Message-Id: <m0qmgis-00005ZC@xiron.pc.helsinki.fi>
Date:         Mon, 19 Sep 1994 06:17:59 -0400
Reply-To:     Logical Language Group <lojbab@ACCESS.DIGEX.NET>
Sender:       Lojban list <LOJBAN%CUVMB.bitnet@FINHUTC.hut.fi>
From:         Logical Language Group <lojbab@ACCESS.DIGEX.NET>
Subject:      Re: Chief logician?
To:           Veijo Vilva <veion@XIRON.PC.HELSINKI.FI>
Content-Length: 2491
Lines: 43

RH>Someone seemed to think that I might claim some such title with
RH>respect to the Loglan project because of my relation to TLI.  I
RH>disclaim any such role.  My job over here is mostly critical; since
RH>the language is "ready for use", I can't do major engineering
RH>modifications on it

I wouldn't disagree with YOU %^)

But
1) JCB says that Loglan will never be done and reserves the right to make
changes by decree indefinitely into the future.  See Loglan 1, and the
charter for his Academy - there are NO restrictions on what changes are
acceptable, and JCB has explicitly DENIED that the community ('the masses' in
his lingo) are relevant to such decisions, which are to be made on purely
ummmm 'academic' grounds by his 'judicial' Academy.
2) A statement that the language is "ready for use" is not true until it
has been put to the test of significant usage.  Lojban has had close to
the level of usage that I can start feeling comfortable with such a claim,
but it is the breadth of our user base as much as the amount that any
individual has written that convinces me more than anything else.  TLI
Loglan has proven capable of expressing a limited set of things that
JCB and a few other people have tried to say with it, but as far as I know,
none of them are non-native English speakers, and the numbers are too small
to really even claim that they cross-section the English speaking world
very well.  (And JCB's linguistics research doesn't give much confidence
either.)

AS an example - in the purely logical arena - I suspect that JCB has never
done the anlysis of negation needed.  He has handled logical negation,
of predicates, but people pointed out to us early on that there were a lot
more variations on negation than we had examined.  So pc went through Horn's
"Natural History of Negation" which conveniently had just been published, and
we made some significant enhancements to the language as a result.  I have
heard nothing abouyt similar changes to the TLI language.  All human languages
seem to have some features, but it is not clear that TLI Loglan has them.

3)Determining the semantics of Loglan (all versions) is a somewhat open-ended
job.  Most of our debates in the Lojban community have been about semantics,
and not the 'engineering' level of the language.  I would presume that you,
Randlal, have significant impact on the semantic interpretation of statements
in TLI Loglan, if such statements fall within the domain of analysis of logic.

lojbab