From lojban+bncCK30vq5WEM_wl-kEGgT1FgX8@googlegroups.com Thu Jan 06 09:14:06 2011 Received: from mail-pw0-f61.google.com ([209.85.160.61]) by chain.digitalkingdom.org with esmtp (Exim 4.72) (envelope-from ) id 1PatPV-0005iB-R3; Thu, 06 Jan 2011 09:14:06 -0800 Received: by pwi2 with SMTP id 2sf5148079pwi.16 for ; Thu, 06 Jan 2011 09:13:56 -0800 (PST) DKIM-Signature: v=1; a=rsa-sha256; c=relaxed/relaxed; d=googlegroups.com; s=beta; h=domainkey-signature:received:x-beenthere:received:received:received :received:received-spf:received:date:from:to:subject:message-id :references:mime-version:in-reply-to:user-agent:x-original-sender :x-original-authentication-results:reply-to:precedence:mailing-list :list-id:list-post:list-help:list-archive:sender:list-subscribe :list-unsubscribe:content-type:content-disposition; bh=/V+wEegv/b2k+Q2xG4GU29GuZZ3Fn+jj1m4gDTGB+Xk=; b=oHbuS9rvAYWBbwSVVV0Ns7N2kzKzgdIq10nqoSLZcFxLM481hKVbpAAVFIUFwzWdxZ AHrFaY37C4ScIVht4+HFV7i8BI4tnBQAnOUYbZdJyMWJP3jYDgrby7NFW7zVwKncvuDp 2AHpvaKc9iFR9GyUZwFdHlFiAdhcGQ15aCIS0= DomainKey-Signature: a=rsa-sha1; c=nofws; d=googlegroups.com; s=beta; h=x-beenthere:received-spf:date:from:to:subject:message-id:references :mime-version:in-reply-to:user-agent:x-original-sender :x-original-authentication-results:reply-to:precedence:mailing-list :list-id:list-post:list-help:list-archive:sender:list-subscribe :list-unsubscribe:content-type:content-disposition; b=zjHvzccuC+JZpr5cY7S9w75nOiTiUHn6mED11UFRNRGnT90iMIR55e7ixFL2wilZnh QwS+7o4Atx6Y7hIrKfdka8sk0J9/9Nmh4lzNViO+EWekO4UTiA30xnR8bvJ8L0IxETPn B1Z7C2EJHx/ztMCvNkt2ppX0RBthducoO+DSk= Received: by 10.143.86.1 with SMTP id o1mr75709wfl.22.1294334031149; Thu, 06 Jan 2011 09:13:51 -0800 (PST) X-BeenThere: lojban@googlegroups.com Received: by 10.142.249.41 with SMTP id w41ls28913065wfh.1.p; Thu, 06 Jan 2011 09:13:48 -0800 (PST) Received: by 10.142.156.15 with SMTP id d15mr918283wfe.69.1294334028239; Thu, 06 Jan 2011 09:13:48 -0800 (PST) Received: by 10.142.156.15 with SMTP id d15mr918281wfe.69.1294334028210; Thu, 06 Jan 2011 09:13:48 -0800 (PST) Received: from chain.digitalkingdom.org (digitalkingdom.org [173.13.139.234]) by gmr-mx.google.com with ESMTPS id f13si1191025wfo.4.2011.01.06.09.13.48 (version=TLSv1/SSLv3 cipher=RC4-MD5); Thu, 06 Jan 2011 09:13:48 -0800 (PST) Received-SPF: pass (google.com: best guess record for domain of rlpowell@digitalkingdom.org designates 173.13.139.234 as permitted sender) client-ip=173.13.139.234; Received: from rlpowell by chain.digitalkingdom.org with local (Exim 4.72) (envelope-from ) id 1PatPH-0005i6-9a for lojban@googlegroups.com; Thu, 06 Jan 2011 09:13:47 -0800 Date: Thu, 6 Jan 2011 09:13:47 -0800 From: Robin Lee Powell To: lojban@googlegroups.com Subject: Re: Lojban is *NOT* broken! Stop saying that! (was Re: [lojban] Re: Vote for the Future Global Language) Message-ID: <20110106171347.GY17534@digitalkingdom.org> References: <9114501.161.1294150198377.JavaMail.geo-discussion-forums@yqhy19> <7c0687a1-deba-495a-9760-95d1d0649423@t8g2000prh.googlegroups.com> <20110105165231.GK17534@digitalkingdom.org> <4D25F32F.8000209@gmail.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 In-Reply-To: <4D25F32F.8000209@gmail.com> User-Agent: Mutt/1.5.20 (2009-06-14) X-Original-Sender: rlpowell@digitalkingdom.org X-Original-Authentication-Results: gmr-mx.google.com; spf=pass (google.com: best guess record for domain of rlpowell@digitalkingdom.org designates 173.13.139.234 as permitted sender) smtp.mail=rlpowell@digitalkingdom.org Reply-To: lojban@googlegroups.com Precedence: list Mailing-list: list lojban@googlegroups.com; contact lojban+owners@googlegroups.com List-ID: List-Post: , List-Help: , List-Archive: Sender: lojban@googlegroups.com List-Subscribe: , List-Unsubscribe: , Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Disposition: inline On Thu, Jan 06, 2011 at 04:51:59PM +0000, And Rosta wrote: > Robin Lee Powell, On 05/01/2011 16:52: > >Lojban is *FAR* more fully defined than Esperanto. > > Natural languages are defined by what their speakers know (or