From - Mon Dec 02 10:10:31 1996 Reply-To: Logical Language Group Date: Mon Dec 02 10:10:31 1996 Sender: Lojban list From: Logical Language Group Subject: Orthography X-To: lojban@cuvmb.cc.columbia.edu To: John Cowan X-UIDL: 539bbd183421bd96cb7e29e958e33ef5 X-Mozilla-Status: 0001 Content-Length: 4924 Message-ID: >if the orthography were being >designed from scratch, which system would one choose? If that >were the question being asked generally, and properly debated >and voted on, then I might be more inclined to go with the collective >choice. There was a time, albeit long ago, where this is exactly what occurred. Specifically, the first weekend of serious work on the language. Since this weekend, I had over one of the other original Lojbanists, Gary Burgess, who got together that last weekend in May 1987, we discussed this very thing (in the context of your alternate usages of y and w and h, and he more clearly than I remembers that these specific ideas were debated and discussed, and eventually were ruled out over the course of the weekend. We aren't sure of the final reasons for everything, but the h vs. ' was definitely because of a) the fact that the buffer is not a regular letter of the Lojban alphabet but rather a filler sound, and the choice f symbols was specifically to contrast with the comma and period which were other ways of separating vowels. The one-sound/one-letter would have made it unacceptable to use "loi" for "lo'i" because the buffer sound IS required, and "loi" does not imply that omoitted sound to a novice, but rather would be produced as what you call "loy" by most people new to the language. JCB did not have such a syllable separator, and this led to constant debates over which VV pairs were one syllable and which were two syllables, and what happened to penultimate stress when a CVV occurred at the end of the word. We felt strongly that the two syllable wioth separator VV pairs needed to be clearly marked. Having done so THEN made possible the loi/lo'i contrast, and the opportunity to increase overloaded cmavo space was irresistable. Meanwhile, it was argued that "loi" could be pronounced as a diphthong and probably would be, or it could be pronounced as a glided slur from "o" to "i", and the result would sound like an American Southern drawl of the diphthong. (the fact that the fourth original Lojbanist, Tommy Whitlock, is from South Carolina and has a pronounced accent of that type made this obvious. Thus we had no need of a separate letter under the one-sound/one-letter argument since we clearly had an allophone situation. But these werekind of final rationales, and we cannot remember all the little tradeoff arguments that went before them. Status quo was almost certainly something that was considered, but I don't think thattoo much that weekend was determined by status quo, since we made a LOT of changes from TLI Loglan standards. Inertia was NOT what goverened decisions and choices, but inertia HAS kept us from being willing to endlessly reconsider changing them once the decisions were made. JCB's Loglan community spent altogether too much time debating phonology and morphology compared to other far more important and undsettled issues in the language. There is no optimal solution to these problems, so 4 people including 2 with linguistics training sat down and made decisions on the basis of that knowledge coupled woth awareness of the problems that had been found with the earlier efforts. lojbab ---- lojbab lojbab@access.digex.net Bob LeChevalier, President, The Logical Language Group, Inc. 2904 Beau Lane, Fairfax VA 22031-1303 USA 703-385-0273 Artificial language Loglan/Lojban: ftp.access.digex.net /pub/access/lojbab or see Lojban WWW Server: href="http://xiron.pc.helsinki.fi/lojban/" From owner-conlang@diku.dk Fri Dec 6 12:43:22 1996 Fri, 6 Dec 1996 17:39:44 +0000 From: dwiggins@elf.bfsec.bt.co.uk (Don Wiggins) Message-Id: <9612061653.AA07250@elf.bfsec.bt.co.uk> To: conlang@diku.dk Subject: Re: CONLANG: Lojban attitudinals Sender: owner-conlang@diku.dk Precedence: bulk Priority: non-urgent Reply-To: dwiggins@elf.bfsec.bt.co.uk (Don Wiggins) X-Mozilla-Status: 0011 Content-Length: 861 > But I think that emotions are rather less obvious than we might think > they are, and also that heavy use of emotional attitudinals adds a > flavor to Lojban that is positive and indeed strongly helps against the > image of the Loglans as being emotionless and hyperlogical. They help > make Lojban FUN. The thing about the emotionals and the attitudinals is the amount of compression that they achieve. For instance, the phrase "I believe that" becomes `.ia' and "I hear that", `ti'e'. The equivalent predications are much more unwieldy and this is one of the reasons that other loglangs are so prolix in expressing even some simple concepts. > The phrase was "how much do I owe you for ...", and Don translated using > "degji", x1 owes x2 to creditor x3. .i .u'u .i You mean "dejni"; "degji" is finger. ni'o co'omi'e dn.