From pycyn@aol.com Tue Jan 29 12:00:46 2002 Return-Path: X-Sender: Pycyn@aol.com X-Apparently-To: lojban@yahoogroups.com Received: (EGP: mail-8_0_1_3); 29 Jan 2002 20:00:46 -0000 Received: (qmail 77152 invoked from network); 29 Jan 2002 20:00:45 -0000 Received: from unknown (216.115.97.172) by m11.grp.snv.yahoo.com with QMQP; 29 Jan 2002 20:00:45 -0000 Received: from unknown (HELO imo-m06.mx.aol.com) (64.12.136.161) by mta2.grp.snv.yahoo.com with SMTP; 29 Jan 2002 20:00:45 -0000 Received: from Pycyn@aol.com by imo-m06.mx.aol.com (mail_out_v31_r1.26.) id r.15b.80fadd1 (4541) for ; Tue, 29 Jan 2002 15:00:33 -0500 (EST) Message-ID: <15b.80fadd1.29885961@aol.com> Date: Tue, 29 Jan 2002 15:00:33 EST Subject: Re: lojban as a programming language [was Re: [lojban] Lojban for lay program... To: lojban@yahoogroups.com MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/alternative; boundary="part1_15b.80fadd1.29885961_boundary" X-Mailer: AOL 7.0 for Windows US sub 118 From: pycyn@aol.com X-Yahoo-Group-Post: member; u=2455001 X-Yahoo-Profile: kaliputra X-Yahoo-Message-Num: 13089 --part1_15b.80fadd1.29885961_boundary Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit In a message dated 1/29/2002 1:33:22 PM Central Standard Time, xod@sixgirls.org writes: > Subj:Re: lojban as a programming language [was Re: [lojban] Lojban for lay > programmers] > Date:1/29/2002 1:33:22 PM Central Standard Time > From:xod@sixgirls.org > To:lojban@yahoogroups.com > Sent from the Internet > > > > > > Lee Daniel Crocker: > > >And I don't know whether or not Lojban will ever become a full- > > >fledge "human language". I hope so, but I fear that the fact that > > >it was designed utterly without regard to the hard-wired language > > >processing features of the human brain might make that difficult. > > > > >I'm not saying that was a bad decision: indeed, that's one of the > > >very purposes for which it was created: to see if it could help > > >discover such features. But cognitive science beat us to the > > >punch, and there is now no serious doubt that such features are > > >present, so Lojban's deviance from them is a problem for getting > > >it accepted as a common-use language. > > > > So Chomsky 1, S-W 0. Is the game over? I'm not convinced that the two are in the same game. Language universals seem mainly to be about syntactic structures, not about syntactic types, and they say nothing about habitual thought patterns and the like. I am also curious just where Lojban deviates from such universals; I can't think of one off hand and the usual complaint about Lojban is that it is too much like ... to be a good S-W test (again not that the two have anything to do with one another). --part1_15b.80fadd1.29885961_boundary Content-Type: text/html; charset="US-ASCII" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit In a message dated 1/29/2002 1:33:22 PM Central Standard Time, xod@sixgirls.org writes:


Subj:Re: lojban as a programming language [was Re: [lojban] Lojban for lay programmers]
Date:1/29/2002 1:33:22 PM Central Standard Time
From:xod@sixgirls.org
To:lojban@yahoogroups.com
Sent from the Internet




> Lee Daniel Crocker:
> >And I don't know whether or not Lojban will ever become a full-
> >fledge "human language". I hope so, but I fear that the fact that
> >it was designed utterly without regard to the hard-wired language
> >processing features of the human brain might make that difficult.
>
> >I'm not saying that was a bad decision: indeed, that's one of the
> >very purposes for which it was created: to see if it could help
> >discover such features. But cognitive science beat us to the
> >punch, and there is now no serious doubt that such features are
> >present, so Lojban's deviance from them is a problem for getting
> >it accepted as a common-use language.



So Chomsky 1, S-W 0. Is the game over?


I'm not convinced that the two are in the same game.  Language universals seem mainly to be about syntactic structures, not about syntactic types, and they say nothing about habitual thought patterns and the like.  I am also curious just where Lojban deviates from such universals; I can't think of one off hand and the usual complaint about Lojban is that it is too much like ... to be a good S-W test (again not that the two have anything to do with one another).  --part1_15b.80fadd1.29885961_boundary--