Message-ID: <344FAFA7.6B5B@locke.ccil.org> Date: Thu, 23 Oct 1997 16:12:23 -0400 From: John Cowan Organization: Lojban Peripheral X-Mailer: Mozilla 3.0 (WinNT; I) MIME-Version: 1.0 To: Lojban List Subject: Re: stero References: <199710231551.KAA02556@locke.ccil.org> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Mozilla-Status: 0011 Status: RO Content-Length: 99999 la markl. cusku di'e: > What does {stero} mean? The gi'uste gives the English gloss > as "steradian". Unfortunately, neither I nor my dictionaries > know what "steradian" means. What does "steradian" mean? It is the measure of 3-dimensional angles, corresponding to "radian" as the measure of 2-dimensional angles. There are pi/2, or is it 2pi, radians in 360 degrees, but I forget how steradians are measured, and anyhow.... -- John Cowan http://www.ccil.org/~cowan cowan@ccil.org e'osai ko sarji la lojban From LOJBAN@CUVMB.CC.COLUMBIA.EDU Thu Oct 23 20:34:13 1997 for ; Thu, 23 Oct 1997 20:34:11 -0500 (EST) Message-Id: <199710240134.UAA28288@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 X-Mozilla-Status: 0011 Content-Length: 853 >This doesn't mean that a conlang can be of no interest to linguist, but it > is interesting *in a different way*. For example, once it has acquired a > community of speakers (better still, some that speak it natively), one can > look at the sort of things that the speakers do to it, the degree to which > they adhere to or deviate from the standard as set up by the creator, and > try to rationalise the observed phenomena and try to link them to linguistic > theory. But of course it'll be some time before Lojban gets to that point. Well, that is fair enough. I don't think any linguist should waste time trying to dissect the design of YET ANOTHER CONLANG unless it actually gains speaker viability. It will be interesting if this one does because it does work so differently from natlangs, which I take it was deliberate. Geoff From LOJBAN@CUVMB.CC.COLUMBIA.EDU Thu Oct 23 20:54:46 1997 for ; Thu, 23 Oct 1997 20:54:45 -0500 (EST) Message-Id: <199710240154.UAA29231@locke.ccil.org> Reply-To: HACKER G N Sender: Lojban list From: HACKER G N Subject: Re: a challenge! X-To: Lojban List To: John Cowan In-Reply-To: <0EII00CDHIJYW3@newcastle.edu.au> X-Mozilla-Status: 0011 Content-Length: 688 On Thu, 23 Oct 1997 bob@MEGALITH.RATTLESNAKE.COM wrote: > Not long ago: > > Bob saw mountains flying over Vermont. > > This is true in at least two interpretation: I was flying my airplane > at an altitude of about 1 km and I saw actual mirages of actual > mountains. (A fairly rare sight in the North East -- I reported it to > a delighted weather man.) I also saw actual mountains on the ground, > as they are supposed to be. > > The challenge: state both interpretations in one Lojban utterance. Be > sure to indicate the appropriate veridical natures of things. la bab noi ca vofli ga'u la vrMANT pu viska lo cmana voi vofli ga'u la vrMANT Easy. Geoff From LOJBAN@CUVMB.CC.COLUMBIA.EDU Thu Oct 23 21:19:13 1997 for ; Thu, 23 Oct 1997 21:19:02 -0500 (EST) Message-Id: <199710240219.VAA00175@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: <0EIJ00CEY783XD@newcastle.edu.au> X-Mozilla-Status: 0011 Content-Length: 885 On Tue, 21 Oct 1997, Chris Bogart wrote: > Could Lojban be used, if not "studied" as such, by a linguist/logician as > a tool for discussing and illustrating some fine points of linguistic > logic? Not writing *in* lojban, just giving examples in Lojban. An > abstract discussion of how abstraction, quantification, and argument > raising (to pick three things out of the hat) would be less readable and > more prone to error than one that analyzed example sentences with {nu}, > {ci}, and {tu'a} in them. In other words, maybe Lojan could be useful in > the same way math notation or normal predicate calculus are useful. Don't you think linguists/logicians already HAVE such notational schemes in place, which are accepted generally within their own communities? Why would they want to learn a WHOLE NEW LANGUAGE just so they can re-invent the wheel? :) Geoff From LOJBAN@CUVMB.CC.COLUMBIA.EDU Thu Oct 23 21:29:32 1997 for ; Thu, 23 Oct 1997 21:29:29 -0500 (EST) Message-Id: <199710240229.VAA00554@locke.ccil.org> Reply-To: HACKER G N Sender: Lojban list From: HACKER G N Subject: Re: machine translation X-To: Lojban List To: John Cowan In-Reply-To: <0EII00C7AFPGW3@newcastle.edu.au> X-Mozilla-Status: 0011 Content-Length: 2255 On Thu, 23 Oct 1997, Mark Vines wrote: > coi doi lobypli > > Someone mentioned that the Cyc system would be superior to > Lojban for machine translation between natural languages. > I hope we can discuss this further. To keep this discussion objective, let me include a snippet from the Cyc site itself, about CycL: "CycL, the CYC representation language, is a large and extraordinarily flexible knowledge representation language. It is essentially an augmentation of first-order predicate calculus (FOPC), with extensions to handle equality, default reasoning, skolemization, and some second-order features. (For example, quantification over predicates is allowed in some circumstances, and complete assertions can appear as intensional components of other assertions.) CycL uses a form of circumscription, includes the unique names assumption, and can make use of the closed world assumption where appropriate." Now, who can tell me whether Lojban is capable of the same power and flexibility as this computer language? > > the Cyc ontology, which my friend > Liane Acker helped to assemble; Cool. I'd love to get involved with Cyc myself. I think they're doing some very exciting things with AI. > > Also, the little I've seen of CycL did NOT seem to approach > cultural neutrality as closely as Lojban does. Be more specific. In what ways did it not? Remember, it's just a computer language; it's NOT mean for communication between humans. > > Finally, someone said that CycL can express things that > Lojban cannot easily express, such as quantification of > whole predicates (bridi? or bridi-tails?) & something which > included the string "skolemic". That's all included in the above snippet. > > Sorry, my copy of McCawley is in pieces; it fell apart while > I was trying to learn the difference between intensions & > extensions. What does "skolemic" mean? I'd like to know this myself. > > Also, I thought we could quantify practically anything in > Lojban. What gives? Well, as Jorge already pointed out, Lojban is not well-suited to quantifying selbri, for one thing. What are some things that Lojban can quantify besides, say, sumti and to a lesser extent indicators? Geoff From LOJBAN@CUVMB.CC.COLUMBIA.EDU Thu Oct 23 23:42:47 1997 for ; Thu, 23 Oct 1997 23:42:26 -0500 (EST) Message-Id: <199710240442.XAA04801@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: <0EIJ00CO98I4W3@newcastle.edu.au> X-Mozilla-Status: 0011 Content-Length: 1835 On Tue, 21 Oct 1997, Chris Bogart wrote: > On Fri, 24 Oct 1997, HACKER G N wrote: > > > {ci}, and {tu'a} in them. In other words, maybe Lojan could be useful in > > > the same way math notation or normal predicate calculus are useful. > > > > Don't you think linguists/logicians already HAVE such notational schemes > > in place, which are accepted generally within their own communities? Why > > would they want to learn a WHOLE NEW LANGUAGE just so they can re-invent > > the wheel? :) > > Well if they've already done all this, why are *we* reinventing the > wheel? Ha, ha, ha! That's the most insightful question I've seen anyone ask on this list. Why indeed? I don't know. > We could just take their scheme, add vocabulary words and a > method of pronouncing the symbols. I thought that's what we were doing, in effect, with Lojban's being based on predicate logic. Most of the logic of Lojban comes from W.V.O Quine's work Word and Object (1960), and most of the work on negation comes from Larry Horn's work The Natural History of Negation. > I thought what we were doing was more > ambitious than what was already available. I don't think so. I think it's very derivative of stuff that's already out there. > I'd be interested in hearing > more about some of these notational schemes. I'd think they were pretty boring to get into, actually. My knowledge of same is not complete, but I know that linguists use all kinds of tree structures, diagrams and various forms of symbolic notation to represent the various mechanics of natural language. And in logic, of course, they have been employing symbolic notation for various kinds of predicate and argument manipulation forever. I think that Lojban is very much the student of these disciplines rather than the master. Geoff From LOJBAN@CUVMB.CC.COLUMBIA.EDU Thu Oct 23 23:43:16 1997 for ; Thu, 23 Oct 1997 23:42:48 -0500 (EST) Message-Id: <199710240442.XAA04809@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: <01bce01d$6cf68560$02180880@rsrodger> X-Mozilla-Status: 0011 Content-Length: 690 On Thu, 23 Oct 1997, Rob Rodgers wrote: > >Don't you think linguists/logicians already HAVE such notational schemes > >in place, which are accepted generally within their own communities? Why > >would they want to learn a WHOLE NEW LANGUAGE just so they can re-invent > >the wheel? :) > > > Gee, the question I was going to ask was why anyone would learn a language > that sort of does the job instead of using existing notation that actually > does it? Hear, hear. That's the way I feel about Lojban with respect not only to linguistic and logical notation, but also machine translation. Lojban at best only SORT OF does the job that existing systems already do. Geoff From LOJBAN@CUVMB.CC.COLUMBIA.EDU Fri Oct 24 01:21:02 1997 for ; Fri, 24 Oct 1997 01:20:58 -0500 (EST) Message-Id: <199710240620.BAA06748@locke.ccil.org> Reply-To: HACKER G N Sender: Lojban list From: HACKER G N Subject: Re: machine translation X-To: Lojban List To: John Cowan In-Reply-To: X-Mozilla-Status: 0011 Content-Length: 2850 On Thu, 23 Oct 1997, Edward Cherlin wrote: > At 6:29 PM -0700 10/23/97, HACKER G N wrote: > >On Thu, 23 Oct 1997, Mark Vines wrote: > >> coi doi lobypli > >> > >> Someone mentioned that the Cyc system would be superior to > >> Lojban for machine translation between natural languages. > >> I hope we can discuss this further. > > > >To keep this discussion objective, let me include a snippet from the Cyc > >site itself, about CycL: > > > >"CycL, the CYC representation language, is a large and extraordinarily > >flexible knowledge representation language. It is essentially an > >augmentation