Message-ID: <344D08A5.2038@locke.ccil.org> Date: Tue, 21 Oct 1997 15:55:17 -0400 From: John Cowan Organization: Lojban Peripheral X-Mailer: Mozilla 3.0 (WinNT; I) MIME-Version: 1.0 To: Lojban List Subject: Re: Dvorak (& Lojban) References: <199710212020.PAA29073@locke.ccil.org> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Mozilla-Status: 0011 Status: RO Content-Length: 45043 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 From LOJBAN@CUVMB.CC.COLUMBIA.EDU Tue Oct 21 16:18:55 1997 for ; Tue, 21 Oct 1997 16:18:53 -0500 (EST) Message-Id: <199710212118.QAA01976@locke.ccil.org> Reply-To: Thorild Selen Sender: Lojban list From: Thorild Selen Subject: Switching between keyboard layouts. X-To: LOJBAN@cuvmb.cc.columbia.edu To: John Cowan X-Mozilla-Status: 0001 Content-Length: 1207 I use both Swedish and US keyboard layouts regularly, and I must say that it isn't impossible at all to get used to several different keyboards. The difference is of course much smaller than between (US) QWERTY and DVORAK, but punctuation is very different, and the (for the purpose of typing in Swedish) important letters =E5,=E4,=F6 are sadly missing on the US keyboard. (On the other hand, brackets and such are more comfortable to type, which is nice when you're programmin= g). Both I and others I know who often switch between Swedish and US keyboa= rds have experienced how important the actual symbols on the keys are; typi= ng on a Swedish keyboard configured as US keyboard works well as long as y= ou don't look at the keys; as soon as you do, you start typing as you woul= d on a keyboard configured as it looks! (I'm sure you can get used to thi= s situation too, if you often use that type of configuration.) --=20 o .. w-, ( .| * o ~ !\_~ ~ ~__*, | (=3D) ___o ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ = ~ ... ?? /I\ ' _/_{ . . |> L__ !__} '/XX\ . _| X _// L\_ ,' thorild@upda= te.uu.se / \ \_/\_,\. | I|. [__] `*\__/, (#/ (=3D)http://www.update.uu.se/= ~thorild/) From LOJBAN@CUVMB.CC.COLUMBIA.EDU Tue Oct 21 18:06:32 1997 for ; Tue, 21 Oct 1997 18:06:30 -0500 (EST) Message-Id: <199710212306.SAA06370@locke.ccil.org> Reply-To: Ilya Ketris Sender: Lojban list From: Ilya Ketris Subject: Re: Dvorak (& Lojban) X-cc: lojban@cuvmb.cc.columbia.edu To: John Cowan In-Reply-To: X-Mozilla-Status: 0011 Content-Length: 1535 On Tue, 21 Oct 1997, John Cowan wrote: > 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. B and C are different letters and I didn't mention those. English is not characteristic. I type in Latvian as well. I think of Latvian A, O, T, E, K as of ah, oh, teh, eh, kah, exactly as in Russian: esseantialy, these are the same letters and sounds. As for Unicode folks, I still fail to understand why Russian "A" == Ukrainian "A" != English "A", but Ukrainian "i" == English "i". Similarly, I maintain that Lojban letters just happened to have shapes of Latin ones, but being totally different from them and from English. > 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 It's not you but your fingers who remember this once your mind is in the different typing mode. -- From owner-conlang@BROWNVM.BROWN.EDU Tue Oct 21 18:34:22 1997 for ; Tue, 21 Oct 1997 18:34:17 -0500 (EST) with NJE id 0178 for CONLANG@BROWNVM.BROWN.EDU; Tue, 21 Oct 1997 18:17:53 -0400 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Message-ID: <19971021221517.13644.rocketmail@web1.rocketmail.com> Date: Tue, 21 Oct 1997 15:15:17 -0700 Reply-To: maleter@ROCKETMAIL.COM Sender: Constructed Languages List From: Ferenc Valoczy Subject: Re: Order in the court where these cases will be heard.... To: Multiple recipients of list CONLANG X-Mozilla-Status: 0011 Content-Length: 1557 ---Svona kvap Tony Harris : > > (snipped, several comments about Latin Case Order) > > > > >Wheelock lists them thus: > >Nominative, Genitive, Dative, Accusative, Ablative. > > > >I have been told several times in the past that this is the normal order in > >the US. I can only take the word of US correspondents for this :-) > > > >In Britain the cases are regularly listed: > >Nominative, Accusative, Genitive, Dative, Ablative. > > In most, if not all, of the books I have seen published in the US > the case order is N,G,D,Acc,Abl. In fact, at first I didn't make > the connection that the other books (N,Acc,G,D,Abl) were UK > published. Rather, I just thought it was a strange way of listing > them. > > What WAS the Roman Way of listing the cases? Nuke me if I'm wrong, but the way I remember it is: Nominativus, Accusativus, Dativus, Genitivus, Ablativus. ---Feri === -----------------------*------------------------------------ VALSCZY Ferenc Gyvrgy maleter@rocketmail.com Personal Page: http://www.geocities.com/CapeCanaveral/3976/index.html Uralic Languages Page: http://www.geocities.com/Vienna/3259/index.html Gamyar Language Page: http://members.tripod.com/~tuonela/english/gamyar.html The reason communism will ultimately fail is that Marxism-Leninism cannot dictate the weather. --Feri Valsczy _____________________________________________________________________ Sent by RocketMail. Get your free e-mail at http://www.rocketmail.com From LOJBAN@CUVMB.CC.COLUMBIA.EDU Tue Oct 21 18:46:26 1997 for ; Tue, 21 Oct 1997 18:46:18 -0500 (EST) Message-Id: <199710212346.SAA07982@locke.ccil.org> Reply-To: JORGE JOAQUIN LLAMBIAS Sender: Lojban list From: JORGE JOAQUIN LLAMBIAS Subject: Re: Indirect questions X-To: lojban To: John Cowan X-Mozilla-Status: 0011 Content-Length: 1518 Clark Nelson: >As an alternative expression for someone's amount of womanliness, >wouldn't >le ka sela'u ce'u ko'a ninmu [kei] >work at least as well as an indirect question using makau? I don't think so. ce'u and makau have different meanings. What you have there is "the property of being the extent to which ko'a is a woman". Consider these examples: la meris cu zmadu la djein le ka sela'u makau ce'u ninmu Mary exceeds Jane in to what extent they're women. li piso'u cu zmadu li piso'i le ka sela'u ce'u xokau prenu cu ninmu "A little" exceeds "much" in how many people are women to that extent. (Assuming it makes sense to talk about extent of being ninmu.) {ce'u} is the place holder for the bearer(s) of the property. {kau} marks the question whose answer makes the bridi true, the claim being that there is such an answer. >I suspect that there's always an alternative to using an indirect >question, Probably true. >and that the alternative would in most cases be "better" (at >least by my own standards) than the indirect question. In most cases the alternative would be more cumbersome. "Better" in the sense that it would be logically more transparent, but "worse" in the sense that it would be almost unmanageable in ordinary conversation (you would need to use quantifiers and the prenex). >I imagine, >however, that there are others who know more and/or believe differently. i naje co'o mi'e xorxes From LOJBAN@CUVMB.CC.COLUMBIA.EDU Tue Oct 21 18:06:40 1997 for ; Tue, 21 Oct 1997 18:06:36 -0500 (EST) Message-Id: <199710212306.SAA06373@locke.ccil.org> Reply-To: mark.vines@wholefoods.com Sender: Lojban list From: Mark Vines Subject: Re: The design of Lojban X-To: LOJBAN@CUVMB.COLUMBIA.EDU To: John Cowan In-Reply-To: Andrew Sieber "The design of Lojban" (Oct 21, 2:15pm) X-Mozilla-Status: 0011 Content-Length: 5211 la .andrus. cusku di'e > Since Lojban is based on Loglan which was designed as a > mechanism for testing the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis which claims, > basically, that people are limited in thought by the language > in which they think, la markl. spuda la .andrus. di'e That's only one interpretation of the SWH. A different interpretation (which I was taught at university) says that language influences _perception_. Perhaps we can compromise between thought & perception to say that language, according to the SWH, influences consciousness. Many of Whorf's beliefs about the influence of language on consciousness have been revised or rejected by later linguists. His comments about Hopi have been shown to apply more to people who learn the language later in life, & for whom the structure of Hopi is what-they-call "foregrounded", than to native speakers of Hopi, for whom the same structure is what-they-call "backgrounded". Consider the word "underhanded" in English. A native speaker of English typically just glosses the word as "sneaky" or "dishonest". But an L2 English speaker may try to figure it out: Does it represent something being hidden under someone's hand? Does it represent a blow struck by the lower hand, when a blow from the upper hand was expected? Does the word "underhanded" relate to the phrase "below the belt"? Or to the word "shorthanded"? Or "shorthand"? Or "underfoot"? Or "sidearm"? The structure of the word "underhanded" is in the foreground of the L2 speaker's awareness. But that same structure is in the background of the L1 speaker's awareness. Whose consciousness is more under the influence of that structure? Whorf would have answered, "The L1 speaker." Later linguists would answer, "The L2 speaker." More material on this can be found in the Lojban FTP Archive. > it's