From lojbab Tue Jun 25 03:45:55 1991 Return-Path: Message-Id: Date: Tue, 25 Jun 91 03:45 EDT From: lojbab (Bob LeChevalier) To: ftslr@alaska.bitnet, lojban-list Subject: Response to Steve Rice Status: RO In response to Steve Rice. John Cowan answered many of your points, but we talked a bit about the comments at LogFest and added some more ideas. >Anyway, to give you some idea how petty and obnoxious "Institute Log6)n" >looks to a logli, for the remainder of this message I will refer to >"Group Lojban." Again, I do this not to be testy, but to give you a >mirror in which to see yourselves. If you feel that it is justifiable >to take over from TLI a term which it originated, used as a special term >unchallenged for some thirty years, and has never ceased to use in that >fashion in copyrighted works, your ethical system and mine are too far >apart for us to even discuss matters. Your comments betray your ignorance of the situation. I have tried to provide you with a) the information that is the basis of our ethical position, and b) the justification of that position based on that information. I have also offered to put you in touch with unbiased third parties that have attempted to mediate the 'ethical' dispute. You have labelled my attempts by asserting that you have "less than zero tolerance for gossip". This sounds quite testy to me. Most people recognize that ethical situations are generally cloaked in shades of gray, and good judgement requires knowledge of the full circumstances. If you would pass ethical judgement, you might want to iknow about what you judge. I offer two relevant analogies, with trivial changes in your words: If you feel that it is justifiable to take over from the British a term ("English") which they originated, used as a special term unchallenged for some several centuries, and has never ceased to use in that fashion in copyrighted works, your ethical system and mine are too far apart for us to even discuss matters. If you feel that it is justifiable to take over from Chomsky terms (" transformational grammar" or "Government and Binding" or "Universal Grammar" ) which he originated, used as a special term unchallenged for some several centuries, and has never ceased to use in that fashion in copyrighted works, your ethical system and mine are too far apart for us to even discuss matters. Clearly your ethical claim leads to nonsense when applied to anything linguistic other then Loglan. Why is the term 'Loglan' so special to demand unique ethics? Note that as a language name, we assert that Loglan, like English, refers to a variety of related languages extending both synchronically and diachronically which are closely related in evolution and structure, not all of which are fully mutually intelligible: a family tree of languages. In any case, copyright does not protect words or phrases but complete expressions of thought. Only trademark law, and then in a very restricted sense, provides protection for the association of a particular expression with the expressor's intended meaning. We use the term "Institute Loglan" to avoid confusion among the audience of the several meanings of Loglan. In addition to the language as named by Heinlein in copyrighted works that do not mention Brown or TLI (or give any clue that the referent was the same - Heinlein's language is after all a computer language which does not have the expressive power of English) and the several versions of Loglan that are part of the Loglan/Lojban family tree, there is also an independently derived object-oriented programming language named Loglan developed by Polish researchers and used in their own copyrighted works. We at LLG have occasion to talk about Institute Loglan, 1975 Loglan, The Loglan Project (defined by JCB as the development and use of Loglan to test the SWH, which we are still working on too), Polish Loglan, Heinlein's Loglan, Carter's 1983-4 Loglan (also called 'Nalgol') because according to pc he got everything backwards. (But even you recognized Nalgol as 'an archaic version of Loglan', according to Mark Shoulson of the Planned Languages Server.) And of course Loglan/Lojban. Why is choosing to be specific and non-confusing in our references so 'offensive' to "Loglanists" like yourself? Is unambiguity un-Loglandic all of a sudden? The phrase "Group Lojban" is not particularly offensive, though obviously a bit odd. Since I know of know other thing or concept called "Lojban", the qualifier "Group" has no restrictive value (and in tanru/metaphor you will surely agree that some sort of restrictive effect from the modifier is necessary to justify a tanru). Note also that it is common practice for TLI to use "Institute" as an adjective for things pertaining to it like "Institute policy". Why is it rude to use the names people/groups choose for themselves? I have never heard anyone talk about anything specific to us as "Group ..." until you. If ever such a restrictive term is REALLY needed, I would hope you would be respectful about it and call the version "la lojbangirz Lojban". We will happily use any name the Institute chooses for its version to uniquely distinguish it from other versions of Loglan (Hmmm. Would you prefer "TLI Loglan"?) "Loglan" does not. >Now, if you wish to >entertain the notion that "Loglan" is a generic term, fine; though it is >ambiguous and quite unnecessary. The generic term "predlang" already >exists, and is more precise. After all, there have been several >"logical languages" in the past few centuries. The distinctive feature >of Loglan and Lojban is use of predicates. I can say lots of things about Loglan, as the general term