Date: Thu, 23 Oct 1997 21:06:27 -0500 (EST) Message-Id: <199710240206.VAA29519@locke.ccil.org> Reply-To: Chris Bogart Sender: Lojban list From: Chris Bogart Subject: Re: Linguistics journals X-To: Lojban List To: John Cowan In-Reply-To: <199710240036.SAA24754@indra.com> X-Mozilla-Status: 0011 Content-Length: 947 X-From-Space-Date: Thu Oct 23 21:06:42 1997 X-From-Space-Address: LOJBAN@CUVMB.CC.COLUMBIA.EDU 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. Obviously its rigor is going to be less well-accepted by a logician's audience at first, but if nothing else it provides something concrete to shoot holes in. As several people have pointed out, reading abstract discussion of logic is *difficult*. I'm fascinated by Lakoff's "Women, Fire, and Dangerous Things", but there are several chapters I just can't get through. Chris