natural to assume that Lojban is as clearly expressive as > possible, so as to remove restrictions imposed by most natural > languages and see what happens when people begin to _think_ in > Lojban. However, an equally valid way of testing the Sapir- > Whorf hypothesis would be to put some odd, obscure restrictions > in the language and see what effect they have on people's > thought processes. This IMO is a very, very insightful comment. > 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. However, > I'm throwing this out as food for thought, and am curious if > anybody thinks/knows that my assumption is false. This IMO is a very, very insightful question. I don't know whether Lojban was intended to raise such barriers. I think that it does raise some barriers while lowering others. Do you imagine that you are interested in women? In music? In logic? In language? Not so, according to Lojban grammar. The x1 place of {cinri} must be an _abstraction_. This raises something of a barrier IMO. And there are other gismu whose place structures raise similar barriers. Don't try to think about defending your country, or your property, in Lojban; people can't defend anything in Lojban; only events can do that, because the x1 place of {bandu} must be an _event_. Perhaps someone, or some event, would care to defend Lojban against this charge? > 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. > 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? Yes. You can leave it ambiguous in a tanru, or you can specify the type of relationship with a cmavo, or with a selbri. > I assume that Lojban has gender-neutral "pronouns." Yes. > 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. Or you can use the other anaphoric resources of Lojban to craft a different approach. On the Lojban numerals: > That's fine and good for me, since I naturally think in decimal > and also use hexadecimal fairly often, and Lojban allows for > both of these. However, how are we ever to convince the Eskimos > of Greenland to learn Lojban? They use base 20. I believe that Lojban has ways to use digits higher than F, but I don't recall what they might be. > Also, are there any _symbols_ beyond 0, 1, 2 ,3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, > and 9 ? I don't think so, but I'm not sure. On ' vs. h: > why not simply use the symbol h as being synonymous with the > symbol ' and thus type comfortably ... ? At least one lobypli has put a similar idea into practice. co'omi'e markl. From LOJBAN@CUVMB.CC.COLUMBIA.EDU Tue Oct 21 19:24:55 1997 for ; Tue, 21 Oct 1997 19:24:54 -0500 (EST) Message-Id: <199710220024.TAA09409@locke.ccil.org> Reply-To: Lee Daniel Crocker Sender: Lojban list From: "Lee Daniel Crocker (none)" Organization: Piclab (http://www.piclab.com/) Subject: Re: The design of Lojban X-To: Lojban Group To: John Cowan X-Mozilla-Status: 0011 Content-Length: 3848 > [Some musing about the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, including the idea > that it can be tested not only by having a language as free as > possible of restrictions, but also by having specific ones.] Yes, it's actually the restrictions that are more interesting to study, and that have been the subject of much study in existing languages. Most such studies don't support the strong SWH, but a few (like the color names study) may support the weaker notion that language does have some effect on thought/perception, if not limiting it. > 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? Not only is there that separation, but every other logical operation one can imagine, and some I can't. > 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? Yes. {le mi mensi} means "the sister somehow associated with me", not "the sister owned by me". In this case, the association is clear from context. In others, e.g. {le mi karce}, it is less clear, and ownership will probably be a default assumption without further context, but the language is clear that it doesn't specify that. Certainly even some cases where ownership is possible another relationship makes more sense: {le mi zdani} is probably the house I live in, whether I own it or not. If you want to clearly state ownership, you can with {poi mi ponse...