encompassing all of these meanings except the Polish language and possibly Heinlein's. By contrast, what could I say useful about your generic concept of "predlan". Only that all "predlans" have predicates. So what? And since 99% of our audience has no interest in any predicate language other than Loglan/Lojban and its linguistic heritage in other languages named Loglan, that is what we talk about. Since most of us don't know much (or care much) about either guaspi or your unidentified language, to use a term inclusive of them might lead to false or misleading statements. The fact that 'Loglan' is acronymic of "logical language" does not mean that "Loglan" refers to all logical languages. After all, "CIA" doesn't refer to all central intelligence agencies - only one. If you feel that the only distinctive feature which separates Lojban and other versions of Loglan from other languages is the use of predicates, you have tunnel vision. The tanru "logical language" is much more complete in describing those features than "predicate language". The fact that there are other interpretations should not bother you. You support the language version that considers "dead-make_from" a valid tanru for "kill". >I should also point out that, contrary to what you may have >heard, the legal status of "Loglan" is as yet undecided. The legal status was decided. That decision is being appealed. ------- Please look the term up in your legal dictionary if you are going to use it in a legal context. >Phonemics and transcribing the digraph: ... I still think mapping >three English phonemes onto one Group Lojban phoneme is asking for >trouble. ... >On a similar note, it's unreasonable to expect an ordinary >English-speaker to hear a /i/ in "later", as is apparently required for >"balvi" to work. Indeed. We also map several Chinese phonemes into 'c', and we drop all aspirations in Hindi, thus mapping at least two phonemes to one in every case. There are numerous systematic decisions that we made in making the gismu/prims, some of which might be considered systematic errors. Our mapping is undoubtedly less erroneous than JCB's original mapping for Chinese. Look in L4/L5 and you will find that his Chinese mappings were usually based on Wade-Giles transliteration, which is not phonemically correct, and he occasionally used Pinyin and Yale transcriptions in word-making, leading to an unpredictable mishmash. In the case of "the digraph" (which has a proper English term, as you should know if you are studying Anglo-Saxon), it is phonetically between Loglan 'a' and Loglan 'e'. How to map it is certainly debatable. It happens that your assertion is not supported in Institute literature. I refer you to TL 2, page 42, which maps the sound to Loglan 'a'. There were two articles in TL2 by Chuck Barton (whose specialties are phonology and language education) on mapping of sounds in all of the Loglan source languages, and JCB has several times acknowledged Chuck's skill and accuracy in making prims. JCB mapped the sound to a dead phoneme with no score in his original prim-making (reference Loglan 2). We chose to use Chuck's mappings as an accepted and superseding set of rules that was more widely known in the Loglan community. Our aim was to keep the language in the tradtion of 'Loglan' which we did. In names, JCB has been inconsistent in mapping the digraph. He has written "Alice" as "la alis", not "la elis" (both offer minimal pair confusions with other English names), and "Ann" is "la an", not "la en". But this is besides the point. Names are mapped as the namer, or the named, wishes. I note the comparable discussion for the name "Jim" on page 90 of 4th edition Loglan 1, which states that the vowel, not found in Loglan, can map to either 'e' or 'i', giving "djem" or "djim", as Jim himself chooses. Our primarily American Lojbanists have generally chosen to map the digraph as 'a'. For example, we use "la .atlstan", for Athelstan, whose name is pure Anglo-Saxon, and who first letter is the epitome of the digraph. Athelstan, who is skilled in Anglo-Saxon, Lojbanized that sound in his own name as "a" by intention so that it would NOT be pronounced as "e". I can generalize though that Loglanists usually place as high or higher value on visual recognition of names as on aural recognition. Thus we have a "tomis" for "Tommy" and a "garis" for "Gary", both used by polyglot professional translators who are more than familiar with the IPA and phonemic analysis. On the other hand, Paul Francis O'Sullivan, proud of his Irish heritage, uses "polfranCIIS, and a student used to longer, drawled vowels Lojbanized her name "Kim" as "Ki,ym". >In referring to problems in deriving primitive predicates, I relied on >your own gismu list. If "censa" neither contains nor resembles the >English word "sacred", then the English word is worthless as a mnemonic. John covered this, but I want to add that in all versions of Loglan, the English keyword is not necessarily the mnemonic. Institute Loglan (sic) uses for example "goltu" for "throat", from "gullet", and "gomni" for "adhere/stick to" from "gummy". Our keywords were chosen to maximize distinctness of meaning, thus we use "fly" for sfani, the insect and "flight" for vofli" the English verb "fly". But you chose a bad example - while "censa" has no score for either sacred or holy in English, we chose sacred because it is used more generally in discussing religions including non-Christian ones, but also because of the two it offered some visual recognition in lieu of aural. In any event, JCB recently said in Lognet that the engineering tests demonstrating the relevance of his mnemonic