of first-order predicate calculus (FOPC), with extensions to > >handle equality, default reasoning, skolemization, and some second-order > >features. (For example, quantification over predicates is allowed in some > >circumstances, and complete assertions can appear as intensional > >components of other assertions.) CycL uses a form of circumscription, > >includes the unique names assumption, and can make use of the closed world > >assumption where appropriate." > > > >Now, who can tell me whether Lojban is capable of the same power and > >flexibility as this computer language? > > My impression is that Lojban can express all of second-order logic > (roughly, quantifying selbri) that can be expressed :-) but that power in > this sense is not a linear scale. The advantage of CycL is supposed to be > that what it represents is computable. Full second-order logic is anything > but computable. How is it not computable, if I may ask? > > >Well, as Jorge already pointed out, Lojban is not well-suited to > >quantifying selbri, for one thing. What are some things that Lojban can > >quantify besides, say, sumti and to a lesser extent indicators? > > > "Not well-suited" is a dangerous phrase in this context. Even though Lojban > does not have syntax specifically for quantifying selbri, it can apparently > express it using constructed terms. Please do not ask me how. This came up in the discussion about cats other-than lying on chairs. Jorge's example (as amended by John Cowan) was something like: su'o bu'a cei na vreta zu'o le mlatu cu bu'a le stizu and Jorge also said that quantified selbri were an abomination on the langauge and that it didn't take much of a level of complexity before Lojban lost it in the ability to quantify the selbri, or some other such thing. Jorge, you'll have to clarify this or correct me if I'm wrong. :) > I won't know > at least until I understand "anti-ka", which I have been given to > understand is the answer to my prayers and a can of worms. ? I've never even HEARD of "anti-ka". Sounds toxic. :) > > > co'o mi'e ed. > .i e'osai la lojban pluka ko "Please! Enjoy Lojban."? I'm not sure I can enjoy Lojban on command. :) Geoff From LOJBAN@CUVMB.CC.COLUMBIA.EDU Fri Oct 24 04:14:10 1997 for ; Fri, 24 Oct 1997 04:14:00 -0500 (EST) Message-Id: <199710240914.EAA18415@locke.ccil.org> Reply-To: veion@XIRON.PC.HELSINKI.FI Sender: Lojban list From: Veijo Vilva Subject: ADM: xiron (was Re: ni) X-To: lojban@cuvmb.cc.columbia.edu To: John Cowan In-Reply-To: ; from And Rosta on Thu, Oct 23, 1997 at 03:36:26PM +0000 X-Mozilla-Status: 0001 Content-Length: 997 la and cusku di'e > Xiron is being recalcitrant, so I can't check the gi`uste, but Yes, xiron has been rather recalcitrant lately due to too large a number of workstations using a common 2 Mbaud modem line to access Novell servers at the wrong end of the line. We have experienced 95 % packet losses, 5 s average delay times and 10 min total black-outs. Last night, however, we succeeded in setting up a fiber optic link, which, I hope, permanently solves the problems. At the moment my average ping response time across the Atlantic (to sunsite.unc.edu) is 120ms and FTP transfer rate in excess of 150 kbytes/s (getting 2Mb files, unknown load at the other end). The ping response time of ftp.tex.ac.uk is about 50ms. Accessing xiron locally from the other end of the new link, I can get >500kbytes/s with FTP (access from a multiuser system with 50 users logged in; at this end, I can saturate the LAN at about 1Mbyte/s). co'o mi'e veion From LOJBAN@CUVMB.CC.COLUMBIA.EDU Fri Oct 24 19:12:17 1997 for ; Fri, 24 Oct 1997 19:12:16 -0500 (EST) Message-Id: <199710250012.TAA14280@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 Status: O X-Mozilla-Status: 0011 Content-Length: 954 la ed mi spuda di'e >> I don't agree that you can have >>{le nu broda cu prenu} = "the event of brodaing is a person" > >In English, a corporation is a legal person different from all the people >and things that make it up, defined by the relation among those people and >things in the act of incorporation et seq. Does this qualify? Not in my view. A corporation may be a prenu, that's a matter for lojbo lawyers to decide, but it isn't an event. {i xu lo kagni cu prenu i mi na djuno i xu lo kagni cu fasnu i pe'i na go'i} >>or {lo prenu cu fasnu} = "some person happens". > >I think this is possible in some science fiction contexts, especially in >the "many worlds" ontology sometimes proposed for quantum mechanics. In >fact, I remember several episodes of Star Trek and of course Dr. Who which >seem to call for such statements. What would it mean? In what context would you say that a person occurs? co'o mi'e xorxes From LOJBAN@CUVMB.CC.COLUMBIA.EDU Fri Oct 24 19:29:33 1997 for ; Fri, 24 Oct 1997 19:29:32 -0500 (EST) Message-Id: <199710250029.TAA14790@locke.ccil.org> Reply-To: JORGE JOAQUIN LLAMBIAS Sender: Lojban list From: JORGE JOAQUIN LLAMBIAS Subject: Re: machine translation X-To: lojban To: John Cowan Status: OR X-Mozilla-Status: 0011 Content-Length: 993 cu'u la djef >su'o bu'a cei na vreta zu'o le mlatu cu bu'a le stizu > >and Jorge also said that quantified selbri were an abomination on the >langauge and that it didn't take much of a level of complexity before >Lojban lost it in the ability to quantify the selbri, or some other such >thing. Jorge, you'll have to clarify this or correct me if I'm wrong. :) For example, does the above mean "at least one which is {na vreta}" or is it "at least one which is not {vreta}"? The bu'a system for Lojban is just not well thought up, it was sort of a last minute addition. Selbri can still be quantified in the usual way {su'o da poi selbri}, at the cost of having longer expressions. >> I won't know >> at least until I understand "anti-ka", which I have been given to >> understand is the answer to my prayers and a can of worms. > >? I've never even HEARD of "anti-ka". Sounds toxic. :) Indeed, I hope lojbab explains what he meant by that. co'o mi'e xorxes From LOJBAN@CUVMB.CC.COLUMBIA.EDU Fri Oct 24 19:30:00 1997 for ; Fri, 24 Oct 1997 19:29:56 -0500 (EST) Message-Id: <199710250029.TAA14794@locke.ccil.org> Reply-To: JORGE JOAQUIN LLAMBIAS Sender: Lojban list From: JORGE JOAQUIN LLAMBIAS Subject: Re: ni X-To: lojban To: John Cowan Status: OR X-Mozilla-Status: 0011 Content-Length: 600 Lojbab: >As for as the language design goes, ANY kind of sumti can go in any place >of any selbri. The semantics might be impossible, but that just makes life >more fun. So far as I am concerned, this debate is about what is semantically >sensible in the specified places, which is not a grammatical issue and is >not intended to be covered by the refgrammar or the gismu list in quite so >authoritative a sense as the grammar is covered. ?! Almost every single debate on the list has been like that! There's practically nothing to debate on syntactics, is there? co'o mi'e xorxes From LOJBAN@CUVMB.CC.COLUMBIA.EDU Fri Oct 24 06:12:26 1997 for ; Fri, 24 Oct 1997 06:12:25 -0500 (EST) Message-Id: <199710241112.GAA19289@locke.ccil.org> Reply-To: David Barton Sender: Lojban list From: David Barton Subject: Re: machine translation X-To: c9709244@ALINGA.NEWCASTLE.EDU.AU X-cc: lojban@cuvmb.cc.columbia.edu To: John Cowan In-Reply-To: <199710240133.VAA12623@severn.wash.inmet.com> (message from HACKER G N on Fri, 24 Oct 1997 11:29:23 +1000) X-Mozilla-Status: 0011 Content-Length: 1339 Geoff writes: To keep this discussion objective, let me include a snippet from the Cyc site itself, about CycL: "CycL, the CYC representation language, is a large and extraordinarily flexible knowledge representation language. It is essentially an augmentation of first-order predicate calculus (FOPC), with extensions to handle equality, default reasoning, skolemization, and some second-order features. (For example, quantification over predicates is allowed in some circumstances, and complete assertions can appear as intensional components of other assertions.) CycL uses a form of circumscription, includes the unique names assumption, and can make use of the closed world assumption where appropriate." First, I note that CycL is proprietary. There are a large number of other languages that cover the same territory, including KIF, the Z notation, and the Larch Shared Language. Now, who can tell me whether Lojban is capable of the same power and flexibility as this computer language? Lojban includes Mex, which can encode any predicate calculus statement. Dave Barton <*> dlb@intermetrics.com )0( http://www.intermetrics.com/~dlb From LOJBAN@CUVMB.CC.COLUMBIA.EDU Fri Oct 24 22:07:27 1997 for ; Fri, 24 Oct 1997 22:07:25 -0500 (EST) Message-Id: <199710250307.WAA20761@locke.ccil.org> Reply-To: JORGE JOAQUIN LLAMBIAS Sender: Lojban list From: JORGE JOAQUIN LLAMBIAS Subject: Re: abstractor place structures X-To: lojban To: John Cowan X-Mozilla-Status: 0011 Content-Length: 3702 >>mlatu be fi lo selci? >>You must have mistyped something. >ni mlatu kei (be) fi lo selci ni doesn't have an x3 either. And if you mean {fe}, which you wouldn't need anyway, le ckilu cu selci ma? >> lei va mlatu cu klani li paci le kamselkancu >> >I have no idea if that lujvo has lost the counter place %^) >Whether it is "abstracted out" or not, it is still implicitly relevant >unless zi'o-filled, or a lujvo is created which explicitly does not have a >counter. You may be right. Make it: lei va mlatu cu klani li paci le kamzilkancu >>>But I would prefernot to stretch klani/ni to be used >>>for counts of objects. >>How do you interpret the "enumerated by x2" bit in the gi'uste >>definition of klani? >I was specifically pointing to the x2 be a number/quantifier. >I am sure that there is SOME x3 (whether we can agree on what it is) whereby >le ni mlatu cu klani li xo le broda >asks for how many cats there are in which case the ni abstraction is >enumerated by that count. (Enumerated can means imply that it has a > specific number applicable to it). Then why do you say that it is stretching it to use klani for number of things? >>>I am willing to have a count always to imply a counter. >>That's fine. I am not, and so I look for ways to say in Lojban >>what I want to say. >zi'o forever %^) I thought that disliking zi'o was one of the few things you and I agreed on! Oh well... >> >mitre and >>>the like are units (gradu), >>If you mean {ro mitre cu gradu} then I disagree. > >Maybe I mean anti-ka(le ka mitre) cu gradu %^) And what is that? >Or maybe I need an anti-si'o. Clearly >lo si'o mitre is not a gradu, but it is