}, and you can state other associations as well. > 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? Not only does it have no gender-specific pronouns, it has no human- specific ones. If you want to point to a man and say he's large, you say {ta bardu}, exactly the same thing you'd say pointing to a large house. That's one reason why there are "series" of pronouns, so that you can have two or three pronouns expressly assigned referents for a coversation. But any of them can be assigned to any referent. > However, how 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.) Also, are there > any _symbols_ beyond 0, 1, 2 ,3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, and 9 ? > [also comment on using H for '] Wasn't aware of a base-20 culture. They are indeed out of luck, unless they use subscripted digits or something (awkward, but still possible within Lojban). No, there are no digit symbols for the hex digits A-F. In written text, numbers are generally spelled out in roman letters-- each digit is only two letters. But since Arabic numerals will likely continue to be used in other contexts, Arabic-style digits might be an interesting idea. Orthography is really a separate issue from the "language" itself. One could write Lojban in other ways--If I had all the money and time at my disposal, I might develop a gestural form and ideographic form of Lojban. If you want to use Hs, use them; it just makes it a little harder to explain that "cehu" is really one syllable sometimes, etc. -- Lee Daniel Crocker "All inventions or works of authorship original to me, herein and past, are placed irrevocably in the public domain, and may be used or modified for any purpose, without permission, attribution, or notification."--LDC From LOJBAN@CUVMB.CC.COLUMBIA.EDU Tue Oct 21 21:10:48 1997 for ; Tue, 21 Oct 1997 21:10:47 -0500 (EST) Message-Id: <199710220210.VAA13936@locke.ccil.org> Reply-To: JORGE JOAQUIN LLAMBIAS Sender: Lojban list From: JORGE JOAQUIN LLAMBIAS Subject: Re: The design of Lojban X-To: lojban To: John Cowan X-Mozilla-Status: 0011 Content-Length: 1662 cu'u la markl >Do you imagine that you are interested in women? In music? In >logic? In language? Not so, according to Lojban grammar. The >x1 place of {cinri} must be an _abstraction_. You can still be interested in those, but you can't translate that "interested" as {cinri}. It is not uncommon that one word in one language has several different translations in another one. You might want to translate it as {lo'e ninmu e lo'e zgike e lo'e logji e lo'e bangu cu trina mi} , or, if you think {trina} is too strong then perhaps {trimli} or {selju'i} or some other lujvo. >This raises >something of a barrier IMO. And there are other gismu whose >place structures raise similar barriers. I agree that they raise barriers because they force you to make distinctions that you're not used to making in your native language, but not because they don't allow you to say things you may want to say. >Don't try to think >about defending your country, or your property, in Lojban; >people can't defend anything in Lojban; only events can do >that, because the x1 place of {bandu} must be an _event_. Again, then you're not thinking of {bandu}. You may want to say {mi badzu'e le mi gugde e le mi selpo'e}. It would be nicer, though, if there was some system behind the choice of place structures. It is almost impossible to guess by analogy with other words whether the x1 of bandu is a person or an event. >Perhaps someone, or some event, would care to defend Lojban >against this charge? Lojbab has said that he sometimes sees people as events, so event Lojbab may yet happen to defend it. :) co'o mi'e xorxes From LOJBAN@CUVMB.CC.COLUMBIA.EDU Tue Oct 21 21:33:39 1997 for ; Tue, 21 Oct 1997 21:33:35 -0500 (EST) Message-Id: <199710220233.VAA14800@locke.ccil.org> Reply-To: HACKER G N Sender: Lojban list From: HACKER G N Subject: Re: Dvorak (& Lojban) X-To: Lojban List To: John Cowan In-Reply-To: <0EIF007309L7E3@newcastle.edu.au> X-Mozilla-Status: 0011 Content-Length: 2099 John Cowan: > > 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 > Ilya Ketris: > It's not you but your fingers who remember this > once your mind is in the different typing mode. Yes, I was just thinking, if you had to think out consciously which finger went where in just one typing mode, you couldn't type very fast. Whenever you learn a new physical skill, there reaches a certain point where your body remembers it quite independently of whether YOU do. I often have to think about exactly where on the keyboard a QWERTY key is to know it intellectually, but if you sit me down on a QWERTY keyboard I can type using that key automatically, and at 70 words a minute! As for the Dvorak keyboard, thanks go to all the people who wrote to me telling me how I could configure my own keyboard to Dvorak. I have now been experimenting with