Return-Path: Message-Id: <9110280624.AA02212@relay1.UU.NET> Date: Mon Oct 28 04:56:22 1991 Reply-To: Logical Language Group Sender: Lojban list From: Logical Language Group Subject: Lojban and case theory{ - response to Bruce and others X-To: conlang@buphy.bu.edu, lojban@cuvmb.cc.columbia.edu To: John Cowan , Eric Raymond , Eric Tiedemann Status: RO X-From-Space-Date: Mon Oct 28 04:56:22 1991 X-From-Space-Address: cbmvax!uunet!CUVMA.BITNET!LOJBAN >With regard to Bruce Gilson's proposal on conlang that a language with explicit pre/postpositions for each place might be superior to Loglan/Lojban's word-order dependent place structures: We analyzed doing something like this, in search of a) an explicit case system as an option for Lojban (JCB adopted such a system for his version of the language in 1987 with 13 cases) and b) as an attempt to satisfy ourselves as to the 'completeness' of the set of BAI cmavo. Our best, but not only, reference, was a book entitled _The Case for Lexicase_, which was at the time (and maybe still) the newest evolution of Fillmore's case theory (discussed in JL3 or JL4 - I can't remember which, but probably the latter). Our conclusions: - there was no consensus among linguists as to a necessary and sufficient set of cases to cover all of language; - the construction of Lojban tanru and lujvo allows for a hypothetical lujvo to have an infinite number of rafsi components and hence places, and hence no case system could exist in one-to-one correspondence to the set of places of such an abstract predicate; - that the imposition of any managable set of cases forced metaphysical constraints (and bias) on the language, even if the case system was optional, because it in effect says that two, say 'destination' places are semantically related by virtue of being associated with the same BAI preposition (for example, in English, we might see a relationship between the final place of "he went to the store" and "I gave the book to John", though most linguists would not consider these the same semantic case "with" and "of" are even worse prepositions in this problem); - that any such bias would undoubtedly reflect our English bias, and in ways we could not easily identify because the case system of English is so subliminal; - that whatever small improvement in semantic clarity might be achieved would be countered by the amount of memorization required: you would have to memorize all the cmavo (say the equivalent of the BAI list, except that you couldn;t really get by until you knew most or all of them, whereas it is possible to speak Lojban without knowing any members of BAI), and you would have to memorize the semantic association of each cmavo with each word, just as English speakers have to memorize what "to", "with" and "of" mean for each English word/predicate. Those opposed to our place structures, as well as those who think that you have to memorize every place structure of every gismu in order to speak the language have very little idea just how much you had to 'memorize' to reach your current mastery of English, and how much English you could speak and understand without learning all these idiosyncrasies (indeed, you probably learned them through inference based on how others used them, and that is how we expect Lojbanists to learn Lojban place structures as well - from usage by others backed up by reference materials when necessary.) > By the way - Lojban does have an effective equivalent to the Japanese topic construct mentioned by Bruce, which although marked by a postposition in Japanese is totally orthogonal to its case system and has nothing to do with 'subject' (the object can be the topic equally with the subject) ---- lojbab = Bob LeChevalier, President, The Logical Language Group, Inc. 2904 Beau Lane, Fairfax VA 22031-1303 USA 703-385-0273 lojbab@grebyn.com NOTE THAT THIS IS A NEW NET ADDRESS AND SUPERSEDES OTHERS IN MY POSTINGS OR LOGICAL LANGUAGE GROUP, INC. PUBLICATIONS For information about Lojban, please provide a snail-post address to me via mail or phone. We are funded solely by contributions, which are encouraged for the purpose of defraying our costs, but are not mandatory.