certainly releated to lo gradu. It probably is related. It is also related to klani. That doesn't help us. >>>and I intended, back before people got hung up >>>on place structure conventions, that new measurement units would be lujvo >>>based on gradu. >>I don't understand your point. Are you saying that because that's >>what you intended back then we should avoid any rational analysis? >No I am saying that the rational analysis must follow the needs of the >language user and is secondary to it. But I do, as a language user, need a rational way of creating new measure words with the same place structure as the basic measure words. Regularity of place structures is a plus for language users. >>How do you use {gradu} to say "the sugar is 3 in cups", in a way that >>parallels {le sakta cu grake li xanono} for "the sugar is 600 in grams"? >You can't, but a certain pattern of lujvo involving gradu should >have that pattern of sumti structure. Thus, I THINK I have >"newton" in my files as "baplygradu" assuming that metric unist would have >preeminent use of shortest lujvo. And baplygradu would have a place structure >such that you would say x1 is measured in newtons as x2, with other parameters >x3, x4, x5 as required my place struture analysis. Sounds extremely ad hoc to me. Why not "baplai"? You can't argue against it on the basis of the place structure of klani if you are going to absolutely ignore the places of gradu in forming yours anyway. >>dekto x1 is ten [1x10**1] of x2 in dimension/aspect x3 >>????? x1 is one [1x10**0] of x2 in dimension/aspect x3 >>decti x1 is a tenth [1x10**-1] of x2 in dimension/aspect x3 > >When they come up with a metric prefix for 10 ** 0, tyhen we'll make a gismu >for it %^). But my point was that we already have one: gradu. The more regularity there is in place structures the better for the ease of learning language. co'o mi'e xorxes From LOJBAN@CUVMB.CC.COLUMBIA.EDU Fri Oct 24 09:48:49 1997 for ; Fri, 24 Oct 1997 09:48:37 -0500 (EST) Message-Id: <199710241448.JAA23733@locke.ccil.org> Reply-To: Ivan A Derzhanski Sender: Lojban list From: Ivan A Derzhanski Subject: Re: APL & Lojban X-To: LOJBAN@cuvmb.cc.columbia.edu X-cc: Irene A Gates <70732.244@CompuServe.COM> To: John Cowan X-Mozilla-Status: 0011 Content-Length: 1136 Karl Andrews wrote: > I originally became interested in Loglan and then Lojban as a means for > sharpening my thinking in general, somewhat in the same manner that APL > did for my math-oriented thinking. What jumped out at me was here are two > other Lojban people who were familiar with APL. [...] For what it's worth, I am also sort of familiar with APL, although I haven't used it much; and I don't know if Irene Gates is still on this list, but she made her bread programming in APL for several years. I think the regularity is a real one: my appreciation of APL and of Lojban share the same source -- a liking for the unusual plus a fondness of conciseness. -- `Meum est propositum in taberna mori; Vinum sit appositum sitienti ori: Ut dicant cum venerint angelorum chori "Deus sit propitius isti potatori".' (Archpoet of Cologne, `The Confession of Golias') Ivan A Derzhanski H: cplx Iztok bl 91, 1113 Sofia, Bulgaria W: Dept for Math Lx, Inst for Maths & CompSci, Bulg Acad of Sciences From LOJBAN@CUVMB.CC.COLUMBIA.EDU Fri Oct 24 12:35:48 1997 for ; Fri, 24 Oct 1997 12:35:11 -0500 (EST) Message-Id: <199710241735.MAA00265@locke.ccil.org> Reply-To: absieber@eos.ncsu.edu Sender: Lojban list From: Andrew Sieber Subject: Re: Dvorak (& Lojban) X-To: Lojban list To: John Cowan X-Mozilla-Status: 0011 Content-Length: 2394 bob@megalith.rattlesnake.com wrote: > Are you practicing using exercises written for the *Dvorak* keyboard? Yes, I am. Available at http://www.mit.edu:8001/people/jcb/Dvorak/dvorak-course/ I was interested to see that I'm not the only one on this mailing list using these particular lessons. (No, the "jcb" in the URL is not "James Cooke Brown".) Ron Kuris wrote: > > Does anybody on this list happen to have an amateur radio license? > > Just curious. > > I do. KE6SHF. I was just curious because it seemed to me that if a lot of us were, it might be interesting to set up meetings on HF to allow realtime communication and also spoken rather than written Lojban to be used. I don't know of any other form of communication that would be practical to allow several people in geographically remote locations to communicate in realtime by voice for no (or little) money. I don't know of any Internet programs that would allow this, either. As far as I know, Internet phones work only between two people (though I may be mistaken). For me personally, any amateur-Lojban communications would have to wait until a future date, partly because I don't have any HF gear (though I will be learning how to build such gear sometime in the next couple years), and partly because I need to spend at least a few months learning enough Lojban to communicate effectively in realtime. But it is something I would like to do sometime in the future. BTW, my call is KD4JTV. On a different topic: I am quite concerned by the recent discussion on this list about the difference in opinion about what certain phrases mean in Lojban. Although I'm not able to follow the specifics (yet), it appears that it is not at all obvious what certain phrases mean, particularly when relating to abstractions (but again, I don't have a clue what the specific ideas being discussed are). All I'm understanding right now that there are ideas which should be simple to express, but are not in fact easy to express in Lojban. Well I currently know English, and (possibly with some difficulty) I can express anything I want. It might be awkward, but I can express it. The whole point behind wanting to learn Lojban is that expressions will be easier and more logical. If the language doesn't do this, then it has no advantage over English. What's going on here? --Andrew From LOJBAN@CUVMB.CC.COLUMBIA.EDU Sat Oct 25 15:01:19 1997 for ; Sat, 25 Oct 1997 15:01:17 -0500 (EST) Message-Id: <199710252001.PAA20265@locke.ccil.org> Reply-To: JORGE JOAQUIN LLAMBIAS Sender: Lojban list From: JORGE JOAQUIN LLAMBIAS Subject: Re: abstractor place structures X-To: lojban To: John Cowan X-Mozilla-Status: 0011 Content-Length: 4518 Lojbab: >>>>>But I would prefernot to stretch klani/ni to be used >>>>>for counts of objects. >>>>How do you interpret the "enumerated by x2" bit in the gi'uste >>>>definition of klani? >>>I was specifically pointing to the x2 be a number/quantifier. >>Then why do you say that it is stretching it to use klani for number >>of things? > Because I am not sure that everyone (including me when I am caught up >on sleep and rational) accepts that klani with any scale is equivalent to >kancu with no counter. Then I don't understand what you mean by "enumerated". > To my mind, a count without a counter >is more or less meaningless. If you put it like that, of course. You're just playing with English words. "Count" and "counter" are obviously from the same root. But there are cardinalities that cannot be counted. And we often talk of number of things without implying that anyone ever counted them. > Coujnting is the placing of objects in one >to one correspondence with some kind fo numbering scheme. >The numbering >scheme is artificial, and that implies an artificer to choose and apply the >numbering scheme to the counting process. Are you saying that you can't talk of the cardinality of a set without talking of there being some artificer behind it? Can you talk about anything at all without an artificer then? >>>Maybe I mean anti-ka(le ka mitre) cu gradu %^) >>>Or maybe I need an anti-si'o. >What I mean by these comments is that out of the mass of all events of >da mitre li pa, we distil an idea or set of properties that constitute the >concept of "meter". {le ka ce'u mitre li pa} is the property of being one meter long, yes. >But a meter is not a set of properties, it is a thing >that has those properties. {lo mitre} is a thing that has that property. The meter, in English, is a unit of length (among other things like the rhythm of a verse), not the same as {lo mitre}. >Thus we need to turn the abstraction into a >non-abstract which the abstraction applies to. I don't know if this makes >any sense or not. It doesn't make sense to me. You seem to be confusing the two words {mitre} and "meter", which have related but different meanings. >>But I do, as a language user, need a rational way of creating new >>measure words with the same place structure as the basic measure >>words. Regularity of place structures is a plus for language users. >Fine, butthat regularity may be a convention that is specific to the problem to >be solved and not necessarily as generalized as the dikyjvo conventions of >Chapter 12. "Regularity specific to the problem to be solved" is kind of contradictory. >Still and all, many gismu are in the gisdmu list in order to be used in >lujvo. I am quite sure that gradu was added specifically to allow the >creation of new units. I am not sure that it has much use if it cannot >be used in such lujvo (specifically, I see no value in a 10**0 metric >prefix, and if anyone else had, there would already be one in all the >languages) Who said anything about it being a metric prefix? {kilto} and kin may have entered the language by virtue of there being metric prefixes for them, but once in the language they're gismu just like any other. And they happen to form a series for which {gradu} fits nicely in the middle. I never proposed using gradu as a prefix, nor are we limited to using {kilto} as a prefix. I can't think of English words equivalent to the Spanish "millar", "centena" and "decena", which would be translated into Lojban as {kilto}, {xecto} and {dekto}. The next one, "unidad", would be {gradu}. >Meanwhile we have a baseline, and changing the place structure is a closed > topic. But in this case no place structure is required to change. {klani} already has the place structure that I want! I'm not asking for changes there. >Violating the dikyjvo conventions, specifically permitted by the Book, >is still permitted. I agree that we want the "violations" as such to be > conventional in their own way, so as to allow easy creation of new lujvo. >But I am less wedded than most people to following the existing >conventions religiously if they do not serve the needs of the community. I, on the other hand, have no qualms about doing something different from what's recommended in the Book if I think it's the