From nobody@digitalkingdom.org Sat Aug 13 14:37:09 2005 Received: with ECARTIS (v1.0.0; list lojban-list); Sat, 13 Aug 2005 14:37:10 -0700 (PDT) Received: from nobody by chain.digitalkingdom.org with local (Exim 4.52) id 1E43ga-0000LT-Bh for lojban-list-real@lojban.org; Sat, 13 Aug 2005 14:37:00 -0700 Received: from [208.234.8.229] (helo=intelligenesiscorp.com) by chain.digitalkingdom.org with esmtp (Exim 4.52) id 1E43gX-0000LL-BN for lojban-list@lojban.org; Sat, 13 Aug 2005 14:37:00 -0700 Received: from zombiethustra (pcp06586041pcs.nrockv01.md.comcast.net [69.140.24.121]) by intelligenesiscorp.com (8.12.10/8.12.10) with SMTP id j7DLarmd026062 for ; Sat, 13 Aug 2005 17:36:55 -0400 From: "Ben Goertzel" To: Subject: [lojban] Re: Loglish: A Modest Proposal Date: Sat, 13 Aug 2005 17:36:52 -0400 Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" X-Priority: 3 (Normal) X-MSMail-Priority: Normal X-Mailer: Microsoft Outlook IMO, Build 9.0.2416 (9.0.2911.0) X-MIMEOLE: Produced By Microsoft MimeOLE V6.00.2900.2180 In-Reply-To: <20050813211503.30329.qmail@web81309.mail.yahoo.com> Importance: Normal X-Spam-Score: -2.6 (--) X-archive-position: 10333 X-ecartis-version: Ecartis v1.0.0 Sender: lojban-list-bounce@lojban.org Errors-to: lojban-list-bounce@lojban.org X-original-sender: ben@goertzel.org Precedence: bulk Reply-to: lojban-list@lojban.org X-list: lojban-list Hi, > The Anglan page arj cites covers the main > objection to your proposal from the point of view > of the Lojban Project. True, but the quu construct in Loglish seems to me to get around this objection in a reasonable way. > Others have noted (in > other contexts of a similar sort -- Basic > English, for example, or spoken C and the like) > that, for a native speaker of English, sticking > to the regimentation is practically impossible, I am not at all sure this is correct in the case of Loglish. My wife and I have been experimenting a bit with speaking Loglish to each other and sticking to the regimentation doesn't seem difficult at all. Of course, we are unusual in that we're both highly conversant in predicate logic, with significant experience formalizing knowledge in predicate logic; even though we're Lojban novices... > and for folks who aren't English speakers the > system offer no advantages (taken by itself) over > learning the underlying formal language alone. On the contrary, for folks who aren't English speakers Loglish still offers a big advantage over Lojban, which is the existence of a complete English dictionary. Whereas using Lojban seriously, at this stage, involves constantly having to make up new words, which has a fun element to it, but is also a pain.... However, this is basically in irrelevant point, because there are damn few people in the world today with the intellectual background to be interested in speaking predicate logic, but without any knowledge of English. (And true fluency in English is not necessary for Loglish to be a lot easier than Lojban.) > Even if the claim that learning Lojban vocabulary > is a snap (or, at least easier than for other > languages) is a sort of cruel joke, the rewards > of doing it (for folks who will get something out > of Lojban) repays the time and trying to duck > around that task cuts one off from much of the value. You may well be right, but I'm not convinced by your arguments. To prove I'm right, however, I'd have to actually become fluent in Loglish, and then teach a couple others ;-) One of my main interests in using Lojban is to communicate with some actual, existing AI programs (such as ones I've written). But these AI programs already have some knowledge gained from information extraction algorithms acting on English texts. So, in order to pragmatically use Lojban with my AI programs, I'd have to create a bunch of linguistic resources mapping Lojban into English. (jbovlaste doesn't come close to being adequate, useful though it is.) On the other hand, to use Loglish with my AI programs would require significantly less work, though not a trivial amount of work either. Also I suspect it would require significantly less effort to train people to encode knowledge into an AI program using Loglish than Lojban; though this is speculative and needs to be validated. -- Ben To unsubscribe from this list, send mail to lojban-list-request@lojban.org with the subject unsubscribe, or go to http://www.lojban.org/lsg2/, or if you're really stuck, send mail to secretary@lojban.org for help.