From mathmaniac@hanmail.net Fri Jun 27 09:38:13 2003 Return-Path: X-Sender: mathmaniac@hanmail.net X-Apparently-To: lojban@yahoogroups.com Received: (qmail 46375 invoked from network); 27 Jun 2003 16:38:11 -0000 Received: from unknown (66.218.66.217) by m15.grp.scd.yahoo.com with QMQP; 27 Jun 2003 16:38:10 -0000 Received: from unknown (HELO n1.grp.scd.yahoo.com) (66.218.66.64) by mta2.grp.scd.yahoo.com with SMTP; 27 Jun 2003 16:38:10 -0000 Received: from [66.218.66.116] by n1.grp.scd.yahoo.com with NNFMP; 27 Jun 2003 16:38:10 -0000 Date: Fri, 27 Jun 2003 16:38:09 -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: 1735 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: 20232 On "better" language. I'm confused. Leo says languages can be made simpler, more regular, more systematic. And then he asks if they can be made "better". Isn't being simpler, more regular, more systematic, a good thing? What does he mean by "better" here? For example, wouldn't you agree that Lojban number system is "better" than French one? 78 is {zebi} in Lojban, and soixante- dix-huit(60+10+8) in French. Isn't Lojban more clear and reflects decimal system better? But my understanding is that you are looking for "more capability", i.e. things that can be expressed in artlangs, and not in natlangs. I doubt if such things exist at all. In my opinion, all languages are more or less equal in their capability, as most of computer languages are all Turing-complete and thus being equal in their capability. And that is not the correct way of comparison. Sometimes someone asks in (say) Perl newsgroup that what can he do in Perl that he cannot do in C++. Someone replies there's no such thing, and explains Turing-completeness briefly. This is a correct answer, but not an appropriate one. It's like answering on the phone, to the question "What are you doing now", "I'm now talking to you on the phone". You can do web programming in Mathematica and symbolic math in PHP -- they are both Turing-complete. But wouldn't you agree that Mathematica is better for symbolic mathe and PHP for web programming? You said that "exclude size of vocabulary". That sounds a lot like "please compare these computer languages, in syntax only, ignoring library richness". I doubt value of such comparison. I will write some features of Lojban that I see being superior to many natlangs, in the next message. mi'e sanxiyn.