From lojbab@lojban.org Wed Feb 12 23:59:41 2003 Received: with ECARTIS (v1.0.0; list lojban-beginners); Thu, 13 Feb 2003 00:39:20 -0800 (PST) Received: from lakemtao02.cox.net ([68.1.17.243]) by digitalkingdom.org with esmtp (Exim 4.12) id 18jEHU-0008Md-00 for lojban-beginners@chain.digitalkingdom.org; Wed, 12 Feb 2003 23:59:40 -0800 Received: from lojban.lojban.org ([68.100.206.153]) by lakemtao02.cox.net (InterMail vM.5.01.04.05 201-253-122-122-105-20011231) with ESMTP id <20030213075907.BUPE6744.lakemtao02.cox.net@lojban.lojban.org> for ; Thu, 13 Feb 2003 02:59:07 -0500 Message-Id: <5.2.0.9.0.20030213022637.0333e250@pop.east.cox.net> X-Sender: rlechevalier@pop.east.cox.net Date: Thu, 13 Feb 2003 02:58:47 -0500 To: lojban-beginners@chain.digitalkingdom.org From: Robert LeChevalier Subject: [lojban-beginners] Re: Loglan In-Reply-To: <009a01c2d246$70136c60$15180aac@oliveira> References: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1"; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable X-archive-position: 107 X-Approved-By: rlpowell@digitalkingdom.org X-ecartis-version: Ecartis v1.0.0 Sender: lojban-beginners-bounce@chain.digitalkingdom.org Errors-to: lojban-beginners-bounce@chain.digitalkingdom.org X-original-sender: lojbab@lojban.org Precedence: bulk Reply-to: lojban-beginners@chain.digitalkingdom.org X-list: lojban-beginners At 11:59 PM 2/11/03 -0300, Jo=E3o Ricardo Oliveira wrote: >The FAQ does adresses the question, but it gives almost no information as= =20 >to why the two groups split up. Did they disagree about some Loglan=20 >feature? Was it about the way the Loglan Institute was being run? A very old (and in need of some revision) response to this can be found on= =20 the Web site at http://www.lojban.org/files/brochures/loglan.html I have several other versions of the history of the split, but none that I= =20 know of that are in any particular web page. http://www.lojban.org/wiki/index.php/Lojban%20timeline gives a timeline highlight of the history of Lojban, not focusing on the=20 split, that may fill in some more gaps. >Also, I would like to know what are the differences between Loglan and=20 >Lojban as to linguistics. The differences in the basic concept are quite small. Except for the=20 wholesale replacement of vocabulary, the grammars are extremely=20 similar. TLI Loglan does not have all of the "bells and whistles" that=20 Lojban has, with most of the latter having been added as a result of the=20 relatively enormous amount of attempts to use Lojban communicatively, and a= =20 few decades of advances in linguistics that partially informed the language= =20 development (though we were strongly biased towards preserving old Loglan=20 features). Lojban has a several more areas that have been "analyzed" and explained in= =20 detail, as explained in John Cowan's book The Complete Lojban=20 Language. Thus we have a working tense system, a rigorous way of=20 expressing numbers and mathematical expressions, better understanding of=20 abstraction and the linguistic phenomenon known as "object raising" (which= =20 we call "sumti raising"), and some incorporation of lambda calculus. We=20 also have a much more elaborate set of attitudinal and discursive markers=20 which increase the expressivity of the language. The following is a more extensive response I gave to a somewhat different=20 question a couple of years ago: >At 09:42 AM 01/14/2001 -0800, you wrote: > >I stumbled across the two languages' sites recently and find the goals to > >be quite interesting. I'm about 1/6 through "Understanding Loglan," but > >was wondering about the two different language communities. Before I > >invest too much more time in learning, can you give me some advice for > >picking between the two? For example, I wonder how the number of= speakers > >of each language compares. Or if one is easier to learn than the other. > >Needless to say, what I advise will be biased towards Lojban. > >First of all, except for the lexicon (vocabulary), the two versions of the >language are not all that different. Thus it cannot really be said that >one is easier or harder than the other in terms of inherent >learnability. TLI Loglan has root words that more strongly reflect English >contribution (25% weighting vs 18%), and thus some may seem more >recognizable to a new learner. But this weighting pertains only to around >1000 words and the difference is not that much. In Lojban's favor is >somewhat better (in my opinion) flashcard software for learning the words, >if you have MS-DOS capability and want to use a flashcard-like drill >program. It works extremely efficiently. But in any event, once you have >learned a good number of the basic words, recognizability is not >particularly an advantage. > >As for teaching materials, our reference grammar book is a COMPLETE >description of the language, and TLI Loglan has nothing like it. People >have learned the language from that book on their own, even though it was >not written as a textbook. We have a partial draft textbook, which people >seem to