From - Mon Mar 04 09:36:03 1996 Received: from VMS.DC.LSOFT.COM (vms.dc.lsoft.com [205.186.43.2]) by locke.ccil.org (8.6.9/8.6.10) with ESMTP id NAA04025 for ; Fri, 1 Mar 1996 13:33:06 -0500 Message-Id: <199603011833.NAA04025@locke.ccil.org> Received: from PEACH.EASE.LSOFT.COM (205.186.43.4) by VMS.DC.LSOFT.COM (LSMTP for OpenVMS v1.0a) with SMTP id D234B182 ; Fri, 1 Mar 1996 12:55:24 -0500 Date: Fri, 1 Mar 1996 09:53:06 -0800 Reply-To: "Peter L. Schuerman" Sender: Lojban list X-UIDL: 825716840.001 From: "Peter L. Schuerman" Subject: Re: Cognitive distortions and lojban X-To: Logical Language Group X-cc: Lojban List To: John Cowan In-Reply-To: <199603011437.JAA26080@access1.digex.net> Status: U X-Mozilla-Status: 0011 Content-Length: 4051 On Fri, 1 Mar 1996, Logical Language Group wrote: > >My initially favorable impression of Lojban has changed, > >and I now regard Lojban as "a computer programming language that you can't > >even write a program in" :) > > Well, this is a provocative statement! Could you elaborate? > > lojbab Well, *can* you write a computer program in Lojban? ;) One of the reasons I say that it is like a programming language is that the language essentially has variables, which makes it necessary to store information in mental "registers". Like the deletion words, which "backspace"... an appealing idea, but I'm not convinced that everyone stores speech as a linear array, so that the "n-1" word is readily available. There are other pronouns and pronoun-like words which, while intriguing, are probably not going to prove useful in conversation because they require people to conceptualize and store speech like a computer processes a program. Another example is the places for each word... again, perfect for a computer which deals with linear arrays, but I'm not convinced it is compatible with the way all people think. There is also a strong emphasis on linear ordering which is reminiscent of the stepwise processing of computer language. Also, very small words have very critical meanings, so that small errors can create huge misunderstandings. Here's an analogy: Say that we have three variables, A, B and C. Here's the function we *want*: A = B - C Here's the function we mistakenly code: A = B = C The symbols "-" and "=" are small and very similar, analogous to cmavo in Lojban. A very small change, but the two statements have completely different, and unfortunately completely "grammatical", meanings. This compactness of computer code is why it can be difficult to catch crucial errors, because they appear small and don't create obvious syntax errors. Compare this with English: I went to the store to buy some milk. I went to the store from buy some milk. I went from the store to buy some milk. I went and the store to buy some milk. I went or the store in buy some milk. These small changes in English "cmavo" create sentences which are either close enough to understand, peculiar enough to be rejected, or ambiguous enough to cause a reader to look for more information. I think that this feature of natlangs is a powerful one, which has evolved over thousands of years of usage. I believe this characteristic maximizes the clarity of communication when using natlangs. It is a feature which is very elusive, but incredibly potent and worth understanding and incorporating into a conlang if possible. Now, if a language has the characteristic of being sensitive to small errors, we not only have the high likelihood of coding errors, but also of interpretation errors. I feel Lojban does share this characteristic with computer code. I guess that I'm not very enthusiastic about speaking a language that lends such fragility to meaning. Who wants to use a language you have to "debug"? The answer? As far as I can tell, people who are extremely comfortable with computer programming! Or people who are very much at home with mathematics and abstract thought. It can be a lot of fun to take apart Lojban sentences, the same way it can be fun to try to understand a computer program or a mathematical equation. It can also be fun to try to see how many different ways you can code a sentence into Lojban... it's sort of like writing a program, that you "run" on someone else's brain (the reader/listener). Lojban can be a very entertaining diversion, but as long as it is designed to meet the aesthetic needs of math geeks and closet math geeks, I think it will never move beyond being more than some sort of complex fraternal code language. Peter Schuerman plschuerman@ucdavis.edu Co-editor, SPECTRA Online for back issues: http://www.well.com/user/phandaal/