algorithm were conducted informally and the results were never published. We have instrumented the new version of LogFlash and intend to determine whether aural mnemonics even have any relevance to word recognition in a way consistent with JCB's word-making algorithm. I suggest scientific research before making unscientific claims. >When I saw "baxso", I thought you might have taken it from "bahasa"--and >almost died laughing. Then I said to myself, "Nah, they wouldn't do >THAT! They must be using some other word." I'm sorry I doubted you. Almost all of the words various cultures use for themselves are derived from the local language word for "people", "country/nation", or "language". Since the commonalty of Malay-Indonesian is primarily linguisitic, not territorial or tribal, and this is reflected in the words of their language, the Malay-Indonesian word "Bahasa" is far more respectful of the local culture than any other choice. I am more proud of it than of "bindo", since "Indonesia" is from the European root stock. >Loglan is a real language, It is? You are the first 'linguist' to say so, then. >so it and >its grammar are found not on some computer but in the minds of >Loglanists. ... >grammatical in terms of The Grammar as known by speakers. Otherwise, Where are the native speakers qualified to make grammatical judgements? In fact, where are the speakers period; JCB claims that there were a few back in 1977 but not since. And if JCB is qualified, then howcum 1977 Loglan and 1991 Institute Loglan have such different grammars? For that matter, JCB changed his human grammar so that the machine could parse it unambiguously. He just failed to finish the job. We have. >It's true that the computer sees "bi" as a type of predicate LEXEME, The correct term is "grameme", one of many JCB errors in terminology, and in this case, we only recently have discovered and corrected it. Others include "primitive" (or are 'billiards' and 'football' truly primitive concepts to you) and "metaphor". He apparently assumed "lexeme" because the YACC 'Preparser' is called by professional computer scientists a "lexer" - it identifies individual words from the text string. > but >that's not to say that "bi" is a predicate in speakers' minds. It isn't >in mine, for example. And are you a fluent Loglan speaker, or even a minimally competent one? Who do you speak it with, and do they understand you and use the same grammar. Our machine grammar is intended to unambiguously define the bounds of grammatical Loglan/Lojban sentences. It is vital that it do this if it is to be used as a standard in teaching the language (as TLI does with its LIP program, too). We have just rebaselined the machine grammar as a prescription for the language until we have a body of fluent speakers that can serve as the basis for the model you speak. >I would suggest that, while you may be in a position to pontificate >about Group Lojban semantics, before doing so about Loglan, you should >bother to learn the language. Looking at the list of basic errors you have made by not knowing the sacred writings of JCB, I suggest that you take your own advice. After all, YOU are the one on the 'Loglan Academy'. I can't help it if Nora, John Cowan, and myself all know Institute Loglan as well or better than some of its official pontificators. >In fact, based on this and other instances of pseudo-Loglan, I can see >why Brown's bugged. I thought it was a mere matter of having the >Institute's work ripped off. 'The Institute' has done no work. JCB did much of the design work. So did Jeff Prothero, John Parks-Clifford, and several dozen-to-hundreds of other individuals, including myself (responsible for the 'y' hyphen - see the second entry on page 597 of 4th edition Loglan 1, and the reference itself. The Institute could be considered to have attempted to 'rip off' our work, since neither I nor most of the others intended the Institute to assume 'ownership' of whatever intellectual property rights might exist. Most of those Loglanists who did the germinal work on Loglan are now Lojbanists, or have dropped out completely in disgust or protest; JCB and Jenny and McIvor are among the few exceptions who stuck with TLI. I could consider accusations like yours to be slanderous. Please desist. Since JCB testified in the trademark action that he had never looked at Lojban to determine whether it was 'logical', are you accusing him of lying? >But now I think rather that he's >(justifiably) afraid that you're contaminating the experimental >area--spitting in the test-tube, so to speak--by misrepresenting Loglan >semantics and metaphysics. ... >2. The tags create a duality in the language. So what? Optionality is >the name of Loglan's game, and I rather like having the choice. I think >more languages have redundancy of this sort than anyone's aware of; if >Group Lojban doesn't, my condolences. You do not understand Loglan to make the latter claim, and if JCB agrees with you, it is he who spits in the test tube. Far more basic than 'optionality' in the design principles of Loglan is metaphysical parsimony. Reread the Scientific American article, Chapter 1 of Loglan 1, and almost every other thing JCB has written before you assert who misrepresents 'Loglan metaphysics'. Only on page 50 of 4th edition L1, do I know of a reference that suggests your point of view. In the first paragraph thereon, we find: "In these last ten years of engineering optionalities into Loglan, I have formed a view of language which I suspect is very different from the one with which I began." It is we who are true to the traditional Loglan metaphysics. JCB and Institute