Message-ID: <344D0781.2975@locke.ccil.org> Date: Tue, 21 Oct 1997 15:50:25 -0400 From: John Cowan Organization: Lojban Peripheral X-Mailer: Mozilla 3.0 (WinNT; I) MIME-Version: 1.0 To: Lojban List Subject: Re: The design of Lojban References: <199710211914.OAA26811@locke.ccil.org> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Mozilla-Status: 0011 Status: RO Content-Length: 4161 Andrew Sieber wrote: > I have been under the assumption (and > have assumed that everybody else was also under the assumption) that > Lojban tests the hypothesis only by lowering existing thought barriers > in natural languages, not by raising new barriers, and so far I haven't > seen any reason to change that assumption. Well, perhaps. There are some things that are hard to say unless you understand predicate logic to some degree, and some places where Lojban can't be vague where other langs can. > Also, some specifics of Lojban: > In English, "or" can mean either inclusive-or (and/or) or exclusive-or > (either-or). Is there an unambiguous separation of the two > interpretations in Lojban? Yes. However, there is no single word that is ambiguous between the two (Latin didn't have one either, AFAIK). > In English, relationships are represented by (or are at least ambiguous > with) ownership. "My sister's husband" implies that my sister owns her > husband, and also that I own my sister. In Lojban is there a way to > make references to relationship without implying ownership? Lojban has four levels: mere association ("my friend"), specific relationship ("my seat on the bus"), extrinsic possession ("my toothbrush"), intrinsic possession ("my arm"). > I assume that Lojban has gender-neutral "pronouns." Does it also have > gender-specific ones, or must gender be specified only by using a > gender-neutral one and then using a separate, explicit modifier to > specify gender? The latter. > [H]ow are we ever to convince the Eskimos of Greenland to learn > Lojban? They use base 20. (We can ignore the Babylonians, who used > base 60, because they're all dead. No hard feelings.) Using the alternate-base-separator "pi'e" (see the same chapter) we can express any base whatever, as well as compound bases like pounds and ounces. > Also, are there > any _symbols_ beyond 0, 1, 2 ,3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, and 9 ? No. Lojban doesn't define new symbols. > [W]hy not simply use the symbol h as being synonymous with the > symbol ' and thus type comfortably using an unmodified Dvorak keyboard? > For people who want to publish texts which they have created in this > manner, all they have to do is use the find/replace feature of their > text editors to change all occurences of h to ' and then their > mischievous alphabet-molesting habits will never be noticed. Whatever you want to do privately is fine with us. The canonical Lojban orthography uses the apostrophe. -- John Cowan http://www.ccil.org/~cowan cowan@ccil.org e'osai ko sarji la lojban From LOJBAN@CUVMB.CC.COLUMBIA.EDU Tue Oct 21 16:41:56 1997 for ; Tue, 21 Oct 1997 16:41:37 -0500 (EST) Message-Id: <199710212141.QAA02856@locke.ccil.org> Reply-To: John Cowan Sender: Lojban list From: John Cowan Organization: Lojban Peripheral Subject: Re: Dvorak (& Lojban) X-To: Lojban List To: John Cowan X-Mozilla-Status: 0011 Content-Length: 981 Ilya Ketris wrote: > Why is it another thing? I touch-type in cyrillic, > and cyrillic A, O, T, E, K etc. are just the same as > their latin counetrparts (they look same, they sound similar) > and still there is no confusion between two different modes. Because (as the Unicode folks are fond of pointing out) you think of them as different characters. If you see "ABC" in an English context, you think "ay-bee-cee"; in a Russian context, you think "ah-ve-es". No connection. But in Latin script, a B is a B, and a C is a C, and if you have to remember: to type a B with left-2nd-finger-down and C with left-3rd-finger-down on QWERTY only vs. B with (whatever) and C with (whatever) on non-QWERTY then you will tend to type QWERTY B with non-QWERTY C or vice versa. -- John Cowan http://www.ccil.org/~cowan cowan@ccil.org e'osai ko sarji la lojban