From a.rosta@pmail.net Sat Jan 1 05:27:41 2000
X-Digest-Num: 326
Message-ID: <44114.326.1770.959273825@eGroups.com>
Date: Sat, 1 Jan 2000 13:27:41 -0000
From: "And Rosta" <a.rosta@pmail.net>
Subject: RE: On international applications of Lojban

Here's a combined reply to Lojbab and Brook.

> From: "Bob LeChevalier (lojbab)" <lojbab@lojban.org>
>
> At 09:20 PM 12/30/99 +0000, And Rosta wrote:
> > > From: "Bob LeChevalier (lojbab)" <lojbab@lojban.org>
> > > At 04:09 PM 12/29/99 +0000, And Rosta wrote:
> > > >My response to the Top-Down idea of IAL or Lojban adoption
> > > >is to wonder why it should be a good thing for the adopting
> > > >body? Take the European patent organization: it would be
> > > >a trivial task to develop a language that shares Lojban's
> > > >virtues of nonambiguity and other areas of suitability to
> > > >the formulation of patents but is much simpler and easier
> > > >to learn;
> > >
> > > Really? If it were so easy, why haven't they done so?
> >
> >Either because they haven't perceived the need or because some
> >cost/benefit analysis doesn't justify it.
> >
> > > Personally, I don't think you can get much simpler than
> > > Lojban and still do the job. The primary extraneous feature
> > > of Lojban not applicable to patents is the attitudinal/evidential
> > > system. Even audible unambiguity has some value.
> >
> >There is nothing relevant that Lojban can do that standard
> >predicate logic notation can't.
>
> It can be spoken and written (unambiguously), and it is languagy enough
> that someone can learn it as a language (I doubt that many can learn
> predicate logic as a language).

There's nothing to say but that we disagree, in that I do think that
people could learn it at least at the intellectual level that people
learn programming languages. They mightn't be able to learn it as
a natlang, but on the other hand, for a limited purpose like legislative
texts this might not be a bad thing, and anyway, Lojban too, taken as
a whole, might be insuperably unnatural.

> By this argument, the efforts to develop an interlanguage for machine
> translation would need only use predicate calculus. But instead the
> closest that anyone has come to successfully using an
> interlanguage was the DLT project that used Esperanto.

I don't know why this was. Maybe they wanted to translate aspects of
form as well as meaning. And very probably it was easier to work out
the mapping from natlangs to Esperanto than from natlangs to something
as stark as predicate logic form.

> > In a Polish/Reverse Polish predicate
> >logic notation you need nothing but predicates, variables,
> >one or two quantifiers and two or three connectives. In other
> >words, setting aside how variables are handled, you could have
> >a language with only 3 cmavo! I'll admit that that number might
> >be expanded a bit, e.g. to include numbers, but even an expanded
> >cmavo inventory would be only a tiny proportion of Lojban's.
> >Likewise, the entire syntax could be formulated in a single
> >sentence.
>
> But could human beings use it to describe a patent?

I don't see why not.

> And what happens when you need to translate an indirect question? After
> all, haven't you just found that it is a fairly intractible problem for
> predicate logic?

Hopefully it is tractable. But I'd use a special WH quantifier if the
language had to be done today.

> > > > logicians have been using such languages for decades.
> > >
> > > 1) What language have logicians used that could be used for writing a
> > > patent description? Key here is "description", and description takes
> > > meaningful content words. Patents include both things and
> processes, and
> > > both have to be describable, hence tanru and description sumti both
> > > requiring content words and both capable of being disambiguated
> > > semantically to an arbitrary degree of specificity as well as
> > > grammatically.
> >
> >Of course the predicate words' senses have to be defined. But in
> Lojban the
> >predicate words' senses are not defined -- this task has been left to
> >'usage' to achieve.
>
> And patent translation would be a large amount of usage.

Exactly. I don't know anything about patents, but a great deal of law
involves decreeing definitions of terms.

> > > 2. The language of logic that most people have seen is the predicate
> > > calculus. Being a reasonably bright sort of guy who
> struggled to barely
> > > pass a self-paced college level course in the stuff, I
> daresay that many
> > > would call the predicate calculus easy to learn.
> >
> >Is that irony?
>
> No, a typo. Substitute few for many.
>
> > If so, I guess that they problem with predicate calculus is
> >that there's no fudgeability with it, which nonfudgeability is
> exactly why
> >one wants a logical language.
>
> But fudgeability is fine for patent translation (maybe even desirable to
> the lawyers), so long as the fudguing does not create an ambiguity
> comparable to those of natlangs.

By fudgeability, I mean the possibility of being ambiguous when you
can't be bothered to disambiguate, or when disambiguation is more
trouble than it's worth.

> > Note also that predicate logic is a subset
> >of Lojban, so if you learn Lojban you learn predicate logic plus a load
> >of extra stuff.
>
> You learn the forms of predicate logic, more or less (but how many people
> actually use the full set of Lojban logical connectives, for
> example?). But you do not learn to reason according to the rules of
> inference along the lines of the predicate calculus.

