From sbelknap@uic.edu Fri Feb 18 09:53:41 2000 X-Digest-Num: 368 Message-ID: <44114.368.2006.959273826@eGroups.com> Date: Fri, 18 Feb 2000 11:53:41 -0600 From: Steven Belknap Subject: Re: Dr. James Cooke Brown And Rosta wrote: > >I very much expect > > that if reunification of Loglandia were linked to redesign, then it > > would be vetoed in any referendum. Rex May wrote: > >Yes, I realize that. My thinking is that the two vocabularies are by now >almost completely different, and if things were to get to the point where >a compromise language were to be considered, which _would_ entail >relexification, why not take the opportunity to do away with those >awkward allomorphs, not to mention the rather monotonous >CCVCV/CVCCV's. The great attraction of Loglan for me has always >been the _grammar_. Its word-derivation is a completely different >matter, and can be dispensed with without taking a thing away from >what I consider the true genius of the language. Anyhow, it all goes >back to my article in TL printed, gad, must be 20 years ago. If anybody >is interested and has never seen that article, I'll be glad to elaborate. >--rx As lojbab has said, "lojban is Loglan"; that is lojban is a realization of Loglan. I learned all of the original Loglan predicates and maybe 30% of the articles in 1979. After subscribing to both listservs for quite some time, I switched over to learning the lojban lexicon, as there simply wasn't very much activity on the Loglan list. Weeks would go by with no postings. The lojban list is very active. Sometimes *too* active! Those with slow modem connections may want to subscribe to the daily digest version of the list. Speaking from experience of a being a Loglander, learning the lojban gismu and cmavo is really not so bad. The real challenge with Loglan/lojban is understanding the conceptual basis of the language. The languages are conceptually equivalent, the only difference being that lojban has been more extensively "debugged". Using some of the software that is available for free from the lojban web site, one can rapidly gain command of the lojban words. Although I personally prefer the Loglan words, probably because I learned them first, it seems unlikely to me that relexification of lojban is going to happen. lojban is already baselined, the grammer is published, there is an active community of online lojbanistanis, the dictionary is coming, and we even see the glimmerings of a textbook. It is important to understand that Loglan was *never* baselined. In my judgement, there is simply not the manpower nor the will to do what is necessary to independently get Loglan to baseline. At this point, it is still a language "under construction", which tends to discourage anyone from learning the language, as it will very likely change should a baseline be attempted. There are a few inconsistencies and some areas of incompleteness in the Loglan grammer. There is no complete dictionary of predicates. There are inconsistencies in the place structures of Loglan words, even within the last published documentation of the language. I don't think there exists a full grammer. At least I haven't seen one. I suppose one could simply make a new Loglan which is identical to lojban in grammer, but has the Loglan words instead. That would be nearly painless for Loglanders and would be fairly straightforward. It is certainly important that the two communities treat each other with mutual respect during the fusion of the two languages. I like the formalism. If this is done, both communities will have a viable means of communicating unambiguously in the same forum. Given the greater size and vigor of the lojban communit, I would predict that the Loglan lexicon will eventually become an alternate historical lexicon, sort of like ancient Greek is to modern Greek. Steven Belknap, M.D. Assistant Professor of Clinical Pharmacology and Medicine University of Illinois College of Medicine at Peoria