Dvorak for 6 days including today, and I have found and downloaded a set of 29 Dvorak lessons from the Internet - I am currently on lesson 6. I was amazed at just how quickly I could pick up Dvorak - I had the new letter positions intellectually memorised in the first evening! - and as far as being able to maintain both QWERTY and Dvorak skills at once, I have from the beginning been concerned with using Dvorak only necessarily in lessons, until my speed in it is comparable with my QWERTY speed. I will type diary entries in Dvorak - slowly but surely - but for my uni work I have to use QWERTY still, because it's too important to stuff up with a keyboard with which I'm not yet fully fluent, obviously. And so far I can say that my speed in Dvorak just keeps picking up, but my QWERTY skills have not diminished in the slightest! In fact, I think they're a little bit faster and more accurate than they were before, because of the extra emphasis I've been giving to correct posture and movement of fingers on the keyboard in Dvorak. Geoff From LOJBAN@CUVMB.CC.COLUMBIA.EDU Tue Oct 21 21:51:06 1997 for ; Tue, 21 Oct 1997 21:51:04 -0500 (EST) Message-Id: <199710220251.VAA15545@locke.ccil.org> Reply-To: HACKER G N Sender: Lojban list From: HACKER G N Subject: Re: The design of Lojban X-To: Lojban List To: John Cowan In-Reply-To: <0EIF007329L9E3@newcastle.edu.au> X-Mozilla-Status: 0011 Content-Length: 2962 On Tue, 21 Oct 1997, Mark Vines wrote: > > it's natural to assume that Lojban is as clearly expressive as > > possible, so as to remove restrictions imposed by most natural > > languages and see what happens when people begin to _think_ in > > Lojban. However, an equally valid way of testing the Sapir- > > Whorf hypothesis would be to put some odd, obscure restrictions > > in the language and see what effect they have on people's > > thought processes. > > This IMO is a very, very insightful comment. Lojban does force certain choices that English doesn't. It forces a choice between whether you mean "inclusive-" or "exclusive-or" when you wish to communicate a disjunction; English does not. Lojban forces a choice about whether to speak specifically/non-veridically or non-specifically/veridically in a casual reference, where English does not. Lojban forces a choice about whether or not to include the listener in the "we" pronoun, and the only group of languages I know of that force this same choice are the Melanesian languages of Papua New Guinea. Lojban is also much less tolerant of metaphor than natural languages are. It's not obvious to me at all that Lojban is a superior method of communication to English, especially given its appallingly small root vocabulary. And I don't believe for one second that it has done anything whatsoever to improve my thinking - but at least it hasn't hindered it! > > > 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. However, > > I'm throwing this out as food for thought, and am curious if > > anybody thinks/knows that my assumption is false. > > This IMO is a very, very insightful question. I don't know > whether Lojban was intended to raise such barriers. I think > that it does raise some barriers while lowering others. Yes, I agree with you on that. > > Do you imagine that you are interested in women? In music? In > logic? In language? Not so, according to Lojban grammar. The > x1 place of {cinri} must be an _abstraction_. This raises > something of a barrier IMO. And there are other gismu whose > place structures raise similar barriers. Don't try to think > about defending your country, or your property, in Lojban; > people can't defend anything in Lojban; only events can do > that, because the x1 place of {bandu} must be an _event_. > > Perhaps someone, or some event, would care to defend Lojban > against this charge? > I would imagine that if YOU wanted to defend something in Lojban, you could just use sumti-raising or a lujvo formed with "-zu'e". You can also use sumti-raising to be interested in a concrete rather than an abstraction. Geoff From LOJBAN@CUVMB.CC.COLUMBIA.EDU Wed Oct 22 00:18:52 1997 for ; Wed, 22 Oct 1997 00:18:51 -0500 (EST) Message-Id: <199710220518.AAA20349@locke.ccil.org> Reply-To: Logical Language Group Sender: Lojban list From: Logical Language Group Subject: Re: ni X-To: lee@piclab.com X-cc: lojban@cuvmb.cc.columbia.edu To: John Cowan X-Mozilla-Status: 0011 Content-Length: 906 >I realize that we want to treat the refgram as "correct by definition", >but where the definition is unclear or contradictory, we should clarify >with the most rational, useful interpretation; and in this case, the >one that causes least disruption to the refgram. However, the gismu list is also baselined and is "correct by definition". In this case we have clearly stated that the x1 of klani is a ni, the x2 of lifri is a li'i, etc. 