do). > An invented language may be defined either (A) explicitly, by > means of formal grammars and suchlike, or (B), like a natural > language, by what their speakers know (or do). Esperanto is > defined only (B)-wise. There are some Lojbanists, such as Lojbab, > who would prefer a (B)-wise definition for Lojban too, but I guess > most folk attracted to the idea of a logical language would want > an (A)-wise definition for it. *nod* > >No, really: it is. Esperanto doesn't have a formal grammar of > >any kind, for starters. > > But nor does Lojban. Lojban's so-called formal grammar does > nothing but define a set of structures of phonological strings. That's what "formal grammar" *means*; http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Formal_grammar > What a real grammar would do is define a set of correspondences > between sentence forms and sentence meanings. I don't know what that is, but it's not a formal grammar. Ask google if you don't believe me. :) I have no idea how you could formalize such a thing (and I'm not terribly sure I care, to be honest). > >We know far more about how Lojban grammatical structures work > >than *any other actually spoken language on the planet*. > > This is one of the attractions of explicit,(A)-wise definitions. > But of all actually spoken languages on the planet, Lojban is the > only one that has an explicit, (A)-wise definition, so Lojban wins > this competition by having no competitors. I *know*. :D Isn't it awesome!?!? > >4. Nobody shouts "Wow this is well specified!!!" at the top of > >their lungs, but they certainly shout their complaints. Geeks > >have a shared culture that compliments are private and insults > >are public; it's deeply fucked up. See > >http://lesswrong.com/lw/3h/why_our_kind_cant_cooperate/ > > The impressive thing is the vitality of the user community, and > the amount of labour folk have invested in it, not the > specification. It would be easy -- with the benefit of experience > -- to improve on the specification enormously, i.e. easy to design > a language better in every conceivable way. But it would be > nigh-on impossible to achieve a lojban-scale user-community for > it. *nod* > >I can say anything I need to say in Lojban, modulo my own > >vocabulary knowledge. > > It may well be that for any meaning you want to express, you have > a way of expressing it and find that others will understand you. > This is not the same thing, though, as it being possible to take > your sentences apart and show *how* they mean what you think they > do. Fair enough; we leave a lot to context in practice. I'm OK with that. > >This puts it ahead of 99.999% of conlangs. > > But maybe not ahead of 99.999% of conlangs that somebody is at all > likely to claim are adequate to all ordinary communicative > requirements. Sssshhhh! Stop spoiling my rants with evidence! :P :) > >Saying that it is very far from being complete and functioning is > >ridiculous, and pretty insulting to a lot of people's hard work. > > Whoever is insulted by that misunderstands what people's hard work > has achieved. The design of the language itself has little > intrinsic excellence (when viewed ahistorically), and it is naive > to deny that it is massively incomplete. I completely disagree. I don't see anything even vaguely approaching "massively incomplete" in any part of Lojban, except maybe vocabulary. I'd ask you to point to specific examples, but I'm honstly not sure that I'm terribly interested in debating the issue. -Robin -- http://singinst.org/ : Our last, best hope for a fantastic future. Lojban (http://www.lojban.org/): The language in which "this parrot is dead" is "ti poi spitaki cu morsi", but "this sentence is false" is "na nei". My personal page: http://www.digitalkingdom.org/rlp/ -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "lojban" group. To post to this group, send email to lojban@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to lojban+unsubscribe@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/lojban?hl=en.