rational thing to do. The reference grammar is an excellent work, but not perfect. co'o mi'e xorxes From LOJBAN@CUVMB.CC.COLUMBIA.EDU Fri Oct 24 14:05:58 1997 for ; Fri, 24 Oct 1997 14:05:56 -0500 (EST) Message-Id: <199710241905.OAA03469@locke.ccil.org> Reply-To: Lee Daniel Crocker Sender: Lojban list From: "Lee Daniel Crocker (none)" Organization: Piclab (http://www.piclab.com/) Subject: Re: Dvorak (& Lojban) X-To: Lojban Group To: John Cowan In-Reply-To: <199710241637.JAA22539@red.colossus.net> from "Andrew Sieber" at Oct 24, 97 12:32:10 pm X-Mozilla-Status: 0011 Content-Length: 2021 > On a different topic: I am quite concerned by the recent discussion on > this list about the difference in opinion about what certain phrases > mean in Lojban. Although I'm not able to follow the specifics (yet), it > appears that it is not at all obvious what certain phrases mean, > particularly when relating to abstractions (but again, I don't have a > clue what the specific ideas being discussed are). All I'm > understanding right now that there are ideas which should be simple to > express, but are not in fact easy to express in Lojban. Well I > currently know English, and (possibly with some difficulty) I can > express anything I want. It might be awkward, but I can express it. > The whole point behind wanting to learn Lojban is that expressions will > be easier and more logical. If the language doesn't do this, then it > has no advantage over English. What's going on here? Two points: (1) The existence of disagreement about what certain constructs actually mean does not necessarily imply that either meaning was "difficult to express". It's very simple and obvious for me to say {li piso'i ni ma'a tavla fi le sidbo} "we've talked a lot about abstractions", and easy for most to understand it; it's just that others may disagree on exactly what it means or whether it is strictly grammatical (in the type-safety sense; it parses grammatically). And (2) "ease of expression" is not the only, or even primary, goal of creating Loglan. While we don't want it to be unreasonably hard to say ordinary things, a bit of difficulty in saying other things is OK in exchange for the ability to say them clearly and unambiguously in ways that natural languages cannot. -- 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 Fri Oct 24 15:29:12 1997 for ; Fri, 24 Oct 1997 15:29:10 -0500 (EST) Message-Id: <199710242029.PAA05981@locke.ccil.org> Reply-To: Logical Language Group Sender: Lojban list From: Logical Language Group Subject: BOOK: good news and bad news X-To: lojban@cuvmb.cc.columbia.edu To: John Cowan X-Mozilla-Status: 0001 Content-Length: 4026 Well, I'm pleased to say that we have finally topped 100 paid sales of the Lojban reference grammar - THe Complete Lojban Language, also known colloquially in this mailing list as the Book %^). This is in spite of having around 40 book orders promised in my early September poll of the list, as yet lacking payment. I hope I hear from those of you who spoke up earlier. The bad news is that the printer called to day and reported that the bindery will be taking longer than they told me last month to bind and ship the books. I am not sure whether the printer or the bindery or both screwed up, but in any event, they are now saying that the books will be done either on 12 Nov or 19 November. Being a pessimist on matters pertaining to the book, I am compelled to assume the latter, which is almost a month later than the printer originally had promised. The bottom line is that those of you who have ordered will receive the books a little later, and given the vagaries of the mail system and the holiday season, those of you who are overseas especially should not expect to receive your copy before the new year unless you have ordered air mail. We are set up to mail out the copies pre ordered fairly quickly once we get them in, thanks to assistance from Dave Barton, but we do need to get the books first. On the other hand, the delay in getting the books is a delay before we have to pay off the printer, and more chance to get advance sales to offset that payment. Therefore, I am extending the date by which advance payment orders must be received until 30 November 1997 in order to qualify for the $35 advance sale price. From 1 December until 31 May then, the price will be $39 for a direct order. The cover price is $48, and I have confirmation that the Internet bookseller www.amazon.com is selling the book at that price (they ordered a copy). Amazon does have an overseas shipping rate that is better than we have come up with for bulk air mail, and they can more easily handle credit card orders via the Internet, so they are perhaps a viable alternate way to order the book for some overseas people especially if you wish to get the book quickly at an overseas location. Shipping costs for orders from us remain as follows: Within the U.S. US$5 Canada and Mexico US$6 All other countries (surface mail) US$10 All other countries (airmail) US$22 in addition to the $35 pre-order book price. VA residents need to add 4.5% sales tax, which is $1.58 on a single copy at the preorder price. I still have yet to mail written notice of publication to LLGs extensive mailing list - which I have not maintained during the book publishing era, making it a real mess that I am still cleaning up. We intend that people on our mailing list will get approximately 1 month from our date of mailing to purchase the books at the preorder price, even if that pushes the date beyond 30 November. So far, only 6 or the 100 orders have specified that they would like the author to autograph their copy. WE are offering this to people preordering, with a likely delay of no more than a month in when you receive your copy (but there will be a delay for autographed copies). There is no extra charge for an autographed copy provided that you are willing to wait. (If you are not sure whether you asked for an autographed copy and wish to make sure your copy is autographed, be sure to email me soon.) 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 Fri Oct 24 15:43:04 1997 for ; Fri, 24 Oct 1997 15:42:55 -0500 (EST) Message-Id: <199710242042.PAA06442@locke.ccil.org> Reply-To: Logical Language Group Sender: Lojban list From: Logical Language Group Subject: Re: ni X-To: a.rosta@UCLAN.AC.UK X-cc: lojban@cuvmb.cc.columbia.edu To: John Cowan X-Mozilla-Status: 0011 Content-Length: 1776 >> 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. > >Xiron is being recalcitrant, so I can't check the gi`uste, but >I don't see how this helps, unless the x1 of klani makes clear >whether it can also be filled by a number or not, or by an >quantity of measurement units, or by a du`u, or whatever. I posted the place strutures of the relevant gismu from the gi'uste a couple days ago. Jorge has correctly pointed out that I did not explicitly use the word "ni" in the x1 for klani - an omission on my part, but certainly my intent (I think I have been sloppier about labelling x1s in the gismu list in this way, since the place structures are worded as natiuralistic English sentences, and such omission does not stand out as much). As for as the language design goes, ANY kind of sumti can go in any place of any selbri. The semantics might be impossible, but that just makes life more fun. So far as I am concerned, this debate is about what is semantically sensible in the specified places, which is not a grammatical issue and is not intended to be covered by the refgrammar or the gismu list in quite so authoritative a sense as the grammar is covered. 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 Fri Oct 24 16:00:31 1997 for ; Fri, 24 Oct 1997 16:00:30 -0500 (EST) Message-Id: <199710242100.QAA07010@locke.ccil.org> Reply-To: Logical Language Group Sender: Lojban list From: Logical Language Group Subject: Re: Linguistics journals X-To: lojban@cuvmb.cc.columbia.edu To: John Cowan X-Mozilla-Status: 0011 Content-Length: 1938 And: >Well: If I was asked to review a grant application for >research of this type, and if I wasn't the Lojban-supporter >I am, then I would want to see a well-made prima facie case >for expecting the research to be fruitful. E.g. what advantage >does Lojban have in this respect over ordinary predicate >logic notation. But someone could probably make such a case. Well, I think the prima facie case for this is fairly simple. People do not fluently speak or use predicate logic notation, and it seems unlikely that anyone ever will. On the other hand, any machine AI will require a lot of real world knowledge base inputs in order to be able to function. A fluent Lojban speaker/writer CAN exist, and at least a large subset of the language can be easily processed into predicate logic compatible f orm (The research work and language skill of Nick Nicholas is eviodence of both of these). This would lead one to believe that the a much better human/ computer interface for inputting the knowledge base data would result by having Lojban speakers (who need not be expert in computer AI nor necessarily is predicate logic, but rather might be expert in an application field) input the knowledge base directly in Lojban. Whether internal storage is in Lojban text (which could be more easily read out and interpreted by a non-computer person) or in predicate logic notation, is a tradeoff more in storage than in AI technology, it seems to me. 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 Fri Oct 24 16:38:15 1997 for ; Fri, 24 Oct 1997 16:38:09 -0500 (EST) Message-Id: <199710242138.QAA08924@locke.ccil.org> Reply-To: Logical Language Group Sender: Lojban list From: Logical Language Group Subject: Re: The design of Lojban X-To: lojban@cuvmb.cc.columbia.edu To: John Cowan X-Mozilla-Status: 0011 Content-Length: 2308 Jorge: >And: >>> Lojbab has said that he sometimes sees people as events, so >>> event Lojbab may yet happen to defend it. :) >>I agree with Lojbab here (always surprises me when that happens). >>To my mind, restricting a tersumti to a nu serves only to exclude >>abstract objects like numbers, ka, du`u, and so on. > >Well, I may agree with you. I don't agree that you can have >{le nu broda cu prenu} = "the event of brodaing is a person" >or {lo prenu cu fasnu} = "some person happens". I still say that you can have the latter, though I would translate it as "Being a person happens" or "Having a personality happens" for the English and it then makes more colloquial sense. In Lojban terms, we might prefer lonu da prenu cu fasnu to lo prenu cu fasnu, but I think they mean essentially the same thing. For the other example, if a computer exhibits apparent personality in pseudodialog (as with Eliza program), we might say "le nu le skami cu gasnu la elaizys. cu prenu". It seems to me that le prenu is anything that exhibits lenu ce'u ckaji le ka ce'u prenu (hop I am using ce'u corerectly here,though perhaps I need subscripts). The requirement for all this to make sense is to take a "long view" such that we see the entirety of a person's life or of the behavior of a computer as a person, as an "event" interpetable per one or more of the event contours (activity, process, point event or state). When we talk of a person's life as being "a flash in the pan" in some long view of things, we are clearly seeing that person as a point-event. Human beings don't normally think of human lives as being on a scale suitable for "events". On the other hand "light" is nothing more than the manfiestation of quantum events is easily seen as a non-abstraction. Likewise the various subatomic particles. 