True, but that's also true even if you learn pred calc notation.

> If you did learn this
> inherently while learning Lojban without having to study the subject, I
> daresay that the original SWH concept for Loglan will have been proven.
>
> I also think that a lot of that "extra stuff" is exactly the sort
> of thing needed for patents, technical writing, formal specification, etc.

Which stuff? I can't think of any, but I exempt MEX from this statement
because I don't know it or the scope of its applicability.

> Again,
> the attempts I know of anguages for these arenas have tended to have some
> logical construct to them, but have always had to fall back on a natlang
> like form. If not enough like a natlang, they haven't been learnable; if
> too much like a natlang, they haven't been sufficiently unambiguous.

Given that pred logic notation differs from natlangs in its extreme
simplicity, it would be interesting to find if some system can be so
simple it is unlearnable.

> > > > Likewise for an IAL; if the EU did decide it
> > > >would be economically advantageous (tho I think it wouldn't),
> > > >for what reason (other than idiocy) would it opt for the
> > > >halfarsed candidate IALs currently on the market?
> > >
> > > If it were easy to develop a better one, I am sure that
> people would have
> > > done so already.
> >
> >Why? Most of the people who invent IALs are total lunatics, and
> most of the
> >rest are either ignorant or dim.
>
> But there is a market for an unambiguous specification language,
> which is what we are talking about. It would be usable in the
> computer industry for software development, security
> verification, proof of program correctness. They were trying
> to solve the problem when I was still working on that kind of
> stuff in the mid-80s, and I have not heard that the problem has
> been solved. They invent computer-languages to try
> to do this kind of thing, but they never catch on as a standard,
> probably because you can't speak LISP. But you CAN now "speak
> PROLOG", given the known mapping from a Lojban subset to PROLOG.

Maybe an advantage of Lojban here is that it is public domain and
culturally-neutral in the sense of not, say, being the progeny of
a single commercial organization. The Linux of logical languages,
as it were.

But if I wanted a logical lang that was only going to be used
in-house, then numerous modifications to Lojban could be made to
make the language easier to learn than Lojban, and yet as
effective. Basically, the main modifications I'd make would
involve discarding tons of stuff and changing the gismu forms to
lightly modified English.

> > > It isn't merely money that is lacking (though money would
> > > be nice) - Interlingua had money backing it, and of course
> DLTs machine
> > > translation internal interlanguage based on Esperanto had
> money backing
> > > it. A language sufficient to do the job will have to be sufficiently
> > > complex, and G-d knows that balancing complexity vs. needed
> > > features is far from easy.
> > >
> > > Then there is the key advantage of an existing language in
> that there are
> > > people who already know it and who therefore can serve as
> > > teachers, already written teaching materials that people can learn the
> > > language from without teachers if necessary. It took 3 years
> of teaching
> > > material development to get Lojban to the point that Nick
> Nicholas could
> > > teach himself the language from the materials and be able to
> write cogent
> > > Lojban without a lot of coaching, and it took him a few more years of
> > > work before he felt himself skilled at the language. Only with the
> > > advent of the Book have we had significant numbers able to teach
> > > themselves Lojban, and a goodly number have said that even that is not
> > > sufficient for them. Going from raw language concept to the Book is
> > > dozens of person-years of effort. Going from there to even
> the current
> > > level of Lojban prowess is many more person-years of effort
> on the part
> > > of self-teachers. And we don't yet have enough to teach the European
> > > patent community (hence by initiation of this thread), much
> less the rest
> > > of Europe. There is a likelihood that Esperanto could come
> up with the
> > > needed teachers reasonably quickly, especially given that for many it
> > > would their first chance to make money using the language
> (which can be
> > > a strong motivating force for many who have half-learned Esperanto,
> > > probably including a goodly portion of this list).
> >
> >I'm not sure what point you're making.
>
> The point is that any top-down application of an artificial language big
> enough to point the way to large scale usage will inherently require that
> the language be easy to learn, with sufficient language learning
> materials
> that many can learn it by self-study and most anyone with more
> than minimal
> verbal ability can learn it with a teacher. The latter will of
> course take
> sufficient skilled Lojbanists to serve as teachers. In short it is the
> "rapid bootstrap" problem that anything really new tends to have a steep
> and time-expensive learning curve. We have to reduce that steepness to
> make Lojban successful.
>
> > I agree that there are these
> >obstacles to the adoption of Lojban. And as I've said, I think Lojban
> >and Esperanto would be poor choices for a patent language, or for a
> >European IAL.
>
> As a patent language it has to go beyond pan-European. Our German
> proponent of the Lojban patent effort cited the difficulty of
> translating Japanese patents as a strong reason in Lojban's favor.

Two different things are getting confused here. A patent language (which
I am actually thinking of a more broadly a legal language), and an EU
IAL.

