From mathmaniac@hanmail.net Fri Jun 27 10:26:50 2003 Return-Path: X-Sender: mathmaniac@hanmail.net X-Apparently-To: lojban@yahoogroups.com Received: (qmail 47136 invoked from network); 27 Jun 2003 17:26:49 -0000 Received: from unknown (66.218.66.216) by m10.grp.scd.yahoo.com with QMQP; 27 Jun 2003 17:26:49 -0000 Received: from unknown (HELO n16.grp.scd.yahoo.com) (66.218.66.71) by mta1.grp.scd.yahoo.com with SMTP; 27 Jun 2003 17:26:49 -0000 Received: from [66.218.66.114] by n16.grp.scd.yahoo.com with NNFMP; 27 Jun 2003 17:26:48 -0000 Date: Fri, 27 Jun 2003 17:26:46 -0000 To: lojban@yahoogroups.com Subject: Re: Better Communication of Ideas Message-ID: In-Reply-To: <20030627143420.GA25004@skunk.reutershealth.com> User-Agent: eGroups-EW/0.82 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Length: 2821 X-Mailer: Yahoo Groups Message Poster From: "sshiskom" X-Originating-IP: 143.248.234.136 X-Yahoo-Group-Post: member; u=122399845 X-Yahoo-Profile: sshiskom X-Yahoo-Message-Num: 20233 Features of Lojban. 1) Attitudinals, discursives, vocatives (UI/COI) "Glorified emoticons". They are useful in actual communication, and mostly lacking in other languages. If you want to know how they can be put in good uses, read a sample dialog at the end of RefGram chapter 13. These can be expressed in other languages in idiomatic ways, but having many easy-to-use and easy-to- combine particles like these, never hurts. 2) Lujvo forming Ability to make compound words are important. I would say Lojban is particularly productive in compounding. And I don't think I'm terribly wrong if I say Deutsch and Chinese are better than other average natlangs in this matter. 3) Anaphora (GOhA, KOhA) Lojban can refer to already used words precisely in many ways. This certainly helps in communicating clearly. How many natlangs have word for "predicate in which this word is embedded", or "referent of last utterance"? Natlang anaphora ("pronoun" is a usual term) are mostly ambiguous. Some languages avoid ambiguity by having many word classes, for example grammatical genders, and having different words for each class. They are still not good enough, compared to Lojban, IMHO. 4) Place filling question words Some natlangs do have this (for example, Korean, my mothertongue), others not. I think this is better than (say) 5W1H question words mechanism, since this is more general and simpler. What do you think of words like {ije'i}, a sentence connection question word? Of course you can say "In which way your first sentence and your second sentence is related? That is, if-then relation, or only-if, or whatnot?" But isn't Lojban still better? 5) Number system (PA) Lojban number system is better than any other crufty, history- riddled, idiosyncratic, unnecessarily complex natlang number systems. Do you object my assertion? And I claim Chinese number system is better than English one which has many exceptions. In Chinese, 14 is 10+4 (juxtaposition of word-for-10 and word-for-4) and 24 is 2*10+4 (word-for-2, word-for-10, word-for-4). In English you have extra "fourteen", and 24 is not (say) "fourtween", and 20 is "twenty", not "two ten", etc. etc. These exceptions buy you nothing, and cannot be justified. 6) ke'a This may be subjective, but I found explicit (or well-defined implicit) use of {ke'a}, relativized placeholder, is better than other relative clause forming strategies. In particular they help to communicate precisely, and saves you from word-order- tinkering needed for making relative sentences. I'm aware that some natlangs do have this. (Usually with their idiosyncratic twist, though.) I'm still new to Lojban, and I'm learning now. But these are what I felt to be features of Lojban, while actually practicing (or reading) Lojban on IRC channel. mi'e sanxiyn.