From cbmvax!uunet!ALASKA.BITNET!FTSLR Thu Jun 20 07:25:16 1991 Return-Path: Date: Thu Jun 20 07:25:16 1991 Message-Id: <9106200700.AA22476@relay1.UU.NET> To: lojban-list@snark.thyrsus.com Sender: "ACAD3A::FTSLR" From: "STEVE L RICE" Status: RO This is going to be a little long. First, I'd like to thank all the cardinals who responded to my previous postings: the comfy chair was very nice, and of course quite unexpected. I'd have gotten back to you sooner, but I had a column to write for Lognet. In fact, it turns out that I'm going to be so busy with Loglan, I won't have much time for keeping track of this list, so I'll be unsubscribing. I'll pop in from time to time, though, and of course anyone who wants to yak may send me a message. Please let me know whether your message is a copy of a posting or personal (but not too personal!) so I'll know how to respond. I'll get back to you as soon as possible, though I need to pick up Anglo-Saxon by the fall semester, and I promised jimc I'd learn -gua!spi, so I may not be very prompt. (Kvetch, kvetch! That's all he ever does!) I have noticed a distressingly rude habit in some of these postings: referring to Loglan as "Institute Loglan." 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. (There's an enormous differrence between predicate-oriented and non-predicate-oriented languages.) I should also point out that, contrary to what you may have heard, the legal status of "Loglan" is as yet undecided. Anyway, to give you some idea how petty and obnoxious "Institute Loglan" 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. Phonemics and transcribing the digraph: It's easy enough to find minimal pairs for epsilon and the digraph in English, though I still think mapping three English phonemes onto one Group Lojban phoneme is asking for trouble. In particular, I'd point out that it's rather hard to find minimal pairs for epsilon and the digraph in English names, but quite easy to find such pairs for the phonemes mapped onto Group Lojban "a": Don/Dan, Jack/Jock, etc. When I first saw "salis", I took it as the Group Lojban version of "Solly". 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. 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. 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. Identities: You seem to be committing ther same mistake as some Transformational-Generative people I've encountered: confusing a model of grammar with grammar itself. Loglan is a real language, so it and its grammar are found not on some computer but in the minds of Loglanists. You might as reasonably confuse a sqare and a rectangle: all square are rectangles, but not all rectangles are squares. If an utterance is grammatical, it will parse; but not all that parses is grammatical in terms of The Grammar as known by speakers. Otherwise, you don't have a language, just a linguistic computer game. (Let me know whether you win or the Klingons do.) It's true that the computer sees "bi" as a type of predicate LEXEME, but that's not to say that "bi" is a predicate in speakers' minds. It isn't in mine, for example. Another example of this confusion is Cowan's recent claim that a mathematical identity such as "Lio topoito bi lio fo" (2+2=4--I don't recall his example right off) is a predication, a "fact" of mathematics. 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. The utterance in question is an identity, not a claim, though a claim could be constructed quite easily in Loglan, and probably in Group Lojban as well. I won't insult your intelligence by explaining further; if the method's obvious to a mere Loglanist, it must be self-evident to Group Lojbanists. 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. 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. Do what you will with Lojban, but please have the courtesy to leave Loglan out of it. Passing thoughts: I'm less of a Zipfoid than most of the people at TLI, though I acknowledge the general validity of his views. lojbab says that Loglan's case tags are bad (Bad tags! Bad tags!) on three counts: 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. 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. 3. The case system isn't "intuitive." I suspect that lojbab means "requiring no intuition or imagination" here; Loglan's case tags are plenty intuitive. Tell me, how many declension-happy languages do you know? From my experience with Latin, (Koine) Greek, and Russian, I'd say the system's pretty reasonable. It's about on a par with that of Japanese, which it somewhat resembles. 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 lojbysia is an area associated with Group Lojbanists lojbypeu is a Group Lojbanist lojbykultu is a feature of Group Lojban culture and even lojbykau ("is a Group Lojban dog") if I wish. I haven't been struck by fire from heaven, and I give you my word that I haven't been transmogrified into a giant can of Spam. So apparently I can do in Loglan exactly what you do in Group Lojban. In effect, you're telling me that as a Loglanist, I have more choices than you Group Lojbanists do. Whillikers, fellers, I'm crushed. In parting, I leave you with the words of the great philosopher Marx: "Loi. I oa mi godzi. I oa no mi stolo. I mi kamla rau lepo cutse lepo mi godzi. I ui mi kamla. Ibuo oa mi godzi. I loa!" (If anyone has better luck with the meter and/or rhyme scheme, I'd like to know about it.) Sia loa, hue Stiv Rais