> > > >In my view, the Bottom-Up approach is the only viable one
> > > >for Lojban and currently extant IALs.
> > >
> > > But is the bottom-up approach viable at all? I think that it is a
> > > necessary step - necessary to build the infrastructure of teachers and
> > > teaching materials and lexicon, but the key problme of bottom-up is
> > > achieving any sort of critical mass.
> >
> >I've never believed Lojban to be viable in the sense that you mean, and
> >have no burning desire to assist it to become viable.
>
> I understand. But I raised the topic in order to find out if there are
> ways to overcome the viability issues provided that the application shows
> up. You may not be interested in the possibility, but it is certain that
> many others are.
>
> > > Lojban has probably achieved critical mass enough to survive it
> > > inventors (which makes it one of the most select of conlangs),
> >
> >I am certain this is so. There's now the Book, which contains pretty
> >much all there is to know about the language, and I imagine it will
> >always attract small numbers of people who find Lojban appealing.
> >
> > > but not necessarily enough to gain a respectable "market
> > > share" among the languages of the world. (I think Lojban has the
> > > advantage that it needs a lot smaller number than other conlangs to
> > > achieve critical mass, because Lojban unlike most conlangs DOES have
> > > the sort of specialty application like patent law and
> > computer-communications
> > > that is economically viable with only a small fraction of the world
> > learning
> > > it. And economic viability is the key to "top down" - a top down
> > > approach will work when someone with power sees a way to make
> money using
> > > the language.
> >
> >I very much doubt that this will happen, though it happening is Lojban's
> >only real hope for achieving critical mass.
>
> Yes.
>
> >But at any rate, I don't see why you should care so much. I
> recognize that
> >you've decided that the validation for all the efforts you've invested in
> >Lojban is the creation of a living language rather than just a language,
> >but I don't understand why you should make that the validation,
> especially
> >when it's so improbable.
>
> I see it as my job as President of LLG to work towards the goals of all
> Lojbanists, including some that you may feel are less practical. I got
> into this project out of a sense of duty, which later expanded to
> become a sense of mission. There are people who want to seriously work
> on finding applications for Lojban. I need to make sure that LLG
> provides the resources needed to make such efforts realizable,
> regardless of whether the goals that the efforts are aiming at will be
> achieved. The best thing I can do is to make it so that when people
> try to promote Lojban for a top-down goal, that there is enough
> substance backing them that they do not seem foolish just for trying.
> And if I do that, real money might "happen", since venture capitalists
> these days are betting on a lot of things with
> even slimmer odds for success than Lojban.

Okay, now I do see why you should care so much.

> > And the original idea that a loglan-speaking
> >community would test sapirwhorf, I've always regarded as a bit of blarney
> >baloney by JC Brown who really wanted to invent a language but
> was trying to
> >(a) gain respectability for an ill-respected activity, (b) differentiate
> >the product from others, (c) attract adherents.
>
> I know the history enough to be sure that it was not blarney at the
> time. Remember that in the mid-50s, testing SWH was a big deal.
> Remember also that JCB came from the Campbell school of science fiction
> which I think had a certain amount of SWH built into it. He does seem to
> have conceived of Loglan before the SWH became big, but I think that he
> seriously wanted to make the language a research tool.

You know the history better than me. The main reasons why I came to the
above
conclusions are firstly that it seems improbable that anyone would seriously
propose Loglan as a psycholinguistic experiment, since the experiment is
so uncontrolled and it takes so much effort to set up, and secondly that
thereafter JCB showed himself much more interested in all the designing
and tinkering and so forth that conlangers are so familiar with, and also
introduced additional design goals. If he'd been serious, he could have
genuinely invented a speakable predicate logic in a short span of time,
and then, say, raised funds to pay people to learn and use it or to
participate in experiments that oblige or incentivate them to learn and
use it.

> > > > The only hope for
> > > >Lojban to succeed Top-Downly is that some organization is
> > > >intelligent enough to see the merits of adopting a logical
> > > >language, but stupid enough to choose Lojban to do the job.
> > >
> > > Gee, thanks. %^)
> >
> >What I mean is this. First, the overriding goal of the Lojban project was
> >always to get a minimally adequate product out into the world. The policy
> >was "if it's not broken, don't fix it". But if you're an
> organization that
> >is so dissatisfied with existing natural languages that you want to
> >adopt a logical language, you're probably an organization that wants the
> >language to be as good as is practicable. Secondly, and more importantly,
> >Lojban was designed as a compromise between many different goals. It is
> >probable that an organization adopting a logical language would have
> >different and fewer goals, and that Lojban would be a relatively poor
> >solution for these goals.
>
> I agree up to a point.
>
> But that point is the realization that the development of a language
> superior to Lojban for a more focussed problem would be at least
> as big an effort as has gone into Loglan/Lojban, but on a shorter
> timescale.

I disagree on this. It depends on the nature of the more focused problem,
but for the patent/legal problem, I claim that the lg could be done
quickly, possibly be using parts of Lojban.