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 Fri Oct 24 17:26:44 1997 for ; Fri, 24 Oct 1997 17:26:26 -0500 (EST) Message-Id: <199710242226.RAA10764@locke.ccil.org> Reply-To: Logical Language Group Sender: Lojban list From: Logical Language Group Subject: Re: Linguistics journals X-To: lojban@cuvmb.cc.columbia.edu To: John Cowan X-Mozilla-Status: 0011 Content-Length: 1276 >Could Lojban be used, if not "studied" as such, by a linguist/logician as >a tool for discussing and illustrating some fine points of linguistic >logic? Not writing *in* lojban, just giving examples in Lojban. An >abstract discussion of how abstraction, quantification, and argument >raising (to pick three things out of the hat) would be less readable and >more prone to error than one that analyzed example sentences with {nu}, >{ci}, and {tu'a} in them. In other words, maybe Lojan could be useful in >the same way math notation or normal predicate calculus are useful. I have discussed with one linguist (Alexis Manaster-Ramer) about using Lojban as a tool for communicating semantic nuance in a way that English translation cannot in reporting examples from other languages. I also found that Lojban event contours made it easy to understand the Russian perfective system, which is purportedly one of the more difficult features for English speakers to understand. This suggests that Lojban may be useful in conveying the significance of grammatical strutures in one language in terms understandable in English or some other native language. For example, perhaps someone could show ergativity in Lojban more clearly than in English. lojbab From LOJBAN@CUVMB.CC.COLUMBIA.EDU Fri Oct 24 17:15:42 1997 for ; Fri, 24 Oct 1997 17:15:35 -0500 (EST) Message-Id: <199710242215.RAA10245@locke.ccil.org> Reply-To: Logical Language Group Sender: Lojban list From: Logical Language Group Subject: Re: abstractor place structures X-To: lojban@cuvmb.cc.columbia.edu To: John Cowan X-Mozilla-Status: 0011 Content-Length: 3467 >>I can imagine ni mlatu be fi lo selci (be loi mlatu) woulfd be a klani >--More-- >>whose x2 is the count. > >mlatu be fi lo selci? > >You must have mistyped something. ni mlatu kei (be) fi lo selci >Yes, but it's abstracted out, not as an argument of the main selbri. >If you prefer: > > lei va mlatu cu klani li paci le kamselkancu > I have no idea if that lujvo has lost the counter place %^) Whether it is "abstracted out" or not, it is still implicitly relevant unless zi'o-filled, or a lujvo is created which explicitly does not have a counter. >>But I would prefernot to stretch klani/ni to be used >>for counts of objects. > >How do you interpret the "enumerated by x2" bit in the gi'uste >definition of klani? \klani >>But I would prefernot to stretch klani/ni to be used >>for counts of objects. > >How do you interpret the "enumerated by x2" bit in the gi'uste >definition of klani? I was specifically pointing to the x2 be a number/quantifier. I am sure that there is SOME x3 (whether we can agree on what it is) whereby le ni mlatu cu klani li xo le broda asks for how many cats there are in which case the ni abstraction is enumerated by that count. (Enumerated can means imply that it has a specific number applicable to it). >>I am willing to have a count always to imply a counter. > >That's fine. I am not, and so I look for ways to say in Lojban >what I want to say. zi'o forever %^) > >mitre and >>the like are units (gradu), > >If you mean {ro mitre cu gradu} then I disagree. Maybe I mean anti-ka(le ka mitre) cu g radu %^) Or maybe I need an anti-si'o. Clearly lo si'o mitre is not a gradu, but it is certainly releated to lo gradu. >>and I intended, back before people got hung up >>on place structure conventions, that new measurement units would be lujvo >>based on gradu. > >I don't understand your point. Are you saying that because that's >what you intended back then we should avoid any rational analysis? No I am saying that the rational analysis must follow the needs of the languag e user and is secondary to it. >How do you use {gradu} to say "the sugar is 3 in cups", in a way that >parallels {le sakta cu grake li xanono} for "the sugar is 600 in grams"? You can't, but a certain pattern of lujv o involving gradu should have that pattern of sumti structure. Thus, I THINK I have "newton" in my files as "baplygradu" assuming that metric unist would have preeminent use of shortest lujvo. And baplygradu would have a plac e structure such that you would say x1 is measured in newtons as x2, with other parameters x3, x4, x5 as required my place struture analysis. >dekto x1 is ten [1x10**1] of x2 in dimension/aspect x3 >????? x1 is one [1x10**0] of x2 in dimension/aspect x3 >decti x1 is a tenth [1x10**-1] of x2 in dimension/aspect x3 When they come up with a metric prefix for 10 ** 0, tyhen we'll make a gismu for it %^). 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 Fri Oct 24 17:18:29 1997 for ; Fri, 24 Oct 1997 17:17:59 -0500 (EST) Message-Id: <199710242217.RAA10354@locke.ccil.org> Reply-To: Thom Quinn Sender: Lojban list From: Thom Quinn Subject: Using Lojban for Computer-related applications, AI, programming, etc. X-To: lojban@cuvmb.cc.columbia.edu To: John Cowan X-Mozilla-Status: 0001 Content-Length: 1831 Please read the following clipping from the Lojban Website. Has anyone tried using Lojban for computer programming, AI, or any real computer application? IF so, please get back to me! Thanks, Thom Quinn thomquinn@esosoft.com swo@execpc.com ---------------------------------------------- Are there other uses for Lojban? Yes, several. Due to its unambiguous grammar and simple structure, it also can be easily parsed (broken down for analysis) by computers, making it possible for Lojban to be used in the future for computer-human interaction, and perhaps conversation. Lojban's structure is similar to existing artificial intelligence (AI) programming languages, and will likely be a most powerful tool in AI processing, especially in the storing and processing of data about the world and people's conceptions of it. There are also linguists interested in Lojban's potential as an intermediate language in computer-aided translation of natural languages. Because Lojban was designed to be culturally neutral, and has a powerful vocabulary easily learned by people of different language origins, some are interested in Lojban's potential as an international language. These are only the beginnings of the Lojban applications that will be developed in the future. Is Lojban a computer language? Lojban was designed as a human language, and not as a computer language. It is therefore intended for use in conversation, reading, writing, and thinking. However, since Lojban can be processed by a computer much more easily than can a natural language, it is only a matter of time before Lojban-based computer applications are developed. Learning and using Lojban doesn't require you to know anything about computers or to talk like one. -------------------------------------- From LOJBAN@CUVMB.CC.COLUMBIA.EDU Fri Oct 24 16:54:32 1997 for ; Fri, 24 Oct 1997 16:54:27 -0500 (EST) Message-Id: <199710242154.QAA09545@locke.ccil.org> Reply-To: mark.vines@wholefoods.com Sender: Lojban list From: Mark Vines Subject: Re: ni X-To: LOJBAN@CUVMB.COLUMBIA.EDU To: John Cowan In-Reply-To: Logical Language Group "Re: ni" (Oct 24, 3:34pm) X-Mozilla-Status: 0011 Content-Length: 633 la lojbab. cusku di'e > As for as the language design goes, ANY kind of sumti can > go in any place of any selbri. The semantics might be > impossible, but that just makes life more fun. So far as > I am concerned, this debate is about what is semantically > sensible in the specified places, which is not a grammatical > issue and is not intended to be covered by the refgrammar or > the gismu list in quite so authoritative a sense as the > grammar is covered. .ui mi spuda la lojbab di'e Bravo! This should eliminate a lot of confusion & anxiety among new & potential learners of Lojban. co'omi'e markl. From LOJBAN@CUVMB.CC.COLUMBIA.EDU Sun Oct 26 09:47:12 1997 for ; Sun, 26 Oct 1997 09:47:11 -0500 (EST) Message-Id: <199710261447.JAA24632@locke.ccil.org> Reply-To: JORGE JOAQUIN LLAMBIAS Sender: Lojban list From: JORGE JOAQUIN LLAMBIAS Subject: Re: abstractor place structures X-To: lojban To: John Cowan X-Mozilla-Status: 0011 Content-Length: 1031 >> are we limited to using {kilto} as a prefix. I can't think of English >> words equivalent to the Spanish "millar", "centena" and "decena", >> which would be translated into Lojban as {kilto}, {xecto} and {dekto}. >> The next one, "unidad", would be {gradu}. > >Could you use "millar" in a sentence? My dictionary simply gives >"thousand". "Millar" is like "millon", only 1000 instead of 1000000. I guess "thousand" is like that, too. What English doesn't have is a word like "mil". Compare: tres gatos three cats diez gatos ten cats mil gatos *thousand cats un millar de gatos a thousand cats un millon de gatos a million cats Not a big deal. In Lojban you can also say {panono mlatu} or {lo xecto be lo'e mlatu} . > Is "decena" like "dozen", only 10 instead of 12? Exactly. >Maybe >"decade" in the archaic sense of 10 anything, not just 10 years. There's also "decada" in Spanish, but yes, I suppose it could be it. Jorge From LOJBAN@CUVMB.CC.COLUMBIA.EDU Sun Oct 26 10:06:34 1997 for ; Sun, 26 Oct 1997 10:06:32 -0500 (EST) Message-Id: <199710261506.KAA25088@locke.ccil.org> Reply-To: JORGE JOAQUIN LLAMBIAS Sender: