From @YaleVM.YCC.YALE.EDU:LOJBAN@CUVMB.BITNET Mon Aug 23 12:15:10 1993 Received: from ELI.CS.YALE.EDU by NEBULA.SYSTEMSZ.CS.YALE.EDU via SMTP; Mon, 23 Aug 1993 16:23:27 -0400 Received: from YALEVM.YCC.YALE.EDU by eli.CS.YALE.EDU via SMTP; Mon, 23 Aug 1993 16:23:23 -0400 Message-Id: <199308232023.AA17324@eli.CS.YALE.EDU> Received: from CUVMB.CC.COLUMBIA.EDU by YaleVM.YCC.Yale.Edu (IBM VM SMTP V2R2) with BSMTP id 8224; Mon, 23 Aug 93 16:22:01 EDT Received: from CUVMB.COLUMBIA.EDU by CUVMB.CC.COLUMBIA.EDU (Mailer R2.07) with BSMTP id 7373; Mon, 23 Aug 93 16:24:26 EDT Date: Mon, 23 Aug 1993 16:15:10 EDT Reply-To: Juan Parra Sender: Lojban list From: Juan Parra Subject: Re: Language Evolution X-To: C.J.Fine@bradford.ac.uk To: Erik Rauch Status: O X-Status: Colin, Thank you for answering. First of all, I sent the message to Lojban list, because I have had trouble to be understood in other lists like sci.lang or soc.culture.esperanto. I read the Lojban features, and I found some its characteristics fit very well my point, except that I meant to apply them to any existing language like english. Second, when I said static, I really meant major language changes regarding communication problems. My idea resides in the assumption that any existing language could be improve to be better understood, less complicated, more efficient if some structural reforms are applied to it. Let say we take some of Lojban features to modify the english language, so we have: * Unambiguous grammar * Phonetic spelling * rules without exception Now, it's possible in the real world to modify the language like this? What would be the major problem? Is this the reason why languages like Lojban are emerging, because it's easier to create a new language than to change an existing one? If Lojban is accepted, then will people tend to complicate it? Is this a vicious circle... Regards, Juan Parra Universite Laval Quebec