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Re: [lojban] Re: CLL and modern Lojban



2017-11-11 17:57 GMT+03:00 'John E Clifford' via lojban <lojban@googlegroups.com>:
Lojban’s claim to be based on logic is not significantly different from the similar claim for any language (sentences derived by transformations from underlying semantic representations which are often presented as formulae in some higher order intensional logic).  JCB ditched most of the features of FOPL (the best then available) which gave for precision and most of the last 60 years has been spent trying to get at least some of that back (not yet all by a long shot).  Lojban is just an SAE language that looks a little strange because position in a sentence does not have a fixed meaning but rather depends upon the verb at the center.  End of borrowings from logic (hyperbole, but not much).
The logic on which Lojban is “based” is again a European creation (mainly Anglo-American and German, with a little French and Italian).  It takes no account of the logical traditions of India or China nor of the specialized languages developed there for logic.

Yes, but Lojban compared to Loglan got somewhere further.
I'm not sure what you mean by Indian or Chinese logic (after all they still influenced European ones) but e.g.
1. second order logic is in CLL
2. combinatory logic with lambda calculus is a common topic (although xorlo reform with a bunch of simultaneous intrusions into plurality, grammar scope and quantifiers probably complicated the issue in Lojbanistan instead of clarifying it). But people can't stop mentioning Lojban when discussing combinatory logic.
3. trivalent logic was discussed although I'm not sure if it's compatible with CLL
4. higher order logic (FOPL - nouns/sumti, 2OPL - selbri/predicates, >2OPL - paragraphs) was again proposed as extensions to CLL

What else did we miss? Indian and Chinese logic is often mixed with philosophy, can you clarify where we haven't caught its logical part?


 
 So, it is hardly culturally neutral in the sense suggested.  Of course, the need for cultural neutrality was prompted by the thoroughly bogus SWH, so its absence is not very damaging, except to the repeated claims to have it.  

On Friday, November 10, 2017, 7:47:33 PM CST, guskant <gusni.kantu@gmail.com> wrote:


coi la sykyndyr

I agree to the most part of your summary, though I have two points to suggest the precision.


Le jeudi 9 novembre 2017 20:48:20 UTC, Benoit Neil a écrit :

* Lojban basics *
What defines Lojban? (Or "What should never change in Lojban?"). So, if I try to sum up again from various sources, the answers are below (please tell if you disagree):

YES!
  • Non-ambiguous grammar (~= monoparsing, machine parsable)
  • Unicity (~= forks are experiments or proposals)
  • Cultural neutrality
  • Partially based on logic
  • Rather stable ("rather" has to be refined)
  • Usable (speakable, learnable, writable, readable...)
  • Usage defines the language, as long as these "basics" are untouched.
    • However the "usage" is rather a blurry situation for now... 

 1. "Partially based on logic".
The phrase "based on logic" is not suitable qualification for a word that signifies a language.

A language is a set of symbols, while logic is a theory of reasoning according to which the meaning of a string of symbols is derived from the meaning of another string of symbols. In any kind of logic, the theory is defined so that a false cannot be derived from a truth.

Symbols are not meanings. A set of symbols cannot be based on a theory of meanings signified by symbols.

As a precise description of Lojban, the following sentence is suitable:

A part of the grammar of Lojban is based on the grammar of a language used in the predicate logic.

# By the way, the CLL defines also semantics of Lojban, among which there are something related to logic. However, the semantics written in the CLL contains very important logical defects, of which I raised the ideas of corrections in the BPFK meeting but failed to make them official. 


2. "Cultural neutrality"
The CLL defends it by creation of gismu based on the six languages of the majority on the Earth. However, as Gleki pointed out, the selection of gismu set is based on European culture. It lacks some important words for people in other cultures, for example {bambu} (listed on the jbovlaste as an experimental gismu) is not in the official gismu list, though it is a very important word for south east asian people.

However, from my point of view, the cultural neutrality of a language does not depend on the content words like gismu, but on the grammar.

Important content words should vary according to the speaker's lifestyle, the culture of each speaker. A cultural neutrality on gismu set is impossible. On the other hand, the grammar of Lojban is based on the grammar of language used in the predicate logic, which is very simplified and specialized in order to treat statements easily in logical reasoning. Such a grammar is indeed the cultural neutrality.

That's it, and the ideas above are based on my creation of a series of short films to be released soon. You all are lucky to know the ideas before release.

mu'o mi'e la guskant

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