Date: Thu, 20 Nov 1997 15:04:34 -0500 (EST) Message-Id: <199711202004.PAA15500@locke.ccil.org> Reply-To: And Rosta Sender: Lojban list From: And Rosta Organization: University of Central Lancashire Subject: Re: What is Loglan/Lojban X-To: LOJBAN@cuvmb.cc.columbia.edu To: John Cowan X-Mozilla-Status: 0011 Content-Length: 3199 X-From-Space-Date: Thu Nov 20 15:04:39 1997 X-From-Space-Address: LOJBAN@CUVMB.CC.COLUMBIA.EDU Lojbab: > >As fir what is > >> language - I think it is a matter of definition. I choose to include > >> all means of expression which CAN be consciously controlled at least in > >> part. Lojban as a language design can prescribe for that entire range > >> of expression. Whether people will or will not follow that prescription > >> is of course an individual decision. > > > >This definition of the Loglan project is news to me. If it is > >LLG policy, there ought to be a far more explicit articulation > >of it. I doubt, for example, that any linguist would realize, > >from the available documentation, that the scope of the project > >was as broad as this. > > I suspect you read more into this than I intend. Lojban CAN prescribe some > pragmatics, because we HAVE done so, both in the refgrammar and in other less > solid prescriptive documents (e.g. the draft textbook). Specifically, in the > areas of attitudinal use, in the stated obligation on the speaker to be clear, > and in several aspects of the tense system, I think we have made prescriptive > comments about pragmatics. In the case of the attitudinals, we have extended > the language into traditionally extralinguistic arenas. In the case of the > metalinguistic sentences, we have grammaticalized that which has traditionally > been conveyed by pragmatics (i.e. that a statement is indeed metalinguistic). > sumti-raising and its avoidance is another area where Lojban prescription > counters natlang norms. > > The scope of the project is such as to make the core of the project "work", > and have integrity for the designed purposes. If people nibble away at the > edges based on pragmatics, then the core loses much of its integrity, since > you can avoid everything in the language without difficulty. Some have > said that we did this too far, already - surely you and Jorge have seemed to > me to complain that too much of the language excepts the speaker from needing > to be rigorous with things like scope. I myself have worried about that one, > but decided that Lojban cannot at this point force logical thinking on people, > only enable it, since most potential Lojban speakers don't have the training > to follow a set of rigid rules on logical usage. What you say is not unreasonable, but if you find yourself in a position where you want to tell linguists what Lojban is, I very much urge that you be more explicit. I would suggest that you describe Lojban as a set of constraints on linguistic behaviour. The goal of the Lojban project (as defined by LLG) is for there to be a speech community whose linguistic behaviour is governed by these constraints. The grammar of Lojban is only a subset of these constraints: that is, one of the constraints on behaviour is "Use grammatical Lojban sentences". It is true that I myself have advocated certain additional constraints on behaviour: keeping the logical meaning of the sentences one uses maximally close to the logical meaning one wishes to communicate. But I have not advocated treating this as part of Lojban itself (since I hitherto conceived of Lojban as a generative grammar - i.e. a set of well-formedness constraints on sentences). --And