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/" Order _The Complete Lojban Language_ - see our Web pages or ask me. From LOJBAN@CUVMB.CC.COLUMBIA.EDU Wed Oct 22 00:19:32 1997 for ; Wed, 22 Oct 1997 00:19:31 -0500 (EST) Message-Id: <199710220519.AAA20367@locke.ccil.org> Reply-To: Logical Language Group Sender: Lojban list From: Logical Language Group Subject: abstractor place structures X-To: lojban@cuvmb.cc.columbia.edu To: John Cowan X-Mozilla-Status: 0001 Content-Length: 2998 I think I need to put up the place structures of the various defining gismu for the abstractors so we are clear why they attribute to particular places of those gismu. >ckaji kai quality x1 has/is >characterized by property/feature/trait/aspect/dimension x2 (ka) x2 is pretty much the definition of "ka". >fasnu fau event 'happen' x1 (event) is an >event that happens/occurs/takes place x1 defines "nu" >klani lai quantity x1 is a quantity >quantified/measured/enumerated by x2 (quantifier) on scale x3 (si'o x1 defines "ni" >lifri lif fri experience 'life' x1 >[person/passive/state] undergoes/experiences x2 (event/experience) x2 defines "li'i" >sidbo sib si'o idea x1 (idea >abstract) is an idea/concept/thought about x2 (object/abstract) by thinker x x1 defines "si'o" Jorge: > lei va mlatu cu klani li paci le ka kancu > Those cats are in quantity 13 as counted. Why not just use kancu as the selbri? > le rismu poi mi te vecni cu klani li ci le ka ki'ogra > The rice that I bought amounts to 3 in kilograms. > > le rismu poi mi te vecni cu klani li repivoso le ka rupnu > The rice that I bought amounts to 2.49 in pesos. You could use merli for both of these. >But when we need to create a new measure word, we have to >base it on {klani}. For example: > > le sakta cu klani li ci le ka se kabri > The sugar amounts to three in being cupped. le sakta cu se merli li ci le se kabri ckilu The sugar is measured to be 3 on the be-cupped scale. >I don't know what gismu we would use to form new measure words >if a klani is not a concrete object. If klani ckilu, gradu, merli were intended for these purposes. >One factor you haven't considered is that if we settle on the unraised >meaning the gi'uste will need some cleaning up. The gismu listy is baselined, and you will note in the refgrammar that the gismu list actually overrides the refgrammar in case of conflict. We don't "clean it up" unless the gismu list is unlcear or self-conflicting. (For example, I am sure x2 of merli is not a ni or a li - I tended to be explicit for these, but "quantity" is ambiguous tp spme people vs "quantifier", and perhaps "quantity abstraction". 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/" Order _The Complete Lojban Language_ - see our Web pages or ask me. From LOJBAN@CUVMB.CC.COLUMBIA.EDU Wed Oct 22 00:19:14 1997 for ; Wed, 22 Oct 1997 00:19:13 -0500 (EST) Message-Id: <199710220519.AAA20355@locke.ccil.org> Reply-To: Logical Language Group Sender: Lojban list From: Logical Language Group Subject: Re: Linguistics journals X-To: c9709244@ALINGA.NEWCASTLE.EDU.AU X-cc: lojban@cuvmb.cc.columbia.edu To: John Cowan X-Mozilla-Status: 0011 Content-Length: 1051 >Belknap: >> >By the way, has lojban central managed to get any reviews by the mainstream >> >press, linguistics journals, or logic journals? > >Lojbab: >> No we have not > >Why not? Isn't anyone interested in the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis? Simply speaking, within the academic linguistics community - no. Anthropologists still consider it an interesting and open question, but until Chomsky has been displaced, S/W will be on the outs in linguistic academia. There are of course individual linguists still interested in S/W, but they by and large do not publish on the topic. 