From lojban+bncCNuStaWoDxCFwKjpBBoEVs0Z6Q@googlegroups.com Sun Jan 09 12:52:38 2011 Received: from mail-wy0-f189.google.com ([74.125.82.189]) by chain.digitalkingdom.org with esmtp (Exim 4.72) (envelope-from ) id 1Pc2Fe-0008Fs-0p; Sun, 09 Jan 2011 12:52:38 -0800 Received: by wyb35 with SMTP id 35sf21021146wyb.16 for ; Sun, 09 Jan 2011 12:52:26 -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:received:message-id:date :from:user-agent: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 :content-transfer-encoding; bh=p8JWIg8atGsi0scol45QnDL+Y/juBL+b7yrmF5ihnUc=; b=FcI3LkatxKUuhTBeP9gjRBGCSpU2mgOuHi+WuemfDV+QvBs994uCcx6kTpSFuj4jaN Y4CXR6HmlekeNfaYMlrUnnVWv9M2wcexGm49iZd41MCKwRd9n58Wq/UJSUns7UDpFp/N b3OChUYvtoLV/wuV1P3LB2j7nLqBh3y1BYufM= DomainKey-Signature: a=rsa-sha1; c=nofws; d=googlegroups.com; s=beta; h=x-beenthere:received-spf:message-id:date:from:user-agent :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:content-transfer-encoding; b=GttYCuxhOQJX4sgP0aQ/0S7lzgshT0nBgxtkLQSoxh44/Ke2m8ShcNbPD3Q50rKc/j zaXW1Ie0FHHiGh4VGHU6mOS5PJFhFxRlnqGuS98j5uamekL0C8POAIJZswbz3p6GvO71 LQiaxyaKsNEyeyBK3bKGS0I78xdWgWOQeNhrw= Received: by 10.216.157.139 with SMTP id o11mr3688494wek.28.1294606341675; Sun, 09 Jan 2011 12:52:21 -0800 (PST) X-BeenThere: lojban@googlegroups.com Received: by 10.227.184.76 with SMTP id cj12ls5453258wbb.3.p; Sun, 09 Jan 2011 12:52:20 -0800 (PST) Received: by 10.216.157.79 with SMTP id n57mr74797wek.0.1294606340505; Sun, 09 Jan 2011 12:52:20 -0800 (PST) Received: by 10.216.157.79 with SMTP id n57mr74796wek.0.1294606340466; Sun, 09 Jan 2011 12:52:20 -0800 (PST) Received: from mail-wy0-f179.google.com (mail-wy0-f179.google.com [74.125.82.179]) by gmr-mx.google.com with ESMTP id k2si4428941wbc.3.2011.01.09.12.52.19; Sun, 09 Jan 2011 12:52:19 -0800 (PST) Received-SPF: pass (google.com: domain of and.rosta@gmail.com designates 74.125.82.179 as permitted sender) client-ip=74.125.82.179; Received: by wyi11 with SMTP id 11so19775541wyi.24 for ; Sun, 09 Jan 2011 12:52:19 -0800 (PST) Received: by 10.227.145.3 with SMTP id b3mr3168630wbv.14.1294606305958; Sun, 09 Jan 2011 12:51:45 -0800 (PST) Received: from [192.168.1.65] (87-194-76-177.bethere.co.uk [87.194.76.177]) by mx.google.com with ESMTPS id 11sm19521043wbj.7.2011.01.09.12.51.44 (version=SSLv3 cipher=RC4-MD5); Sun, 09 Jan 2011 12:51:45 -0800 (PST) Message-ID: <4D2A1FDE.2020109@gmail.com> Date: Sun, 09 Jan 2011 20:51:42 +0000 From: And Rosta User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.9.2.13) Gecko/20101207 Thunderbird/3.1.7 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> <4D299E8D.2080107@lojban.org> In-Reply-To: <4D299E8D.2080107@lojban.org> X-Original-Sender: and.rosta@gmail.com X-Original-Authentication-Results: gmr-mx.google.com; spf=pass (google.com: domain of and.rosta@gmail.com designates 74.125.82.179 as permitted sender) smtp.mail=and.rosta@gmail.com; dkim=pass (test mode) header.i=@gmail.com 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 Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable Bob LeChevalier, President and Founder - LLG, On 09/01/2011 11:39: > And Rosta wrote: >> 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). [...] >> 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 completely disagree. The Lojban design embodies several decades' worth of= design ideas, all of which are too entrenched to change. Anybody doing the= language over from scratch can keep the bits they can't improve on and rep= lace the bits they can. Neither of us would claim that the language remains= in its current state because its design cannot be improved on. (By "its de= sign cannot be improved on" I mean "it is not possible to find a design tha= t better satisfies the design goals of a logical language".) Perhaps by (A) you are thinking of CLL and its thickness, whereas I am thin= king more of the design itself. I certainly agree that it would be hard to = replicate the monumental effort that led to CLL; it's the underlying design= that I think could so easily be improved on. And it would be possible to c= ome up with a design so much simpler that the documentation required for it= could be much less. (Actually a lot of CLL is instructional rather than sp= ecificational, so its thickness is a bit of a red-herring.) =20 >>> 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 apar= t 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". In order to avoid any annoying digressions into irrelevances about what mea= ning is and how it's governed by far more than "grammar", I will rephrase w= hat I said into what I had hoped was the obviously intended sense: "This is= not the same thing, though, as it being possible to take your sentences ap= art and show *how* they encode the logical formula that you think they do". >>> 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. I'm not sure, from your comments, if you understood the points I was making= . To restate them, in elaborated form: 1. The building of the Lojban speech community is a huge achievement. The b= uilding of the speech community necessitated design-by-committee, which als= o was a huge achievement. Of all languages with a comparable or larger user= community, Lojban comes closest to being a logical language. 2. Technology moves on, as each generation of designs improve on the last. = At one time, the Lojban design was cutting-edge techology, but nowadays we = have learned enough to do much better. Lojban is rather like the qwerty key= board layout; the mere fact that the design can be substantially improved u= pon is not enough to make a significant number of folk switch to an alterna= tive (and certainly not to make them all switch to the same alternative, wh= ich fact makes it so much harder to decide to switch). > 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 claim that the design of Lojban could be substantially improved upon is= so transparently true that it is completely unreasonable to find it hollow= or insulting. Indeed, the idea that, given the goal of creating a speakabl= e predicate logic, the design of Lojban could be thought a near-optimal sol= ution strikes me as near lunacy. If you were thinking that I was claiming that it would be easy to write ano= ther CLL, then I agree that would have been hollow and insulting. =20 >> The language itself could not >> have been substantially improved without great detriment to the user-com= munity. > > If you invent a "better language" but no one can/will use it, I contend > that it is not a "better language". I expect we can agree that the success of designs for things can be assesse= d both by how well they achieve their design goals (e.g. fuel efficiency fo= r an engine, etc.) and by how much they get used. By the one sort of criter= ion, Dvorak is more successful than Qwerty; by the other sort of criterion,= Qwerty is more successful than Dvorak. --And. --=20 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@googlegrou= ps.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/lojban= ?hl=3Den.