Loglan are apparently not. John Cowan mentioned the shoe-horning of inconsistent semantics into the Institute Loglan case system. Every assignment of an argument place into a fixed case imposes an unnecessary metaphysical assumption that the two places are semantically identical. Thus English speakers make metaphorical and metaphysical assumptions about objects that are labelled with the preposition "to", although some are destinations, and some are beneficiaries. The >use< of the case system in Institute Loglan is optional, but its very existence causes unnecessary patterns among predicates that are supposed to be logically independent and unclassified in a predicate language. If I, a Loglanist, read and understand a case tag to identify a similarity between two supposedly unrelated predicates, I am inherently led to see a closer tie between those two predicates than between others. >1. Linguists can't agree on how many cases there are. True from the >standpoint of universal grammar, false from the standpoint of a given >language (e.g., Loglan). It's not too hard to figure out how many cases >a language needs to account for its syntax. The trick is coming up with >a system which works for everybody. Now, Loglan is A language, not ALL >languages, so there's no problem. Ah! But in having 11 case tags such that each place of a given place structure associates one-to-one with a case tag, Institute Loglan can have no predicate with more than 11 places (probably not too bad a constraint), but also no predicate such that two different places need the same case tag. Hence "sau" for example means that no predicate can have both a source place and a reason place. "beu" means that none can have two places that encompass the 'semantic field' of "patients", "parts", and "properties" (whatever those three have in common other than initial letter in English). But you also prevent me from, for example, seeing myself as a Loglanist/Lojbanist who "cirna (Lojban cilre)" from seeing myself as a "doer", a "beneficiary", and a "part" of the Loglan community. And why must it be in the Loglan world that one of the participants in "kitsa" be active and the other passive, and which one is which? Is Institute Loglan sexist? Judge for yourself. It includes the metaphor "mrenu durzo" (man-do) as the origin for "to man a ship". "It's not too hard" - but since you have no complete dictionary of all valid compounds (and cannot by definition in Loglan), how can you possibly conduct the semantic analysis. Indeed, though additional work may have been done since, the cases were done from analysis only of the prims. Indeed, the analysis was probably done by a native English speaker, thereby ensuring that the semantics of the Institute Loglan words will encode English semantics. Certainly you can see that in some cultures, "kitsa" has reflexive cases. "The trick is coming up with a system for everyone" - indeed. And since JCB and Jenny did so with no speaker base, they were guilty of imposing a specific world view on their Loglan, making it less likely to be useful in a test of SWH. And tell me, is it only the use of a computer that causes you to see our use of a formal grammar to define the human grammar as different from the formal preassigning cases to define the semantics of places? >I'm also informed that Group Lojban doesn't have the full spectrum of >ethnic forms found in Loglan. Using *lojb- as an example, we'd have > > lojba is a part of the Group Lojban language > lojbe is an area associated with Group Lojbanists > lojbi is a Group Lojbanist > lojbo is a feature of Group Lojban culture > (No -u form exists as of now.) > >In Group Lojban, such concepts are handled with complexes ("lujvo" is >the local shibboleth, I think). Now, I can write (and even say, but not >in a mail message) > > lojbyleu is a part of the Group Lojban language or given the above 4 forms, a language used in an area associated with Group Lojbanists, any language spoken by Group Lojbanists (obviously this includes English more likely than Lojban), or a language associated with the Group Lojban culture (definitely including English) > lojbysia is an area associated with Group Lojbanists or an area associated with the culture, or with the language > lojbypeu is a Group Lojbanist or a person associated with the area associated with Group Lojbanists, etc. In all of the above, you cannot tell the source metaphor for the compounds; the affixes are ambiguously resolve to use any of the four 'declensions', AND EACH RESULTS IN A DIFFERENT INTERPRETATION. Therefore the whole purpose of GMR was violated by this kludge. > and even lojbykau ("is a Group Lojban dog") if I wish. (And the new animal declension is worse. Can I use the animal declension on 'logla' if I am referring to such a Loglandic dog?) >In effect, you're telling >me that as a Loglanist, I have more choices than you Group Lojbanists >do. No, IMHO you just have more sloppiness in your language. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Now can we cease being mutually rude, and work to end dispute rather than cause more? I suggest that you study our language a bit more before condemning it, and that you study your own version and the words of JCB a bit more before challenging people who have been working with Loglan a bit longer and also more extensively than you. And finally, I suggest you get both sides of the story before rendering summary ethical judgement. ---- lojbab = Bob LeChevalier, President, The Logical Language Group, Inc. 2904 Beau Lane, Fairfax VA 22031-1303 USA 703-385-0273 lojbab@snark.thyrsus.com Note: I am also posting this to lojban-list