From LOJBAN%CUVMB.bitnet@YaleVM.YCC.YALE.EDU Sat Mar 6 22:59:52 2010 Received: from YALEVM.YCC.YALE.EDU by MINERVA.CIS.YALE.EDU via SMTP; Mon, 18 Jan 1993 02:15:38 -0500 Received: from CUVMB.CC.COLUMBIA.EDU by YaleVM.YCC.Yale.Edu (IBM VM SMTP V2R2) with BSMTP id 7699; Mon, 18 Jan 93 02:14:18 EST Received: from CUVMB.BITNET by CUVMB.CC.COLUMBIA.EDU (Mailer R2.07) with BSMTP id 6330; Mon, 18 Jan 93 01:21:24 EST Date: Mon, 18 Jan 1993 01:20:19 -0500 Reply-To: Logical Language Group Sender: Lojban list From: Logical Language Group Subject: Ken Miner comments on Lojban on sci.lang X-To: conlang@buphy.bu.edu, lojban@cuvmb.cc.columbia.edu, miner@kuhub.cc.ukans.edu To: Erik Rauch Status: RO X-Status: X-From-Space-Date: Sun Jan 17 20:20:19 1993 X-From-Space-Address: @YaleVM.YCC.YALE.EDU:LOJBAN@CUVMB.BITNET Message-ID: Ken Miner writes on sci.lang >However these are not among the linguistic universals that are >presently crucial to Linguistics in its attempt to define the notion >"human language" and so we must wait to see whether human children can >acquire Lojban (roughly, spoken symbolic logic). I suspect that you portray us rather poorly in labelling Loglan and Lojban as "spoken symbolic logic". The symbolic logic aspects of the language have shown little promise in dominating the language, either in its learning or its usage. The predicate language aspect is far more dominant, supported by the absence of parts of speech categorization of any of the content words, and the combinatorial compounding power of Lojban tanru, which are inherently metaphorical (semantically ambiguous, but not figurative) rather than logical. And I think the emotional attitudinal system, if acquired natively by a new generation will most immediately show differences in the thinking of its speakers. Any significant effects from the LOGIC aspects of the language will almost certainly wait for a later generation of speaker, one who has been taught the language by other speakers who are themselves comfortable enough with the logical theory embedded in the language to use it enough for those usages to serve as models. As it is, the most skilled Lojbanists tend to treat the logical aspects as toys to be analyzed and played with rather than internalized. The attitudinals on the other hand are the first to be internalized (and I notice in my Russian native kids that attitudinal-like usages of English are the first things they have acquired, too). As Nick Nicholas observed in our international phone call reported on Lojban List, for a limited subset of Lojban attitudinals I have internalized them and indeed use them before English (and Russian) equivalents in some circumstances. If I were even somewhat more fluent in Lojban, I suspect that my English understandability would be seriously affected by Lojbanisms thrown in subconsciously. (I'm not all that sure that effects not too detrimental to understanding haven't happened already - I know that the way I write and talk has changed since I worked on the project, but not in a particularly obvious way - I suspect that analysis would show it to be based on the tanru effect.) lojbab