From lojban+bncCN673cmqFBCRvabpBBoEpst_wQ@googlegroups.com Sun Jan 09 03:40:21 2011 Received: from mail-yi0-f61.google.com ([209.85.218.61]) by chain.digitalkingdom.org with esmtp (Exim 4.72) (envelope-from ) id 1Pbtd6-00059T-7A; Sun, 09 Jan 2011 03:40:20 -0800 Received: by yia27 with SMTP id 27sf12403160yia.16 for ; Sun, 09 Jan 2011 03:40:06 -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:received:x-vr-score :x-authority-analysis:x-cm-score:message-id:date:from:organization :user-agent:x-accept-language:mime-version:to:subject:references :in-reply-to: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; bh=yUgi6PxFIyauDnEuxpCrsMCAdaVDzECpft1HzUGfo8g=; b=54/C7JI50G2Hdj5uMC4mvOO0udA04T7MbelrtYWjMUaQmfsQEnEpLMm0/1eLq2xPTV G/xY7L2YsBZUn/DTmNO/fBD21A78PJhOjZq/uXHvw5k5ONEI7V56n96hKc0W+rruhK6B kR4tORZmyaAOC1uJhDqC9KOVZF5bsrwK8MwSA= DomainKey-Signature: a=rsa-sha1; c=nofws; d=googlegroups.com; s=beta; h=x-beenthere:received-spf:x-vr-score:x-authority-analysis:x-cm-score :message-id:date:from:organization:user-agent:x-accept-language :mime-version:to:subject:references:in-reply-to: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; b=LuFeop4LngJN6U3i65ISjC7RlDXbhk/GfwOCV7LBKKRnFGB97G9SmucPY5+xWoKh2F Wneu3JuQje5xIMgd1ToNvxfNH8psHkuN4mUCg10zYNCvQv6HBQIsO8rk1wwQFSWjSS0t qeqrCti9NB6jlCTUWDKfj/fPotuQ8IGnAjYRM= Received: by 10.100.46.10 with SMTP id t10mr95539ant.78.1294573201969; Sun, 09 Jan 2011 03:40:01 -0800 (PST) X-BeenThere: lojban@googlegroups.com Received: by 10.100.26.21 with SMTP id 21ls3717962anz.2.p; Sun, 09 Jan 2011 03:40:00 -0800 (PST) Received: by 10.100.194.11 with SMTP id r11mr2453646anf.24.1294573200944; Sun, 09 Jan 2011 03:40:00 -0800 (PST) Received: by 10.100.194.11 with SMTP id r11mr2453645anf.24.1294573200927; Sun, 09 Jan 2011 03:40:00 -0800 (PST) Received: from eastrmmtao102.cox.net (eastrmmtao102.cox.net [68.230.240.8]) by gmr-mx.google.com with ESMTP id q5si11713374anf.4.2011.01.09.03.40.00; Sun, 09 Jan 2011 03:40:00 -0800 (PST) Received-SPF: neutral (google.com: 68.230.240.8 is neither permitted nor denied by best guess record for domain of lojbab@lojban.org) client-ip=68.230.240.8; Received: from eastrmimpo01.cox.net ([68.1.16.119]) by eastrmmtao102.cox.net (InterMail vM.8.01.03.00 201-2260-125-20100507) with ESMTP id <20110109114000.CLQE27861.eastrmmtao102.cox.net@eastrmimpo01.cox.net> for ; Sun, 9 Jan 2011 06:40:00 -0500 Received: from [192.168.0.101] ([70.179.118.163]) by eastrmimpo01.cox.net with bizsmtp id tPfw1f0013Xcbvq02Pfw9l; Sun, 09 Jan 2011 06:40:00 -0500 X-VR-Score: -70.00 X-Authority-Analysis: v=1.1 cv=K6H15zDybEznVbWvwx3O4PPp0p/D2/5TW7WmbNpAZQA= c=1 sm=1 a=qAVpB3kuuf4A:10 a=8nJEP1OIZ-IA:10 a=7ls7RdmwX4RvLZNVULbZcg==:17 a=sgthKbH0AAAA:8 a=8YJikuA2AAAA:8 a=KDWJuIzWEWS-2FwRVlkA:9 a=OOD_yoosWgSQFAntFMwA:7 a=4Lwr4ZPq0gJ0YMldrguQnWNz_fUA:4 a=wPNLvfGTeEIA:10 a=1eKL1TqT5oQA:10 a=dxBpO5_FDU0A:10 a=fEo9rHQ8TDY0mvTz:21 a=4djJE_hcQ8mRWcdZ:21 a=7ls7RdmwX4RvLZNVULbZcg==:117 X-CM-Score: 0.00 Message-ID: <4D299E8D.2080107@lojban.org> Date: Sun, 09 Jan 2011 06:39:57 -0500 From: "Bob LeChevalier, President and Founder - LLG" Organization: The Logical Language Group, Inc. User-Agent: Mozilla Thunderbird 1.0.7 (Windows/20050923) X-Accept-Language: en-us, en MIME-Version: 1.0 To: lojban@googlegroups.com Subject: Re: Lojban is *NOT* broken! Stop saying that! (was Re: [lojban] Re: Vote for the Future Global Language) 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> In-Reply-To: <4D25F32F.8000209@gmail.com> X-Original-Sender: lojbab@lojban.org X-Original-Authentication-Results: gmr-mx.google.com; spf=neutral (google.com: 68.230.240.8 is neither permitted nor denied by best guess record for domain of lojbab@lojban.org) smtp.mail=lojbab@lojban.