Message-Id: <199602101623.LAA13933@locke.ccil.org>
Date:         Sat, 10 Feb 1996 10:35:33 -0500
Reply-To: Logical Language Group <lojbab@ACCESS.DIGEX.NET>
Sender: Lojban list <LOJBAN@CUVMB.BITNET>
From: Logical Language Group <lojbab@ACCESS.DIGEX.NET>
Subject:      *old response onbuffer vowel
To: John Cowan <cowan@LOCKE.CCIL.ORG>
Status: OR
Content-Length: 2110

>From: ucleaar <ucleaar@UCL.AC.UK>
>Subject:      Re: buffer vowel
>> "Specified" implies a "specifier" (aty least to me).  NO one has ever
>> list a complete specification on the rules of any one person's English,
>> so far as I know.
>
>It should have been obvious that I was not claiming that grammarians
>have stated the rules of each of our phonologies.  What I meant was that
>each phonology consists of a set of rules, and that these rules do not
>shift like quicksand.

I'm not sure this is true, at least in the sense that most people think
of "rules".  I suspect the individual idiolects DO vary in phonology
with time, and the shift is mathematically chaotic.  That which we call
the phonology of a language is just some kind of chaotic sum of these
chaotic idiolects.  We can describe certain "patterns", but I doubt that
all of those "patterns" are "rules".

>Lojban grammar prescribes - vocalically speaking - seven countries but
>no map.  No natural phonology is like that; but that needn't be
>understood as a criticism of lojban.

No natural language has *any* phonology prescription, so I agree.

My claim is that natural languages are mimicked by Lojban in that
individual idiolects of Lojban will probably cluster around some pattern
that is consistent with the prescription, and that the range of
phonology in these idiolects will not deviate that strongly from the
"average" pattern any more than natlang speakers deviate from their
language's norm.  I will add a caveat that the natlang be one that is
subjected to a lot of influences from other unrelated languages.

>> Likewise, different registers of English have substantially different
>> grammars, in my opinion. The English that I write on the net is NOT the
>> same language that I use in conversation in my living room.
>
>That sort of claim wouldn't surprise me coming from a person working on
>register, but I doubt I'd see it coming from a person working on
>grammar, since they'd be obliged to show what these substantial
>differences are.

Then you are claiming that the effects of register is not part of
grammar?

lojbab