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/" Order _The Complete Lojban Language_ - see our Web pages or ask me. From LOJBAN@CUVMB.CC.COLUMBIA.EDU Wed Oct 22 04:34:53 1997 for ; Wed, 22 Oct 1997 04:34:52 -0500 (EST) Message-Id: <199710220934.EAA02952@locke.ccil.org> Reply-To: veion@XIRON.PC.HELSINKI.FI Sender: Lojban list From: Veijo Vilva Subject: Re: APL & Lojban X-To: lojban@cuvmb.cc.columbia.edu To: John Cowan In-Reply-To: ; from Karl Andrews on Tue, Oct 21, 1997 at 12:22:56PM -0700 X-Mozilla-Status: 0011 Content-Length: 587 la karl cusku di'e > > Another observation is that the Lojban Home Page is hosted from Finland. > Finland was known around the world in the mid-80s as a hotbed of APL > activity. Interesting coincidence? Veijo, are you familiar with APL? Well, I wrote a couple of programs in APL back in '68 or so on an IBM1130 with 16kb core memory, 1Mb HD and typewriter I/O (an APL ball :). The concept was nice, but the available hardware resources were kind of restricting (and still are if you'd like to handle matrices of, say, 5000000+ rows and columns :( co'o mi'e veion From LOJBAN@CUVMB.CC.COLUMBIA.EDU Wed Oct 22 07:34:11 1997 for ; Wed, 22 Oct 1997 07:34:11 -0500 (EST) Message-Id: <199710221234.HAA04943@locke.ccil.org> Reply-To: And Rosta Sender: Lojban list From: And Rosta Organization: University of Central Lancashire Subject: Re: Linguistics journals X-To: LOJBAN@cuvmb.cc.columbia.edu To: John Cowan X-Mozilla-Status: 0011 Content-Length: 1009 gEOff: > Belknap: > > >By the way, has lojban central managed to get any reviews by the mainstream > > >press, linguistics journals, or logic journals? > > Lojbab: > > No we have not > > Why not? Isn't anyone interested in the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis? yES, though not in the mainsteam, but i DON'T think Lojban would present a sufficiently focused basis for experiment. I myself can think of hardly any ways in which Lojban might legitimately be discussed in lx journals. Good psycholinguistic data on processing of things with and without terminators (i.e. natlangy and nonnatlangy structures) might be interesting. If someone came to me wanting to do a dissertation on Lojban, and didn't mind being taken for a loony or not increasing their emplyability, then I'd encourage them to do one, but only if it was essentially a work falling within the domain of Cultural Studies: that is, Lojban as a creation, rather than as a language. Same goes for all other invented lgs. --And. From LOJBAN@CUVMB.CC.COLUMBIA.EDU Wed Oct 22 09:39:25 1997 for ; Wed, 22 Oct 1997 09:38:51 -0500 (EST) Message-Id: <199710221438.JAA08224@locke.ccil.org> Reply-To: Robin Turner Sender: Lojban list From: Robin Turner Subject: Re: Linguistics journals X-To: lojban@cuvmb.cc.columbia.edu To: John Cowan In-Reply-To: <199710220452.HAA13687@firat.bcc.bilkent.edu.tr> X-Mozilla-Status: 0011 Content-Length: 2819 >> >>Why not? Isn't anyone interested in the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis? > >Simply speaking, within the academic linguistics community - no. >Anthropologists still consider it an interesting and open question, but >until Chomsky has been displaced, S/W will be on the outs in linguistic >academia. > Hmmm. I was under the impression that Chomsky, if he has not been exactly displaced, is definitely being nudged to one side. The cutting edge of linguistics is semantics rather than syntax these days, and the upsurge of interest in categorisation theory and metaphor has also provoked a resurgence of interest in Whorf (though I see fewer references to Sapir). George Lakoff, for example, has a pretty good re-appraisal of Whorf (in "Women, Fire and Dangerous Things") and the SWH seems to be cropping up all over the place. For an example of how far linguistics has moved since the Generative Grammar days, have a look at the website "The Cognitive Science of Metaphor" - unfortunately I don't have the URL to hand, but you can link to it from my page . Whether this renewed interest in SWH will lead to more linguists becoming interested in Lojban is anybody's guess. IMHO Lojban cannot really test the SWH (I vaguely recall earlier strings on this subject), not least because Sapir and Whorf's work does not really produce a testable hypothesis anyway. Whorf himself rejected the idea of a "correlation" between language and culture, and as for the idea of language restricting thought, as Ellis (in "Language, Thought and Logic") points out, this relies on the rather dubious assumption that they are two distinct entities. On the other hand, Lojban does provide some fairly enticing area for linguistic research (which I may pursue when I get my MA out of the way). Certainly the creation of a speech community from scratch would offer some intriguing possibilities for sociolinguists, and a discourse analysis of Lojban would be another possibility. At the moment this is hampered by the small amount of written Lojban (other than translations) in circulation, and the lack of spoken exchanges, but as a long-term project it would be very interesting to see to what exten Lojbanists