Lojban list From: JORGE JOAQUIN LLAMBIAS Subject: Re: What's going on here? X-To: lojban To: John Cowan X-Mozilla-Status: 0011 Content-Length: 1575 > There's >nothing fundamentally different about the two forms of being; they're just >used linguistically for different cases. If a native Spanish-speaker feels >differently, speak now or forever hold your peace. :) Do you feel there's anything fundamentally different about the two forms of "hacer": "to do" and "to make"? Or are they just used linguistically for different cases? Different languages break up the continuum of possible meanings in different ways, that's all. co'o mi'e xorxes > >> In short, I speculate that Lojban does have the potential to expand one's >> mind, but it's not a magic pill that you take and suddenly become smarter; >> it will take years of work, and any benefits will be pretty subjective >> since we'll have learned something that almost by definition we won't be >> able to easily explain to the rest of society. > >In cases where a concept is especially difficult to express briefly in a >native language, we generally just borrow the word or phrase that >expresses it from the other language. It will be interesting to see if >there are any such Lojbanic phrases that anyone will find useful enough to >quote a lot, or eventually borrow and adapt. This process of >word-borrowing has been going on forever and English must be the king of >borrowing words. > >But in terms of actually making the distinction at all, you don't need a >language to do that, you just make the distinction. What a language can do >is find a convenient way of expressing that distinction to others. > >Geoff > > From LOJBAN@CUVMB.CC.COLUMBIA.EDU Sun Oct 26 10:07:30 1997 for ; Sun, 26 Oct 1997 10:07:28 -0500 (EST) Message-Id: <199710261507.KAA25097@locke.ccil.org> Reply-To: JORGE JOAQUIN LLAMBIAS Sender: Lojban list From: JORGE JOAQUIN LLAMBIAS Subject: Re: FANVA X-To: lojban To: John Cowan X-Mozilla-Status: 0011 Content-Length: 485 cu'u la djef >If I say > >mi na klama le zarci gi'e nelci la djan > >am I saying, "I don't go to the store, and I like John", or does the "na" >have to append to every other bridi-tail? {na} should cover the whole bridi. >And if it does, then how do I >say, "I don't go to the store, and I like John", or more coloquially, "I >don't go to the store, but I do like John" or some other such thing? mi klama le zarci nagi'e nelci la djan co'o mi'e xorxes From LOJBAN@CUVMB.CC.COLUMBIA.EDU Fri Oct 24 22:49:35 1997 for ; Fri, 24 Oct 1997 22:49:35 -0500 (EST) Message-Id: <199710250349.WAA21681@locke.ccil.org> Reply-To: Chris Bogart Sender: Lojban list From: Chris Bogart Subject: Re: machine translation X-To: Lojban List To: John Cowan In-Reply-To: <199710242331.RAA14980@indra.com> X-Mozilla-Status: 0011 Content-Length: 225 On Fri, 24 Oct 1997, JORGE JOAQUIN LLAMBIAS wrote: > >? I've never even HEARD of "anti-ka". Sounds toxic. :) > > Indeed, I hope lojbab explains what he meant by that. I assumed he meant {tu'anai} :-) co'o mi'e kris From LOJBAN@CUVMB.CC.COLUMBIA.EDU Fri Oct 24 23:00:23 1997 for ; Fri, 24 Oct 1997 23:00:19 -0500 (EST) Message-Id: <199710250400.XAA21858@locke.ccil.org> Reply-To: Chris Bogart Sender: Lojban list From: Chris Bogart Subject: Re: FANVA X-To: Lojban List To: John Cowan In-Reply-To: <199710240144.TAA29341@indra.com> X-Mozilla-Status: 0011 Content-Length: 958 Revised translation based on Jorge's good suggestions: > >Translation (of a translation) of the Tao Te Ching, chapter 4: la dadjo cu cimni le ka ce'u vasru makau .i se pilno le sevzi gi'enai malclu le munje .i gau da na ka'e se katna gi'a jgena gi'a kandi gi'a smaji .i le dy. jicmu cu se mipri gi'e zvati rode gi'e cabna rodi .i mi na djuno ledu'u makau krasi dy. .i dy. lidne la rarna Notes: * I meant "cabna", not "cabra". * the object of djuno must be an abstraction, not a simple sumti; for Jorge this comes easier because djuno/selsau parallel saber/conocer. I mess this up in Lojban and Spanish alike. * I puzzled for a while over the na...gi'e...gi'e....gi'e in line 3 and couldn't figure out if it should be gi'e or gi'a. But gi'a sounds right, even obvious to me now. * This book is an interesting mixture of cryptic poetic fluff and subtle logical statements. It cries out for further translation. Chris From LOJBAN@CUVMB.CC.COLUMBIA.EDU Fri Oct 24 23:00:40 1997 for ; Fri, 24 Oct 1997 23:00:36 -0500 (EST) Message-Id: <199710250400.XAA21864@locke.ccil.org> Reply-To: Chris Bogart Sender: Lojban list From: Chris Bogart Subject: Re: What's going on here? X-To: Lojban List To: John Cowan In-Reply-To: <199710241637.KAA01056@indra.com> X-Mozilla-Status: 0011 Content-Length: 1936 On Fri, 24 Oct 1997, Andrew Sieber wrote: > currently know English, and (possibly with some difficulty) I can > express anything I want. It might be awkward, but I can express it. > The whole point behind wanting to learn Lojban is that expressions will > be easier and more logical. If the language doesn't do this, then it > has no advantage over English. What's going on here? Suppose you found a group of English speakers who were interested in learning Spanish because they thought that grasping the difference between "ser" and "estar" (two different flavors of "to be") would be an interesting experience, open their minds, have Sapir-Whorf effects, whatever. To native Spanish speakers the distinction comes naturally, but English-speaking students can study it for years and still get it wrong sometimes. Now imagine how much harder it would be if there weren't actually any native Spanish speakers or definitive Spanish texts to look at; the distinction was purely theoretical, and the students had to not only "acquire" the distinction in the language-learning part of their brain, but invent and refine the distinction intellectually as they went along to provide a standard for their language abilities to adhere to. The result would be far more valuable, because, without native Spanish speakers, they'd be the first people in the world to gain an intuitive grasp of this interesting distinction. But it would be damn difficult without a half a billion Spanish speakers available to try to explain it to them and provide examples. In short, I speculate that Lojban does have the potential to expand one's mind, but it's not a magic pill that you take and suddenly become smarter; it will take years of work, and any benefits will be pretty subjective since we'll have learned something that almost by definition we won't be able to easily explain to the rest of society. Chris From LOJBAN@CUVMB.CC.COLUMBIA.EDU Fri Oct 24 23:11:26 1997 for ; Fri, 24 Oct 1997 23:11:25 -0500 (EST) Message-Id: <199710250411.XAA22211@locke.ccil.org> Reply-To: Lee Daniel Crocker Sender: Lojban list From: "Lee Daniel Crocker (none)" Organization: Piclab (http://www.piclab.com/) Subject: Re: ni X-To: Lojban Group To: John Cowan In-Reply-To: <199710242332.QAA06161@red.colossus.net> from "JORGE JOAQUIN LLAMBIAS" at Oct 24, 97 06:28:50 am X-Mozilla-Status: 0011 Content-Length: 1935 >>As for as the language design goes, ANY kind of sumti can go in any place >>of any selbri. The semantics might be impossible, but that just makes life >>more fun. So far as I am concerned, this debate is about what is >>semantically sensible in the specified places, which is not a grammatical >>issue and is not intended to be covered by the refgrammar or the gismu list >>in quite so authoritative a sense as the grammar is covered. While I heartily agree, that doesn't imply that such discussion is not valuable or even necessary. We all agree that the x2 and x3 places of {klama} both refer to a location; is there no point in the reference works being clear which is the source and which the destination? I, personally, like to know whether I'm coming or going. In computer terms, knowing that function1(arg1, arg2) is in the correct syntax doesn't tell me what the function does; for that I need not only a description of the function but some idea of what kinds of arguments it expects and what it will do with them. Even in a "loosely typed" language like Lojban (where any argument can syntactically fit into any place), I still need to know what arguments are /expected/ to know how to call the function. So the question becomes, what kinds of arguments are expected in the function call {xy. ni broda zy.}? Maybe saying "a quantity" and "a scale for that quantity" is sufficent definition, and if we fill it with either a number or an abstraction, so be it. But if that causes other problems (and I'm not sure that it does, but I still suspect so}, then maybe we need to be clearer. -- 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 Sat Oct 25 01:53:41 1997 for ; Sat, 25 Oct 1997 01:53:40 -0500 (EST) Message-Id: <199710250653.BAA25725@locke.ccil.org> Reply-To: Logical Language Group Sender: Lojban list From: Logical Language Group Subject: Re: machine translation X-To: jorge@INTERMEDIA.COM.AR X-cc: lojban@cuvmb.cc.columbia.edu To: John Cowan X-Mozilla-Status: 0011 Content-Length: 535 >>> I won't know >--More-- >>> at least until I understand "anti-ka", which I have been given to >>> understand is the answer to my prayers and a can of worms. >> >>? I've never even HEARD of "anti-ka". Sounds toxic. :) > >Indeed, I hope lojbab explains what he meant by that. I defer to Cowan. You guys talked about this around 2 years ago, and at some point we decided that we didn't need an explicit construct, but my only concept of it is as an inverse operation for the abstraction that is "ka". John? lojbab From LOJBAN@CUVMB.CC.COLUMBIA.EDU Sat Oct 25 01:57:56 1997 for ; Sat, 25 Oct 1997 01:57:55 -0500 (EST) Message-Id: <199710250657.BAA25773@locke.ccil.org> Reply-To: Logical Language Group Sender: Lojban list From: Logical Language Group Subject: Re: ni X-To: jorge@INTERMEDIA.COM.AR X-cc: lojban@cuvmb.cc.columbia.edu To: John Cowan X-Mozilla-Status: 0011 Content-Length: 1543 >Lojbab: >>As for as the language design goes, ANY kind of sumti can go in any place >>of any selbri. The semantics might be impossible, but that just makes life >>more fun. So far as I am concerned, this debate is about what is >semantically >>sensible in the specified places, which is not a grammatical issue and is >>not intended to be covered by the refgrammar or the gismu list in quite so >>authoritative a sense as the grammar is covered. > >?! >Almost every single debate on the list has been like that! There's >practically nothing to debate on syntactics, is there? Not any more. Isn't it nice!!! Before the baseline, a question of semantics could lead to an argument to change the syntax, add a cmavo, or whatever. No more, The language we have is IT for at least 5 years and we have to make it work. This means that semantics will run into pragmatics, no official decisions can or will be made, and people will finally decide to stop arguing and start USING the language. pu'o dargu nunsisti .ui I pleasantly anticipate the end of debate. 