think is pretty good as far as it goes, but it is not being >actively worked on. I'm the author, so my saying that I think it is much >better than TLI's primer is quite biased - I don't think the style of TLI's >materials will prove very effective for self-teaching (indeed my textbook >has weaknesses which is one reason why I stopped working on it, until I >have the capability to write what really is needed). We have a separate >effort at a primer underway, with 8 lessons written by a teacher in Turkey, >that some people find pretty good. These are also in draft form and on our >website. > >Our most effective teaching advantage is our active mailing list, where you >can get any of dozens of other Lojban students to help you over a problem >in understanding. > >The Lojban grammar is more complex than the TLI grammar, but this >complexity is almost all in the form of optional bells and whistles that >make the language more natural to use or more logical to use in particular >situation. Almost any TLI Loglan sentence can be translated into an >equivalent valid Lojban sentence by direct word-for word substitution, but >Lojban may have a better way to say some things. > >The reason for the added complexity is that Lojban has seen MUCH more >usage. Lojban has a couple of demonstratedly fluent speakers, and several >more who can converse easily, and still more who can maintain a chatroom >conversation on line, where speed is limited to typing. There are a couple >dozen who have demonstrated live conversational ability (not too many >chances to make such a demonstration). There are probably well over 100 >who would fit the latter category. > >To my knowledge, there are no fluent TLI Loglan speakers, and no one has >claimed to have held a conversation in TLI Loglan since 1977 (which >"conversation" according to one participant consisted of a few people >looking at wordlists a lot and occasionally saying something that was >corrected by Dr. Brown). There are a couple of people who claim to write >comfortably in the language, but for the most part, prior to Dr Brown's >death last year, almost nothing appeared in the language without first >being editted for correctness by Brown, so that even the better users have >little confidence that they use the language correctly. Meanwhile, several >Lojbanists, including myself, write as well if not better in TLI Loglan >than the people who nominally are the best, because Lojban skills are fully >transferrable. > >Lojban has an active mailing list with over 200 members, growing >regularly. Traffic varies up to peaks, typically in summer, of 20 messages >a day. The complete archives of that list back to 1989 are available, >constituting tens of megabytes of Lojban text and information. There is an >IRC channel #lojban which might have a couple people talking at almost any >time of day or night because our community is worldwide. There is also a >Lojban-only email discussion list as well, but that has light traffic. > >TLI Loglan has a mailing list of unknown membership, on which there >typically are no posts for a couple of months and then a short flurry of a >dozen or so before lapsing again into silence. In short, there is no real >TLI Loglan "community", but rather isolated users that have little contact >with each other. Part of this is because of how Dr. Brown ran his >organization, with him as the hub of a many-spoked wheel. But with Brown's >death last year, the TLI organization is largely rudderless. The new >leader of TLI has not consolidated power, and does not want to risk >offending Brown's family by making any changes; the two most important >leaders of TLI are both elderly retired people, and thus not inclined to >start major new initiatives. It is frankly my belief that the TLI language >effort is practically defunct. > >We believe that there are some significant design flaws in TLI Loglan that >we have corrected, but they are difficult to explain to the novice, who >might not notice them. More seriously, the TLI Loglan community is more >prone to "encoded English" in their usage - translations that reflect >English colloquial usage. A simple example of this is the compound word >based on the metaphor "man-do" for "to man a ship", where the TLI Loglan >word for "man" refers only to male humans; the things that male humans "do" >by nature have very little relationship to boats. > >The final argument is the one we started with. TLI Loglan was claimed as >copyrighted by the organization, and use of the language is theoretically >subject to intellectual property considerations, though it is unlikely that >they will be enforced now that Dr. Brown is dead. Lojban and its basic >design are in the public domain; we want the user community to feel totally >free to use the language. This difference was fundamental to our starting >the effort, and the result seems apparent. People are using Lojban. > >Hopefully this more than answers your questions. I'll be happy to answer >further. lojbab --=20 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