follow the discourse patterns of their native discourse communities or create new discourse patterns specific to Lojban. Yet another research area would be language aquisition - is Lojban easier to learn as a second language, and (when we eventually have children learning Lojban) is it possible to aquire it as a first language, or does it have features which make conscious learning necessary? Robin Turner Bilkent Universitesi, IDMYO, Ankara, Turkey. From LOJBAN@CUVMB.CC.COLUMBIA.EDU Wed Oct 22 09:43:12 1997 for ; Wed, 22 Oct 1997 09:42:49 -0500 (EST) Message-Id: <199710221442.JAA08321@locke.ccil.org> Reply-To: HACKER G N Sender: Lojban list From: HACKER G N Subject: Re: Linguistics journals X-To: Lojban List To: John Cowan In-Reply-To: <0EIG00241AZ7BC@newcastle.edu.au> X-Mozilla-Status: 0011 Content-Length: 2252 On Wed, 22 Oct 1997, And Rosta wrote: > gEOff: > > Belknap: > > > >By the way, has lojban central managed to get any reviews by the mainstream > > > >press, linguistics journals, or logic journals? > > > > Lojbab: > > > No we have not > > > > Why not? Isn't anyone interested in the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis? > > yES, though not in the mainsteam, but i DON'T think Lojban would > present a sufficiently focused basis for experiment. In what ways? It seems to me that if Lojban really is intended to test the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, then this kind of feedback should be important. > > I myself can think of hardly any ways in which Lojban might > legitimately be discussed in lx journals. Fairly shattering. In what ways is it not relevant? > Good psycholinguistic > data on processing of things with and without terminators (i.e. > natlangy and nonnatlangy structures) might be interesting. Is that because terminators are so unnatural? Terminators are one of the most irritating features of the language, IMHO, and the easiest to get wrong. In fact, it's interesting to note that a common cause of initial syntax errors with computer programs is in forgetting to close brackets in an expression, just as a common cause of syntax errors in Lojban is in forgetting a non-elidable terminator. There's a lesson to be learned there, I'm sure... > > If someone came to me wanting to do a dissertation on Lojban, > and didn't mind being taken for a loony or not increasing their > emplyability, then I'd encourage them to do one, but only if > it was essentially a work falling within the domain of Cultural > Studies: that is, Lojban as a creation, rather than as a language. And what form would that take in the domain of Cultural Studies? 'Gee, look what some loonies have actually bothered to think up...,' etc.? > Same goes for all other invented lgs. Invented languages are not worthy of study in linguistics? Is this because they don't pass a test of useability that is found in speaker viability? For if so, then Esperanto might merit some study. (Not that I'd want to undertake it, but anyway...) What you say is interesting. I'd just like you to elaborate on it a little bit. Geoff From LOJBAN@CUVMB.CC.COLUMBIA.EDU Wed Oct 22 09:50:32 1997 for ; Wed, 22 Oct 1997 09:50:20 -0500 (EST) Message-Id: <199710221450.JAA08508@locke.ccil.org> Reply-To: And Rosta Sender: Lojban list From: And Rosta Organization: University of Central Lancashire Subject: Re: The design of Lojban X-To: LOJBAN@cuvmb.cc.columbia.edu To: John Cowan X-Mozilla-Status: 0011 Content-Length: 401 la markl. cusku: > > why not simply use the symbol h as being synonymous with the > > symbol ' and thus type comfortably ... ? > > At least one lobypli has put a similar idea into practice. If that lobypli is me, I've decided to try to use only standard baselined Lojban, on the grounds that Lojban Central feels that the interests of Lojban are best served in that way. --co`o, mi`e and From LOJBAN@CUVMB.CC.COLUMBIA.EDU Wed Oct 22 13:11:22 1997 for ; Wed, 22 Oct 1997 13:11:21 -0500 (EST) Message-Id: <199710221811.NAA14447@locke.ccil.org> Reply-To: John Cowan Sender: Lojban list From: John Cowan Organization: Lojban Peripheral Subject: Re: The design of Lojban X-To: Lojban List To: John Cowan X-Mozilla-Status: 0011 Content-Length: 439 la .and. cusku di'e: > If that lobypli is me, I've decided to try to use only standard > baselined Lojban, on the grounds that Lojban Central feels that > the interests of Lojban are best served in that way. > > --co`o, mi`e and A worthy resolution, but subtly undermined by the signature, I think? -- John Cowan http://www.ccil.org/~cowan cowan@ccil.org e'osai ko sarji la lojban