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 Sat Oct 25 02:38:22 1997 for ; Sat, 25 Oct 1997 02:36:37 -0500 (EST) Message-Id: <199710250736.CAA26131@locke.ccil.org> Reply-To: Logical Language Group Sender: Lojban list From: Logical Language Group Subject: Re: abstractor place structures X-To: jorge@INTERMEDIA.COM.AR X-cc: lojban@cuvmb.cc.columbia.edu To: John Cowan X-Mozilla-Status: 0011 Content-Length: 6692 >>>>But I would prefernot to stretch klani/ni to be used >>>>for counts of objects. >>>How do you interpret the "enumerated by x2" bit in the gi'uste >>>definition of klani? >>I was specifically pointing to the x2 be a number/quantifier. >>I am sure that there is SOME x3 (whether we can agree on what it is) >whereby >>le ni mlatu cu klani li xo le broda >>asks for how many cats there are in which case the ni abstraction is >>enumerated by that count. (Enumerated can means imply that it has a >> specific number applicable to it). > >Then why do you say that it is stretching it to use klani for number >of things? Because I am not sure that everyone (including me when I am caught up on sleep and rational) accepts that klani with any scale is equivalent to kancu with no counter. Klani was designed so as to be definitional of ni, and thus for it to be used for counts, i think that ni abstractions also have to be usable for counts. I don't know if this works or not, and I am no longer ex-officio the decider of such things. (no one is). >>>>I am willing to have a count always to imply a counter. >>>That's fine. I am not, and so I look for ways to say in Lojban >>>what I want to say. >>zi'o forever %^) >--More-- > >I thought that disliking zi'o was one of the few things you >and I agreed on! Oh well... Of course I dislike it. Whenever I use it, I am to some extent poking fun atthe whole concept of needing it. To my mind, a count without a counter is more or less meaningless. Coujnting is the placing of objects in one to one correspondence with some kind fo numbering scheme. The numbering scheme is artificial, and that implies an artificer to choose and apply the numbering scheme to the counting process. >>> >mitre and >>>>the like are units (gradu), >>>If you mean {ro mitre cu gradu} then I disagree. >> >>Maybe I mean anti-ka(le ka mitre) cu gradu %^) > >And what is that? > >>Or maybe I need an anti-si'o. What I mean by these comments is that out of the mass of all events of da mitre li pa, we distil an idea or set of properties that constitute the concept of "meter". But a meter is not a set of properties, it is a thing that has those properties. Thus we need to turn the abstraction into a non-abstract which the abstraction applies to. I don't know if this makes any sense or not. I am usually half asleep when I post to the list these days because all of my waking time is going to kid support and the mangling of the LLG address list, or recovery from these. >No I am saying that the rational analysis must follow the needs of the >>language user and is secondary to it. > >But I do, as a language user, need a rational way of creating new >measure words with the same place structure as the basic measure >words. Regularity of place structures is a plus for language users. Fine, butthat regularity may be a convention that is specific to the problem to be solved and not necessarily as generalized as the dikyjvo conventions of Chapter 12. My main constraint on ad hoc conventions is that we don't end up with things like JCBs use of the TLI equivalent of zbasu as the tertanru for all manner of causal lujvo, because that is what we do in English. Maybe the place struture of gradu is useless for the purpose I intended and we should have changed itto fit the intended purpose and to be consistent with dikyjvo conventions. But I do not undertsand those conventions well enough to do this, and could not justify yet another pass through the gismu list to optimize it for a lujv-making system that I do not really understand. Still and all, many gismu are in the gisdmu list in order to be used in lujvo. I am quite sure that gradu was added specifically to allow the creation of new units. I am not sure that it has much use if it cannot be used in such lujvo (specifically, I see no value in a 10**0 metric prefix, and if anyone else had, there would already be one in all the languages) Meanwhile we have a baseline, and changing the place structure is a closed topic. Violating the dikyjvo conventions, specifically permitted by the Book, is still permitted. I agree that we want the "violations" as such to be conventional in their own way, so as to allow easy creation of new lujvo. But I am less wedded than most people to following the existing conventions religiously if they do not serve the needs of the community. >>>How do you use {gradu} to say "the sugar is 3 in cups", in a way that >>>parallels {le sakta cu grake li xanono} for "the sugar is 600 in grams"? >>You can't, but a certain pattern of lujvo involving gradu should >>have that pattern of sumti structure. Thus, I THINK I have >>"newton" in my files as "baplygradu" assuming that metric unist would have >>preeminent use of shortest lujvo. And baplygradu would have a place >structure >>such that you would say x1 is measured in newtons as x2, with other >parameters >>x3, x4, x5 as required my place struture analysis. > >Sounds extremely ad hoc to me. Of course it is ad hoc. Most of the language design was ad hoc, especially in the area of semantics. Until Nick tackled lujvo, there was no real interest in TRYING to make the semantics more than rudimentarily systematic, and the systems that were created were QUITE ad hoc. >Why not "baplai"? You can't argue against it on the basis >of the place structure of klani if you are going to absolutely ignore >the places of gradu in forming yours anyway. Of course not. But gradu is in the language for this purpose and klani is in the language for a different purpose. gradu got its rafsi based on being uised for unit lujvo. klani got rafsi based on other kinds of lujvo (not sure what kind). I don't pretend to have a rational way to explain it all away. It was and is ad hoc. Maybe serendipity will strike as it has so often before in this project and we will realize that a "better way" has fallen out of the complexity of the language system that solve our problem without our intending to. But until/unles it does, I prefer to stick with the patterns that have been used in the past. 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 Sat Oct 25 02:47:45 1997 for ; Sat, 25 Oct 1997 02:47:15 -0500 (EST) Message-Id: <199710250747.CAA26240@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: 2648 >In computer terms, knowing that function1(arg1, arg2) is in the >correct syntax doesn't tell me what the function does; for that I need >not only a description of the function but some idea of what kinds of >arguments it expects and what it will do with them. Even in a "loosely >typed" language like Lojban (where any argument can syntactically fit >into any place), I still need to know what arguments are /expected/ >to know how to call the function. > >So the question becomes, what kinds of arguments are expected in the >function call {xy. ni broda zy.}? Maybe saying "a quantity" and >"a scale for that quantity" is sufficent definition, and if we fill >it with either a number or an abstraction, so be it. But if that >causes other problems (and I'm not sure that it does, but I still >suspect so}, then maybe we need to be clearer. Maybe we do, but I suspect that until we get people actually trying to communicate in the language a lot more, we won't be able to tell what constructions are "sufficiently clear". In particular we know that whatever the semantics are of function1(arg1, arg2), in Lojban if we want something that uses arg3 with a particular semantics to it, there will be SOME way to add in that arg3, and if we want a differnet flavor of arg2, or even to leave out arg2, we can do that also. It isn;t instinctive to us NOW how to do this kind of thing - I suspect that it will be one of the early tricks that gets mastered. I've had ways of doing so myself that I hone through ad hoc usage, but until I get in a position to use the language heavily, my own ad hockeries will not necessarily prove convincing to anyone else. But I think they WILL be settled by usage much more quickly than by debate. Then after we get more usage history, we will be in a position to more intelligently deabte and seek general solutions. But that is what we mean by having only promised a 5 year baseline. It may very well take that long before we knwo the language well enough to go to the next level of semantics specification, and I do not presume to say how Lojbanists of 5 years from now will see the problems or their solutions. 