> And that is too much to be feasible. Furthermore, a redevelopment
> would almost certain be attempted as a proprietary effort because of the
> needed investment, and I think TLI Loglan and DLT both demonstrated the
> folly of trying to make a proprietary artificial language. Lojban's
> strength has been the diverse breadth of input that has gone into the
> language.

I agree. Also important is that none of the adopters are to blame for
any faults they perceive in the language, and no adopter has to
swallow stuff created by a rival.

> The question is whether Lojban, or a subset thereof is "good enough" for
> some application. I think it is. Time will tell. We certainly have the
> creative and bright minds needed to find such applications that exist.
>
> >I suppose that once one organization used Lojban, that would then become
> >a reason in itself for other organizations to use it too. But I really
> >can't see it being a sensible decision for any organization to adopt it
> >otherwise. True, it already exists, so would save labour in concocting
> >an alternative language, but if you're going to invest so much in getting
> >your organization to use it, a redesign would probably save you cost
> >in the long run.
>
> Therefore we have to make the investment for an organization
> small compared to the alternatives. I think we can. Having a public
domain
> language is a good start.
>
> >I'm not hostile to Lojban. If the United Nations decided to choose a
> >language to be a global general purpose second language, and if I
> >had a vote, then if the choice had to be made from an existing language
> >then I would vote for Lojban. And even if there was the option of
> >designing a new language I would vote for Lojban to avoid the risk
> >of the designed language being worse than Lojban.
>
> %^)

I should perhaps have said "*not as good as* Lojban" rather than "worse
than Lojban".

> > > >(This isn't an attack on Lojban. Lojban is more complex
> > > >than it needs to be for limited, formal, written applications
> > > >because it needs also to be usable for the full range of
> > > >linguistic functions.
> > >
> > > What linguistic functions other than attitudinals are not needed
> > > for patent work?
> >
> >Lojban is designed to be general purpose, flexible, nonconstraining,
> >culturally neutral, etc. etc. The only two of its goals necessary
> >for patent work are logicality and nonambiguity.
>
> Culturally neutral is a biggy. Nonconstraining and flexible are probably
> important, because patent writeups in various natlangs to be translated
> into Lojban will have their own natlang style and idiosyncrasies. And
> patent writeups tend to use very complicated language structures.

I'm probably displaying my ignorance of patent write-ups then. I was
assuming that all that counts is their pure content, and that issues
of style and the structures used in the source language are irrelevant.

> > > More importantly, how much simpler could a language optimally
> > > designed for a limited purpose be than a Lojban subset that
> simply omits
> > > those features not needed. After all, a large portion of the
> > > Loglan/Lojban concept is optionality of features.
> >
> >If you pared Lojban down to the smallest adequate portion you'd still
> >be left with unnecessary stuff (e.g. zo'u, terminators) and what remained
> >would be Lojban only in as much as that unnecessary stuff would remain
> >and that the vocabulary items would be Lojban. And the vocabulary items
> >being Lojban would be a positively unnecessary hindrance to efficient
> >use of the language. It would be much easier for all concerned to use
> >a posteriori European vocabulary.
>
> In other words "Anglan".
>
> > > Again, if it were so easy to do much better than Lojban, why
> hasn't anyone
> > > even come close?
> >
> >First, it is not so easy to do better than Lojban if you have
> the same goals
> >as Lojban. It is easier to do better than Lojban only if you have a more
> >restricted set of goals. Second, if it is possible to do better
> than Lojban,
> >with the same set of goals, this is largely because it is
> possible to learn
> >from Lojban's 'mistakes', i.e. it is by standing on Lojban's
> shoulders that
> >Lojban can be bettered. Third, even if it were easy to improve
> upon Lojban's
> >design, there remains the matter of the huge amount of labour
> necessary to
> >get any language to the level of completion that Lojban has attained.
>
> #3 is a biggie.
>
> >Also, in a certain sense, it has been proved that it is easy to do better
> >than Lojban, because over the years people have often proposed valid
> >improvements that were not adopted (on the grounds that completion was
> >a more important goal than improvement).
>
> It is not clear that the various proposals were mutually compatible and
> workable; lots of things sound nice till you have to make them work in
> usage. As it is, Lojban suffered from "bells and whistles
> syndrome" as we hung new features on because they were easy and did not
> conflict with the past. There was also a 4-5 year period at the beginning
> when improvement was still considered, so long as certain basics were not
> lightly challenged. Nick and Cowan came in right at the end of that
> period, and in fact may have ended it simply by being able to do what they
> then did with the language.
>
> lojbab

