From lojbab@lojban.org Fri Feb 18 13:31:02 2000 X-Digest-Num: 368 Message-ID: <44114.368.2015.959273826@eGroups.com> Date: Fri, 18 Feb 2000 16:31:02 -0500 From: "Bob LeChevalier (lojbab)" Subject: Re: RE: Re[2]: Dr. James Cooke Brown At 01:12 PM 02/18/2000 -0800, Ron Hale-Evans wrote: >At 02:23 PM 2/18/00 -0500, you wrote: >From: "Bob LeChevalier (lojbab)" > >>Incidentally, the latter discussion points out the one problem with the >>"hoa" and "xo'a" introducers of the other language/dialect - while the two >>words look different in print, in speech they would likely be heard as the >>same word in either version, and thus be ineffective at indicating a change >>in dialect. Indeed, in our alternate orthography originally established to >>make rapprochement based on Lojban more attractive to the TLI Loglan >>community, the alternate orthography form of "xo'a" is exactly "hoa". >> >>lojbab > >Why, Bob? Couldn't one treat them as _toggles_ rather than as indicators >of a particular language? In other words, whenever you hear hoa/xo'a, you >switch to the other dialect. IMHO, this would only be a problem if > >1) Your listener did not already know which dialect you were speaking >(unlikely), or > >2) There were more than two dialects of Loglan/Lojban. A possibly valid point. Part of the reason I made the statement is that I gave examples in both dialects in my response to Slavik, and I was thinking about which word should label which switch, and I said them aloud and realized that they were not labelling a dialect. They could label the fact of a switch though. I am not sure that, especially if the communities merge, that in the spoken language someone would necessarily know the version. There are indeed a small infinity of sentences that are grammatical in both dialects, and a smaller infinity of sentences that are identical in meaning in both dialects (infinities because both grammars allow recursion that might add words without significant affect on meaning). Nora (and more rarely myself) often slips in a classical prim instead of the Lojban word because she so thoroughly learned the original set (using LogFlash, our implementation of JCB's original flashcard algorithm, which is especially effective in implanting words in long term memory) and never forgot it. (I mention the flashcard algorithm, because this is a somewhat less remembered but perhaps important part of JCB's legacy.) lojbab ---- lojbab lojbab@lojban.org Bob LeChevalier, President, The Logical Language Group, Inc. 2904 Beau Lane, Fairfax VA 22031-1303 USA 703-385-0273 Artificial language Loglan/Lojban: http://www.lojban.org (newly updated!)