[lojban] Re: Better Communication of Ideas

["sshiskom" <mathmaniac@hanmail.net>]

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.


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