> From: Brook <nellardo@concentric.net>
>
> On Thu, 30 Dec 1999, And Rosta wrote:
> > From: "And Rosta" <a.rosta@pmail.net>
> >
> > > From: "Bob LeChevalier (lojbab)" <lojbab@lojban.org>
> > >
> > > At 04:09 PM 12/29/99 +0000, And Rosta wrote:
> > > >My response to the Top-Down idea of IAL or Lojban adoption
> > > >is to wonder why it should be a good thing for the adopting
> > > >body? Take the European patent organization: it would be
> > > >a trivial task to develop a language that shares Lojban's
> > > >virtues of nonambiguity and other areas of suitability to
> > > >the formulation of patents but is much simpler and easier
> > > >to learn;
> > >
> > > Really? If it were so easy, why haven't they done so?
> >
> > Either because they haven't perceived the need or because some
> > cost/benefit analysis doesn't justify it.
>
> I'd be surprised if a roomful of patent lawyers *didn't*
> recognize the need for clarity in language. The intelligent
> ones would realize that much of the
> ambiguity in patents is due to the vagueness of most human
> languages. Whether
> or not they would go from there to the concept of another
> language, I don't
> know, but I suspect most of them are familiar enough with the concepts of
> formal semantics (at least, the ones in software patents would be).
>
> And the cost/benefit analysis is what you're *both* talking
> about. However, at
> the risk of putting words in peoples' mouths, it seems that:
>
> a) lojbab thinks the cost of creating an IAL is high, the cost of
> switching to one might be high (but is lower the more established the
> language is) and the benefit of using one might be high, depending on
> the application.
>
> b) And Rosta thinks the cost of creating an IAL is low, the cost
> of switching to one is high, and the benefit of using one is probably low,
> especially for patents.

No. I think the cost of creating an artificial language for patent/legal
texts is lowish (relative to alternatives) and certainly low compared
to the cost of switching, which I do think is high. I think the benefit
of using a general purpose IAL is low, unless the IAL is a logical one,
like Lojban. I think the benefit of using your average IAL for patents
is zero. I think the benefit of using a logical language for patents
and other legal texts is immense, vast, humungous.

> Lojbab is suggesting that using an existing IAL (like lojban)
> reduces the cost dramatically. I think And would agree, but that
> doesn't seem to matter, as And feels that the cost is low to begin with.

Correct, if you mean the cost of providing the lg rather than the cost
of switching to it.

> We all seem to agree one way or another that the cost of *finding* a
> suitable IAL is low (whether that involves using lojban (for lojbab) or
> creating one (for And)).
>
> Switching costs are discussed below.
>
> Right now, let's get into utility:
>
> > > Personally, I don't think you can get much simpler than
> > > Lojban and still do the job. The primary extraneous feature
> > > of Lojban not applicable to patents is the attitudinal/evidential
> > > system. Even audible unambiguity has some value.
> >
> > There is nothing relevant that Lojban can do that standard
> > predicate logic notation can't. In a Polish/Reverse Polish predicate
> > logic notation you need nothing but predicates, variables,
> > one or two quantifiers and two or three connectives.
>
> This is true in the sense that this is all you need to be
> Turing-equivalent.
> Actually, you don't even need that much - the Lambda calculus is
> Turing-equivalent and all it really has are lambda expressions (functions)
> (which are just lists of other lambda expressions) and
> applications of those
> expressions (i.e., calling a function).

i don't know enough to comment. All I meant was that the truth conditional
content of any natlang sentence can be expressed in predicate language
notation. (I may be wrong, but that was the claim.)

> But this neglects an important part of *expressiveness* - just because
> something *is* Turing-equivalent, does not mean it is an effective way to
> express it. Minimize too much and you make it cumbersome and
> long-winded to say anything useful. Put too much in, and you've made
> somethign too complex.

I agree. But I think that pred log notation does not minimize expressiveness
so drastically, that the minimization of expressiveness is not so important
for legal texts, and indeed is possibly even beneficial, and that any
detrimental loss of expressiveness is more than compensated for by the
gain in learnability.

> Finally, looking at predicate calculus (or *any* calculus, for
> that matter) is misleading because it ignores the question of *vocabulary*
> (a point lojbab makes below). Try programming in Prolog with no libraries.
> Sure, you can write quick-sort in a couple of lines, but what are you
going
> to *do* with it? And how do you map it to the real world?
>
> Lojban has that in the form of gismu - predicate calculus does not.

It's precisely because this is an area of noncomparability that this issue
is a red herring. Pred logic notation is proposed as an alternative to
Lojban syntax and cmavo. As I originally said, you need predicates. I
don't think Lojban gismu are adequate, because they're not yet defined,
but if you think they're adequate, then the Lojban gismu could be used
as the predicates in the language I'm mooting.

> > In other
> > words, setting aside how variables are handled, you could have
> > a language with only 3 cmavo! I'll admit that that number might
> > be expanded a bit, e.g. to include numbers, but even an expanded
> > cmavo inventory would be only a tiny proportion of Lojban's.
>
> A perfect example of going too far towards minimalism. Sure,
> AND, OR, and NOT are all you need to make any other truth function
> but you better believe people that build ICs for a living don't
> recreate a one-bit adder from AND, OR, and NOT every time they need
> one - they don't even use one-bit adders - they pull more useful
> things from a library - 32-bit add, multiply, etc. and a whole lot
> of other stuff.