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 lojbab@access.digex.net Sat Oct 25 03:17:43 1997 for ; Sat, 25 Oct 1997 03:17:36 -0500 (EST) id DAA29809 for cowan@ccil.org; Sat, 25 Oct 1997 03:19:32 -0400 (EDT) Date: Sat, 25 Oct 1997 03:19:32 -0400 (EDT) From: Logical Language Group Message-Id: <199710250719.DAA29809@access4.digex.net> To: cowan@ccil.org Subject: orders X-Mozilla-Status: 0001 Content-Length: 439 A veritable flood of new orders today after a light week. maybe 10 books in all - I haven;t typed them all in yet. Most interesting is a book order from one B. Comrie! Now maybe we would like to solicit Zwicky to do a review, but Comrie's review (or the review of someone he selects - maybe a grad student familiar with his sytyle of analysis) is oone that I really would like to read, whether positive or negative. lojbab From LOJBAN@CUVMB.CC.COLUMBIA.EDU Sun Oct 26 16:23:37 1997 for ; Sun, 26 Oct 1997 16:23:35 -0500 (EST) Message-Id: <199710262123.QAA05666@locke.ccil.org> Reply-To: JORGE JOAQUIN LLAMBIAS Sender: Lojban list From: JORGE JOAQUIN LLAMBIAS Subject: Re: News, news... X-To: lojban To: John Cowan X-Mozilla-Status: 0011 Content-Length: 562 >de'i li 1997;10;23 lo remoi panzi be mi cu se jbena .i ro le se lanzu cu >.ui kanro .i zoi .ga. Esther Kelly .ga. cu cmene le cifnu noi nixli coi ~mark i mi do geirkansa i mi rinsa la esterkelis i xu do ba bangau la lojban ebu i xu le pamoi ca pu'i tavla >Naskigxis nia dua infano (filino) antaux du tagoj (tri? La dato sxangxis >dum mi tajpas cxi-tiun mesagxon). "Esther Kelly" estas sxia nomo. Sanas >cxiu, kaj cxiu jam venis hejmen. Gratulojn! Sxi bonvenitu en la mondon. Cxu vi parolas al viaj infanoj en Esperanto? co'o mi'e xorxes From LOJBAN@CUVMB.CC.COLUMBIA.EDU Sat Oct 25 11:24:46 1997 for ; Sat, 25 Oct 1997 11:24:45 -0500 (EST) Message-Id: <199710251624.LAA13418@locke.ccil.org> Reply-To: Robin Turner Sender: Lojban list From: Robin Turner Subject: Why Lojban? X-To: Lojban List To: John Cowan X-Mozilla-Status: 0001 Content-Length: 846 One reason people give for studying Lojban is that it helps them to "think more clearly". Lojban has the advantage over formal logics that you can actually think (and speak) in it (although I must admit I've got a long way to go before I reach this stage!). what I would be interested to hear is specific examples of how Lojban has actually helped people's thinking processes. For example, the place structure of "xamgu" gave me an idea for an essay entitled "Yet More Thoughts on 'the good'" . Although I used normal logical notation in the essay itself (and expanded the place structure), it was Lojban which gave the original inspiration. Has anywone else had experiences of Lojban helping to solve problems, whether philosophical, mathemmatical or linguistic? Robin From LOJBAN@CUVMB.CC.COLUMBIA.EDU Sun Oct 26 18:41:01 1997 for ; Sun, 26 Oct 1997 18:40:54 -0500 (EST) Message-Id: <199710262340.SAA09669@locke.ccil.org> Reply-To: Chris Bogart Sender: Lojban list From: Chris Bogart Subject: le da'i smuni be lo nalgerna X-To: Lojban List To: John Cowan In-Reply-To: <199710260424.WAA23274@indra.com> X-Mozilla-Status: 0001 Content-Length: 305 On Sun, 26 Oct 1997, HACKER G N wrote: > > I assumed he meant {tu'anai} :-) > > {tu'anai}? What's that mean? "The sumti associated with the following > abstraction"? .i na gerna .i le smuni be lo nalgerna no drata be la cevni cu slabu .i ri mipri .i mu'i la'edi'u mi la'ezo zo'obu ciska Chris From LOJBAN@CUVMB.CC.COLUMBIA.EDU Sat Oct 25 18:21:30 1997 for ; Sat, 25 Oct 1997 18:21:01 -0500 (EST) Message-Id: <199710252321.SAA26595@locke.ccil.org> Reply-To: George Foot Sender: Lojban list From: George Foot Subject: Re: Dvorak (& Lojban) X-To: Lojban List To: John Cowan In-Reply-To: <199710252044.VAA06907@sable.ox.ac.uk> X-Mozilla-Status: 0011 Content-Length: 3910 On Thu, 23 Oct 1997, HACKER G N wrote: > After a bit of thought on the matter, George, I've decided that this isn't > really an appropriate analogy. The reason that Dvorak is easier to learn > after qwerty than qwerty is to learn after Dvorak is that Dvorak is MORE > INTUITIVE than qwerty, not necessarily more logical. The only way in which I'm not sure I follow what you mean by `intuitive'; surely this concept depends upon what has been learned before? Or do you think some things (like crawling and walking perhaps) are truly intuitive? If so, I'm not sure I'd agree that a language can be intuitive in the same manner. The ability to speak takes a long time to develop; I'm not sure that any (spoken) language can be classed as intuitive in the same way that walking is intuitive. Perhaps the language of our thoughts is, though... > it is more logical than qwerty is that it is designed to make it easier to > type the letters that are more common NATURALLY in English. By contrast, > Lojban is decidedly UN-intuitive and UN-natural. Terminators aren't > natural, a grammar based on predicate calculus is most decidedly > unnatural, and there seems no rhyme or reason to which sumti places take I think I contest the above; perhaps terminators aren't natural because English doesn't use them, the formalised grammer and its roots aren't natural because English shares neither the level of formality nor the derivation? Presumably the grammer seemed natural to those who created it, and to others familiar with predicate calculus (with which I am not familiar). > an abstraction, and which take a concrete, as Mark Vines pointed out. If > you were going to look for a keyboard that was the analagous equivalent of > Lojban, I would say that it would be a keyboard with all of the keys in > alphabetical order - I understand the original typewriter keyboards > actually used this layout. Whereas, if you were looking for a linguistic > analogue to a Dvorak keyboard, then probably something like Interlingua > would be the go, which was designed so that all the most familiar words > for a speaker of a European language were presented in Interlingua in > their most universally recognisable forms. Meaning that Interlingua is intuitive to one who has previously learned one or many European languages? Presumably, though, it would be no more intuitive to a first-time speaker... or would it? > This is to say that Lojban is logical but A PRIORI, whereas Dvorak is > logical but A POSTERIORI. Analagously, the original typewriter keyboards > were also logical and a priori, and Interlingua is logical and a > posteriori. I see your point: Level 1: The Dvorak and QWERTY keyboards both communicate the user's desires to the computer/typewriter by way of pressing on an array of keys. Lojban and other languages both communicate the speaker's desires by way of either written/typed symbols or vocal sounds. Level 2: The Dvorak and QWERTY keyboards both generate one character per keypress, in general, i.e. the output is formed from the keys you press in the order they are pressed, one character per keypress. Lojban differs, though, from English in the way phrases are formed. I can't speak for other languages really. Level 3: The Dvorak keyboard generates different symbols, in general, for each keypress to those the QWERTY keyboard would generate. Lojban uses a different vocabulary, in general, to English. So the keyboards differ at level two, whereas the languages differ at level 3. An analagous comparison to that between English and Lojban, then, would be the one-handed keyboards which involve pressing several keys at once to generate a letter or word? I don't agree that an alphabetical keyboard is any better an analogy than a Dvorak keyboard, though. -- Regards, george.foot@merton.oxford.ac.uk From LOJBAN@CUVMB.CC.COLUMBIA.EDU Sat Oct 25 22:40:53 1997 for ; Sat, 25 Oct 1997 22:40:51 -0500 (EST) Message-Id: <199710260340.WAA03335@locke.ccil.org> Reply-To: HACKER G N Sender: Lojban list From: HACKER G N Subject: Re: machine translation X-To: David Barton X-cc: lojban@cuvmb.cc.columbia.edu To: John Cowan In-Reply-To: <199710240959.FAA02226@hudson.wash.inmet.com> X-Mozilla-Status: 0011 Content-Length: 427 On Fri, 24 Oct 1997, David Barton wrote: > > First, I note that CycL is proprietary. There are a large number of > other languages that cover the same territory, including KIF, the Z > notation, and the Larch Shared Language. > > Lojban includes Mex, which can encode any predicate calculus > statement. Fair enough, but then why learn a whole new language to do what existing languages can already do? Geoff From LOJBAN@CUVMB.CC.COLUMBIA.EDU Sat Oct 25 22:51:07 1997 for ; Sat, 25 Oct 1997 22:50:57 -0500 (EST) Message-Id: <199710260350.WAA03709@locke.ccil.org> Reply-To: HACKER G N Sender: Lojban list From: HACKER G N Subject: Re: APL & Lojban X-To: Lojban List To: John Cowan In-Reply-To: <0EIK00LU86IB06@newcastle.edu.au> X-Mozilla-Status: 0011 Content-Length: 506 On Fri, 24 Oct 1997, Ivan A Derzhanski wrote: > my appreciation of APL and of Lojban share the same source -- > a liking for the unusual plus a fondness of conciseness. I have to comment on this: I do like Lojban aesthetically because it is a very strange language. Esperanto, in contrast, is so European that it is too familiar to me; it's boring. I am also fond of conciseness, but I don't find Lojban particularly concise. Specifically, it takes a lot of syllables to say anything. Geoff From LOJBAN@CUVMB.CC.COLUMBIA.EDU Sat Oct 25 23:00:53 1997 for ; Sat, 25 Oct 1997 23:00:53 -0500 (EST) Message-Id: <199710260400.XAA03952@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: <0EIK001DVE7ZPK@newcastle.edu.au> X-Mozilla-Status: 0011 Content-Length: 1334 > > On a different topic: I am quite concerned by the recent discussion on > this list about the difference in opinion about what certain phrases > mean in Lojban. Although I'm not able to follow the specifics (yet), it > appears that it is not at all obvious what certain phrases mean, > particularly when relating to abstractions (but again, I don't have a > clue what the specific ideas being discussed are). All I'm > understanding right now that there are ideas which should be simple to > express, but are not in fact easy to express in Lojban. Well I > currently know English, and (possibly with some difficulty) I can > express anything I want. It might be awkward, but I can express it. > The whole point behind wanting to learn Lojban is that expressions will > be easier and more logical. If the language doesn't do this, then it > has no advantage over English. What's going on here? > Hah! I seem only really to like Lojban because it's weird. I don't think it has any advantage over English. Everything I can say in English is harder for me to say in Lojban, and I can say anything I want in English without significant difficulty. But then again, I'm not looking for a superlanguage to reform my thought or my expression, and I consider such a goal to be unrealistically ambitious. Geoff From LOJBAN@CUVMB.CC.COLUMBIA.EDU Sat Oct 25 23:33:48 1997 for ; Sat, 25 Oct 1997 23:33:45 -0500 (EST) Message-Id: <199710260433.XAA04643@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: <0EIK001BGER5SH@newcastle.edu.au> X-Mozilla-Status: 0011 Content-Length: 3525 On Tue, 21 Oct 1997, Chris Bogart wrote: > On Fri, 24 Oct 1997, HACKER G N wrote: > > > Well if they've already done all this, why are *we* reinventing the > > > wheel? > > > > Ha, ha, ha! That's the most insightful question I've seen anyone ask on > > this list. Why indeed? I don't know. > > OK, let me be more specific. What interests *you* about Lojban enough to > be subscribed to the list? Another good question. I've addressed a couple of these issues already in different postings, but just for the sake of putting them all together in one letter, here goes. I like conlangs. They're fun. The idea of a made-up language has always appealed to me. On a more practical note, they enable