Return-Path: Message-Id: <9110101836.AA24561@relay2.UU.NET> Date: Thu Oct 10 18:40:48 1991 Reply-To: "61510::GILSON" Sender: Lojban list From: "61510::GILSON" Subject: Loglan - Institute, Generic, etc. X-To: lojban To: John Cowan , Ken Taylor , List Reader Status: RO X-From-Space-Date: Thu Oct 10 18:40:48 1991 X-From-Space-Address: cbmvax!uunet!cuvma.bitnet!LOJBAN The LLG has for some time had a dispute with the Loglan Institute as to whether the term "Loglan" is solely applicable to the Institute's language or a generic term including similar languages (specifically Lojban). Since JL14, the LLG has felt vindicated by a court decision that the generic interpretation is right. The Institute is, of course, unhappy even that the term "Institute Loglan" is used to describe what they (JCB?) consider(s) the only Loglan. While Both the Institute and LLG, of course, have the right to promote their own languages, I wonder if anyone has thought through the consequences that arise from considering "Loglan" as generic. The first question that arises is: How close does a language have to be to the language JCB defined in Sci. Am to qualify as a Loglan (or perhaps a loglan, small "l," since if the word is generic, the capital is not appropriate)? Is a predicate language without the CVCCV/CCVCV structures of Loglan's predicates (Lojban's gismu) a loglan? I could imagine a language which used recognizable Greco/Latin or pure Latin or Germano/Latin roots as does Glosa or Interlingua or Esperanto/Ido/Novial/Intal, respectively, but with a predicate structure similar to Loglan/Lojban. Second: how are we to describe the original Loglan? It isn't even Institute Loglan, because JCB and the Institute have made their own changes. I suppose "1960 Loglan" will do there. Third: Why does anyone who is pushing Lojban really _want_ to use the term generically? It is a different language -- even if syntactically almost identical -- and just as one wants to consider Esperanto and Ido as different more often than to refer to them by a single word, most of the time one is either talking about 1960 Loglan or Institute Loglan or Lojban, and the occasions when one really wants to go generic one can talk of "logical lang- uages."