I can't think of which Lojban cmavo represent huge savings in
convenience over a combination of predicates and basic connectives
and quantifiers.

> > Likewise, the entire syntax could be formulated in a single
> > sentence.
>
> Yeah, and how would you say the classic "Colorless green ideas sleep
> furiously"? Bet it would be a lot longer. A lot.

I don't see why you've chosen that sentence in particular, which as
you must know is standardly cited as an example of a pragmatically
anomalous sentence. But be that as it may, I cannot see where Lojban
has any particular advantage in brevity over what I would propose.

FWIW, I'd suggest something approximately like

Ex and colourless x and green x and furious x sleep x

where Furious is a 2 place predicate whose second argument is the
predication [sleep x].

> > > > logicians have been using such languages for decades.
> > >
> > > 1) What language have logicians used that could be used for writing a
> > > patent description? Key here is "description", and description takes
> > > meaningful content words. Patents include both things and
> processes, and
> > > both have to be describable, hence tanru and description sumti both
> > > requiring content words and both capable of being disambiguated
> > > semantically to an arbitrary degree of specificity as well as
> > > grammatically.
>
> Here's lojbab making the vocabulary point I referred to above.
>
> > Of course the predicate words' senses have to be defined. But
> in Lojban the
> > predicate words' senses are not defined -- this task has been left to
> > 'usage'
> > to achieve.
>
> What? Okay, lojbab is hard at work on a dictionary (in his, I'm
> sure, copious spare time) but gismu are as well defined as any word
> you care to name in any language - better, in fact, because they only
> ever have *one* definition (try looking up "run" or "fork").

Either you have in mind some notion of "defined" that I cannot apprehend,
or what you say is wrong. Lojban Central correctly declares that gismu
aren't defined and that definition will be left to usage. In other
words, in its gismu definitions Lojban will operate like a natural
language rather than an invented language. In natural languages, usage
has already defined the meanings of words, and on them there is
intersubjective agreement, such that they are a fit subject for
rational debate and quasiempirical research (in the subfield of linguistics
usually called 'lexical semantics').

> > > 2. The language of logic that most people have seen is the predicate
> > > calculus. Being a reasonably bright sort of guy who
> struggled to barely
> > > pass a self-paced college level course in the stuff, I
> daresay that many
> > > would call the predicate calculus easy to learn.
> >
> > Is that irony? If so, I guess that they problem with predicate
> calculus is
> > that there's no fudgeability with it, which nonfudgeability is
> exactly why
> > one wants a logical language. Note also that predicate logic is a subset
> > of Lojban, so if you learn Lojban you learn predicate logic plus a load
> > of extra stuff.
>
> Mmm, I agree with your content, but not your point. Having
> learned lojban, I would agree someone could then learn predicate calculus
> pretty easily (though I'd bet a "native" lojban speaker would have a hard
> time seeing the point of predicate calculus

Why? Predicate calculus is a systematization of reason. The notation is
language pared to the minimum.

> (but then, I believe in Sapir-Worff)). But learning
> predicate calculus is not the same as learning a language. Kids soak up
> language without having to be taught. No one does that with
> predicate calculus.

It has never been put to the test whether kids could soak up a language
with the grammar of predicate logic notation. Or, on another view, many
linguists believe that this is effectively what all children do: Deep
Structure in the Generative Semantics version of Transformational
Grammar, and Logical Form in the Government-Binding version (and its
equivalent in the Minimalist version) are close approximations to
certain versions of predicate logic notation.

> Now, unless you believe that "subject", "verb", and "object" are
> hardwired into brains, I'd submit that a young child exposed to a
> fluent lojban speaker could pick it up easily enough (I'm not fluent,
> but my three-year-old daughter seems to get the hang of lojban easily
> enough).

I don't understand. Since we agree that a subset of Lojban is a close
approximation of predicate logic notation, surely if a child picks
up Lojban, they have picked up predicate logic notation.

> [...]
>
> > Why? Most of the people who invent IALs are total lunatics, and
> > most of the rest are either ignorant or dim.
>
> Please - go say that on Auxlang - I want to watch you get toasted.