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; format=flowed [this response was largely overcome by the way the thread proceeded, but was written before I had read the rest of the thread. I am more or less satisfied with what others said, but figured that what I had written in response to the original post might still be of interest] 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, lojbab wants both. A revised baseline to serve as (A), followed by "naturalization" a la (B). After (B) exists, (A) can still have a normative role, but linguists would probably be more interested in how (A) and (B) differ. > But nor does Lojban. Lojban's so-called formal grammar does nothing but > define a set of structures of phonological strings. What a real grammar > would do is define a set of correspondences between sentence forms and > sentence meanings. That makes the assumption that "meaning" is a grammatical concept. >> 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. But of course it would be impossible to actually complete such an "improved specification" BECAUSE the user community wouldn't be there to complete it. We've had a hard enough job completing (A) even with the extremely robust user community and 20-odd years to play the game. Doing a better (A) is likely no longer "easy", because Lojban's standard for (A) is a pretty high bar to top. >> 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. Which is ultimately what language is all about. > 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. If there is one thing that "Chinese whispers" and other such games should teach us, is that "meaning" is an extremely difficult question, governed by far more than "grammar". >> 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), TLI Loglan back in the 1980s was already described by someone as the most successful committee effort in history. I'm not sure that is true - the King James Bible sets a pretty high standard, but Lojban has far surpassed what existed when we started. But that isn't looking "ahistorically", you might point out? Yet you conceded Robins claim: > We have already won that prize: Lojban is the most precisely, > formally specified language that there is, for any language with its > number of speakers or higher. Period. I challenge anyone to find > anything even *remotely close* to the CLL in terms of covering every > *possible* grammatical combination. Even if you can find such a > thing, the formal grammar takes it so far ahead of everything else > they can't possibly hope to catch up. which is an ahistorical claim. To say that "far ahead of everything else" is not "excellence" seems to be trying to define "excellence" not only ahistorically, but unrealistically. In short, until someone actually DOES produce a demonstrably more excellent (A), claims that it would be "easy" to do so are indeed both hollow and insulting. > The language itself could not > have been substantially improved without great detriment to the > user-community. If you invent a "better language" but no one can/will use it, I contend that it is not a "better language". lojbab -- Bob LeChevalier lojbab@lojban.org www.lojban.org President and Founder, The Logical Language Group, Inc. -- 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.