) ja ckule},
that is, "(small and girl) or school", so it might describe something which
is either (a) both small and girlish or (b) a school, (and possibly both).

Basically, the way tanru elements modify each other should be dependent
*only* on the various cmavo we have for just that purpose (JA, JOI, etc.)
and *not* on some magical characteristics of the elements themselves.  What
would happen if we somehow crammed in a connective by means other than JA
or GUhA?  Like mela'elu....li'u?  Heaven only knows what's inside of that!
How do we know when (or how!) to apply distribution?  If you want to throw
a cmavo in to flag distributivity, that's a different kettle of worms, and
I wouldn't mind that.  I think the A je B xai C method makes the most
sense: again, we have a cmavo between tanru elements to flag the way the
modification happens.

And as for your example (1), for me, {melbi je cmalu nixli} makes eminent
sense as "(beautiful and small [thing]) type-of girl", which would likely
expand using parallel tanru method to {melbi je cmalu je nixli}, a
beautiful and small girl: a thing that is beautiful and is small and is a
girl (or, to use a sumti, {lo nixli poi ke'a melbi je cmalu}).  There are,
of course other interpretations.  Maybe a girl who collects
small-and-beautiful things?

~mark