The content of remarks will go some way to explaining why I don't
subscribe to that list...;-)

> [lojbab talks about how having an existing body of speakers
> speeds adoption of a language)
>
> > I'm not sure what point you're making. I agree that there are these
> > obstacles to the adoption of Lojban. And as I've said, I think Lojban
> > and Esperanto would be poor choices for a patent language, or for a
> > European IAL.
>
> I would agree on use of either for an IAL - IMNSHO, YMMV, etc.
> But for patents,
> I think having a common, unambiguous language would be a boon. The biggest
> barrier is probably patent lawyers, who have spent years learning
> how to deal
> with the ambiguity in a natural language.
>
> > > (I think Lojban has the
> > > advantage that it needs a lot smaller number than other conlangs to
> > > achieve critical mass, because Lojban unlike most conlangs DOES have
> > > the sort of specialty application like patent law and
> computer-communications
> > > that is economically viable with only a small fraction of the
> world learning
> > > it. And economic viability is the key to "top down" - a top down
> > > approach will work when someone with power sees a way to make
> money using
> > > the language.
> >
> > I very much doubt that this will happen, though it happening is Lojban's
> > only real hope for achieving critical mass.
>
> Yes, well, I never would have thought that getting millions of
> people to write
> differently would be viable, either, but the Palm Pilot did it.
> Lojban needs
> its "killer app," and the only way to find one is to try lots of them.
>
> > But at any rate, I don't see why you should care so much. I
> recognize that
> > you've decided that the validation for all the efforts you've
> invested in
> > Lojban is the creation of a living language rather than just a language,
> > but I don't understand why you should make that the validation,
> especially
> > when it's so improbable. And the original idea that a loglan-speaking
> > community would test sapirwhorf, I've always regarded as a bit
> of blarney
> > baloney by JC Brown who really wanted to invent a language but
> was trying to
> > (a) gain respectability for an ill-respected activity, (b) differentiate
> > the product from others, (c) attract adherents.
>
> flamebait, flamebait, flamebait. At least on a *lojban* list it is.

Not really. Only a small proportion of the people active on this list
over the years have had much interest in sapirwhorf or reverence for JCB,
or, indeed, propensity for flaming (there has never been any flamage
whatever on this list as far as I can recall).

> > > > The only hope for
> > > >Lojban to succeed Top-Downly is that some organization is
> > > >intelligent enough to see the merits of adopting a logical
> > > >language, but stupid enough to choose Lojban to do the job.
> > >
> > > Gee, thanks. %^)
> >
> > What I mean is this. First, the overriding goal of the Lojban
> project was
> > always to get a minimally adequate product out into the world.
> The policy
> > was "if it's not broken, don't fix it". But if you're an
> organization that
> > is so dissatisfied with existing natural languages that you want to
> > adopt a logical language, you're probably an organization that wants the
> > language to be as good as is practicable.
>
> Um, but you may also recognize that "Better is the enemy of good
> enough," and see the reduced costs of using something in existence, even
> if it isn't quite what you were looking for.

I do.

> In other words, if the reduction in benefit from using lojban (as opposed
> to something tailor-made) leaves the cost benefit ratio positive
(including
> switching costs), then you still make the switch, because doing otherwise
> takes longer and incurs other costs, making the cost benefit of a custom
> solution less appealing.

I wasn't ignoring this. I was reckoning that when you add up all the costs
and all the benefits, certain alternatives to Lojban rate higher.

> Classic "buy vs build." la lojban needs to find the situations
> where it makes sense to be bought.

We agree on this.

> > Secondly, and more importantly,
> > Lojban was designed as a compromise between many different goals. It is
> > probable that an organization adopting a logical language would have
> > different and fewer goals, and that Lojban would be a relatively poor
> > solution for these goals.
>
> Can you give a concrete example of the needs of an organization?

Lack of ambiguity in key communications is the most obvious one where
a natural language is not a sufficient solution.

> > I suppose that once one organization used Lojban, that would then become
> > a reason in itself for other organizations to use it too. But I really
> > can't see it being a sensible decision for any organization to adopt it
> > otherwise. True, it already exists, so would save labour in concocting
> > an alternative language, but if you're going to invest so much
> in getting
> > your organization to use it, a redesign would probably save you cost
> > in the long run.
>
> Hmmm, maybe, if your organization didn't get killed by the
> short-run damage.
> Again, a classic example of network businesses - the first fax machine was
> useless. The *second* fax machine had some utility, but not much. The
> 100,000,000th fax machine has a great deal of utility. These
> kinds of things grow very slowly for long periods of time, then suddenly,
> they're huge (look at Microsoft).
>
> > I'm not hostile to Lojban. If the United Nations decided to choose a
> > language to be a global general purpose second language, and if I
> > had a vote, then if the choice had to be made from an existing language
> > then I would vote for Lojban. And even if there was the option of
> > designing a new language I would vote for Lojban to avoid the risk
> > of the designed language being worse than Lojban.
>
> Boy, you sure couldn't tell that from the above.

But I think anyone who'd been on the list for a few years would know
it, and would know that there's a hallowed tradition of me being impolite
to Lojbab. But I promise you I'll be giving him a big hug when I meet
him, assuming he's the sort of chap who acquiesces in being given big
hugs by people who've spent years being impolite to him...

> > On the other hand,
> > of course, if the United Nations decided to entrust the task of
> > designing the language to me, then I would not choose Lojban...;-]
>
> Be our guest - design it, let us know about it.

Why? I have not found a community of people interested in such things,
and my own conlanging efforts are spent in other directions.

