X-Digest-Num: 119 Message-ID: <44114.119.666.959273824@eGroups.com> Date: Tue, 20 Apr 1999 18:22:11 +0100 From: Colin Fine Subject: Re: Planned languages X-Yahoo-Message-Num: 666 Content-Length: 7330 Lines: 149 vecu'u le notci po'u <371C54B3.AEB9F4EA@bcc.bilkent.edu.tr> la Robin Turner cu cusku di'e >From: Robin Turner > >Richard wrote: >(with some cuts) > > >> A few weeks ago I left dangling a thread about Loglan, a planned >> human language begun in the 1950s to test the Whorf Hypotheses that >> language controls or greatly influences thought. Its creator >> decided to optimize Loglan for logically unambiguous expression, to >> see if those learning the language would acquire enhanced abilities >> to think logically, and in order to facilitate comparison and >> measurement, to develop a vocabulary more or less cognate with as >> many major world languages as practical, to minimize any relative >> advantage or disadvantage for students from different backgrounds, >> such as might be the case with Esperanto, whose vocabulary is >> predominantly European. > >I'm not sure how testable the Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis really is, but it's a >noble effort. Speaking as a Loglanist from the '70s, I never believed in the practicality of testing it - not even when Jim wrote a proposal for a specific test. I was always much more interested in the grand game of constructing a language and seeing (in a subjective way) what it did to my thinking. Note also that the respects in which Loglan was supposed to have influence in the Sapir-Whorf sense were NOT primarily in vocabulary. It had to have a vocabulary, so some strategy was required to generate it; but the unique properties were to be in various aspects of the grammatical structure. > >> >> I know very little about Lojban except that it is an offshoot of >> Loglan which came about over a copyright dispute (perhaps in the >> mid-1980s?). As I understand it some of those working with JCB >> wanted to make it public domain, he wanted to retain legal >> ownership, so the others claimed his copyright applied to the >> individual words, not the structure of the language, which they had >> helped develop. Lojban is *almost* isomorphic with Loglan, except >> for vocabulary. >> > >AFAIK this is the case. It would have been pretty hard for JCB to claim >copyright on the structure, since this would really mean claiming >copyright on predicate logic! The other problem was that not only was JCB >claiming copyright, but he was continually changing the language. This >combination frustrated people somewhat. Actually it was never accepted that he could copyright even the words, but the devisers of Lojban took the opportunity to rebuild the vocabulary from an updated set of languages, and with some new guidelines concerning combining forms. > >> Far from being all but dead, I see Loglan building for >> greater activity than ever before. The listserv is getting >> significant participation from those whose native language is not >> English, including native speakers of Russian, Ossetian, German, and >> Esperanto. (Actually, most of the Esperantists are not native >> speakers; but not all of them know English nor Loglan, so there is >> interest in developing a Loglan-Esperanto / Esperanto-Loglan >> dictionary). >> > >I must admit I was surprised at this resurgence of activity (as postings >on the Lojban list show as well). > >> >> Blanu is roughly equivalent to "blue", "bleu", "azul", "azure", >> etc., but does not mean "blue" in the absolute sense it would in >> other languages. > >Well, if Berlin etc. have taught us anything, it is that these words are >not absolute anyway. > >> I don't know about Lojban, but in Loglan it is a >> two-place predicate, comparing X to Y (or ba to be, or da to de, to >> use colloquial Loglan terms). Loglan predicates by default make >> relative comparisons rather than absolute declarations. After all, >> there are many different shades of blue and not quite so blue: so >> "da blanu de" means that "da" (= it(1) ) is more blue than "de" (= >> it(2) ). It is perfectly regular and common to omit trailing >> arguments of a predicate, so "da blanu" means simply "it's blue". >> > >According to what you've just said, it means "It's bluer", which kind of >obliges you to either fill in the missing argument or supply a default >value in the definition. > The trouble with the Loglan standard of making most or all 'adjectival' predwords two-place is that they either require or imply (I'm not sure which) that there is a scale of (in this case) blueness. I accepted this when I was using Loglan, but now that it has been questioned, I am dubious. >> >> Loglan structure requires (and presumably the same or something very >> similar applies to Lojban) that leading predicates be expressed at >> least by blank place holders, so as I understand it, one way to say >> that an item currently under consideration is less than ultimately >> blue, is *"Ba blanu de". (something, it doesn't matter what, is >> more blue than it(2).) * I could be mistaken about the choices of >> "ba" and "de", but the principle here is sound loglan. >> In fact it is one of the differences between Loglan and Lojban (unless Loglan has changed since I looked) that predicates with the first argument omitted have different meanings. In Loglan AFAIK they are imperatives, whereas Lojban requires an explicit pro-argument 'ko' to express that. Sentences lacking the first argument are grammatically 'observatives' in Lojban, glossed as 'Lo! Something blue!' and the like; but a number of writers (including myself) have taken the licence to omit the first arg as a generalisation of the licence to omit any other, and will happily use 'blanu' as a sentence in connected discourse to mean e.g. 'it was blue' - first arg omitted and understood just as any other can be. All of which does not affect your point, which is that, given an intrinsically comparative pred (such as loglan 'blanu' or lojban 'blamau' [blue-more]) it is possible to express less-than-superlative by saying 'something is bluer than it': 'ba blanu da'/'da blamau ko'a' > >In Lojban, colours are one-place predicates. "da blanu" just menas that X >is-blue by generally accepted atandards of blueness, not that it is bluer >than something (though obviously there is a logical implication that a >blue thing is bluer than a red thing). Since there are no sharp colour >distinctions, we can read "da blanu" as "the colour of X approximates to >prototypical BLUE". Of course, colour term vary across languages, but >there seems to be substantial agreement on prototypes. > >I suspect that most cognitive linguists would regard Loglan and Lojban as >quixotic projects (which is why I too remained silent on the subject for a >long time). Nevertheless, I would be interested to hear people's ideas. I don't disclaim that epithet. But I am delighted to be able to discuss Loglan and Lojban together after all this time. -- ----------------------------------------------------------------------- | Colin Fine 66 High Ash, Shipley, W Yorks. BD18 1NE, UK | | Tel: 01274 592696/0976 635354 e-mail: colin@kindness.demon.co.uk | | "Don't just do something! Stand there!" | | - from 'Behold the Spirit' (workshop) | -----------------------------------------------------------------------