> > > >(This isn't an attack on Lojban. Lojban is more complex
> > > >than it needs to be for limited, formal, written applications
> > > >because it needs also to be usable for the full range of
> > > >linguistic functions.
> > >
> > > What linguistic functions other than attitudinals are not needed
> > > for patent work?
> >
> > Lojban is designed to be general purpose, flexible, nonconstraining,
> > culturally neutral, etc. etc. The only two of its goals necessary
> > for patent work are logicality and nonambiguity.
>
> Flexibility isn't necessary for describing *inventions*?

I wouldn't have thought so. By flexibility, I was thinking of "having
many ways to say the same thing". Not "being able to say lots of
things".

> Non-constraining isn't necessary? Okay, maybe not strictly *necessary*
> in some sort of Turing-equivalence sense, but so useful as to be
> necessary for practical purposes.

I'd have thought not, but then I've no experience of patent descriptions.

> And cultural neutrality seems like a very desirable trait for patent
> description in the *European Union*! Even more so for global patent uses.

For global, yes. But the EU is very eurocentric and there is no tradition
whatever of cultural neutrality; rather, europeanicity is celebrated at
every opportunity.

> > > More importantly, how much simpler could a language optimally
> > > designed for a limited purpose be than a Lojban subset that
> simply omits
> > > those features not needed. After all, a large portion of the
> > > Loglan/Lojban concept is optionality of features.
> >
> > If you pared Lojban down to the smallest adequate portion you'd still
> > be left with unnecessary stuff (e.g. zo'u, terminators) and
> what remained
>
> Your particular examples of zo'u and terminators seem again, perhaps not
> strictly *necessary* but so useful to merit inclusion.

Again, I don't see why, but I guess that would be more appropriate for
discussion on some generic loglang list.

> > would be Lojban only in as much as that unnecessary stuff would remain
> > and that the vocabulary items would be Lojban. And the vocabulary items
> > being Lojban would be a positively unnecessary hindrance to efficient
> > use of the language. It would be much easier for all concerned to use
> > a posteriori European vocabulary.
>
> Em, no, I'd disagree - look to the incredibly broad applications
> of patents in software that are being put in place, in part because of
> ambiguity of definitions (see "run" and "fork" again, only talk about it
> to a computer programmer).

I don't understand what you mean. I was making a point about the etymology
or mnemonicality of lexis and your response seems not to bear on this.
Perhaps you are saying that for wholly new ideas we need wholly new words?

> [...]
> > My own language is a general purpose one like Lojban, and has
> to grapplie
> > with a similarly disparate set of design goals, and the difficulty is
> > mainly in the amount of work involved. I could design the basis for
> > a European patent language in scarcely more than the time it
> would take to
> > decide on the phonology.
>
> Please, do so. Show it to us.

Why? See response above.

> [...]
> > First, it is not so easy to do better than Lojban if you have
> > the same goals as Lojban. It is easier to do better than Lojban only
> > if you have a more restricted set of goals.
>
> Sure - an application-specific language *might* be simpler, but I
> would suggest
> that patents, by being descriptions of new inventions, are
> sufficiently broad
> that this in fact, would not be the case. But I'd love to be proven wrong.

I was assuming that for patents, all that counts is an unambiguous encoding
of truth-conditional meaning. That of course is a very restricted set
of goals.

> > Second, if it is possible to do better than Lojban, with the same
> > set of goals, this is largely because it is possible to learn
> > from Lojban's 'mistakes', i.e. it is by standing on Lojban's
> > shoulders that Lojban can be bettered.
>
> Please, do so! :-)

I'm not clear why you keep responding in this way. If you had a genuine
idea to explore the way in which we think Lojban might be bettered, we
could start a Loglang list and discuss it there, or we could discuss it
on Conlang, even. But you don't seem to have such an interest, and I
suspect that you intend a rhetorical device to indicate something
adversarial, such as skepticism maybe.

> > Third, even if it were easy to improve upon Lojban's
> > design, there remains the matter of the huge amount of labour
> necessary to
> > get any language to the level of completion that Lojban has attained.
>
> Ehrm, sounds like you just said using lojban is a good thing, but
> before you were saying it wasn't.

I was saying it wasn't for something as limited as I was envisaging
legal/patent texts being. Or for an EU general purpose IAL.

> > Also, in a certain sense, it has been proved that it is easy to
> do better
> > than Lojban, because over the years people have often proposed valid
> > improvements that were not adopted (on the grounds that completion was
> > a more important goal than improvement).
>
> A cost/benefit tradeoff - did the change improve things enough to
> destabilize the design? I wasn't there, but I'll bet it didn't.

Whether it did or didn't, that wasn't an issue. However much it did improve
things, it would only be permitted to destabilize the design if the
design were shown to be failing to meet the language's explicit goals
(e.g. if a hitherto unnoticed syntactic ambiguity were discovered). The
rationale for this was as I stated before.

--And.