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Re: [lojban] [hedybos@hotmail.com: Feedback (long, sorry)))]

On Mon, 18 Oct 2004, Robin Lee Powell wrote:

I am not anywhere near enough of a linguist to handle this.

-Robin

----- Forwarded message from Hedy Bos <hedybos@hotmail.com> -----
[snip header]

Dear Sir(s),

I have the following feedback on Lojban:


Thank you very much for your insightful message. I will reply to your points in turn. But first a general remark:

In most of the cases where we made Lojban different from all known
natural languages, it was deliberate. This could make it easier to
test if the universal in question actually is due to how the human
language faculty works, or if it is simply a statistical fluke that we
have not yet observed any such languages.

-The denotation is hell. A period expressing a phoneme? Why? And what?s with
the phobia for the symbol ?h?? If your defence is ?it is used only to
separate vowels?, then there still would be no reason why the symbol ?h?
could n?t be used.


Another reason is that after the introduction of the h phoneme, it
became very frequent, and it was changed to ' because it was more
visually lightweight. That's not the best of reasons in my personal
opinion, but there you have it.

The first basic rule in lexicography is ?be consistent?. If you choose to go
roman, go roman all the way! Don?t use diacretic (and illogical) symbols
that will chase beginners away instantaneously! It?s pretty much illegible
like this. The apostrophe I can live with, but don?t incorporate something
like a period in the system. Many languages express a normal phoneme such as
a glottal stop with an apostrophe (or an alif). Use an ?h? for all I care.
Don?t use a dot.


You can drop the period entirely, and not be misunderstood, so long as
you keep all the words separated (by spaces). In fact most of us do,
when writing informally (such as on IRC).

I am surprised that you didn't mention Lojban's system of obligatory
pauses, which is very unnatural indeed. This is the precise reason
that we use periods in texts aimed at beginners: to remind them where
the language's self-segregation rules demands a pause.

-it?s either under- or overspecified. If it really is such a logical
language then let logic do it?s job and dare to make a choice for either
system. Especially the deictic/locative marking is hopelessly overspecified
in an innatural manner. Languages naturally have either an unspecified form
(mi klama) or a specified (mi su klama) form. Nobody needs an superspecified
form. If it does, it will come naturally, when it?s not a pidgin anymore.
Indonesian manages well (with  ?saya pergi? and ?saya sudah pergi? as the
two only options) I don?t think Lojban needs to specify everthing in such a
frantic way. It?s logical, people can think for themselves.
Common people have no use for such specifications as mentioned in the
section about deictics. They will not use such forms. It could be useful as
a jagon maybe, but then I still think that people will fill in the gaps in a
language for themselves. For example: people living in mountainous areas
tend to modify their deictic system to be able to express referrals to
objects according to their relative position concerning height (?that goat
above me? ?that house on the same level as me?). These things come
naturally. No pilot/mountaineer will spontaneously use a form as predicted
in your grammar in a situation where it is needed (?enemy at twelve o?clock
above...?), nor will he look up in a grammar what form he should have used.
If the situation he would like to describe keeps occuring, he will come up
with a ?patch? himself. The only chance that correct Lojban will be used,
would be when pilots and mountain people learn the propre terms in avance.
The greengrocer won?t. He doesn?t care. He does not need this kind of
specifications. If people like him would keep ending up in a situation
requiring the specifications they will come up with them. I predict it will
be something else then what you produced. Let this go. Or create
jargon-vocabularies for every professional group only. Still you will be
left with inconsistencies I?m afraid.


I don't understand this objection. Every speaker can use as little or
as much of the tense/locative system as he or she wants.

-the assumption that natural languages are inadequate aggravates me. I am
convinced that if something does not occur in a natural language this must
be for a (simple) reason: it doesn?t work!


You're probably right. I can think of at least a few parts of the
grammar of Lojban that are likely to be unstable in native language
learners.[1] But maybe some features of Lojban don't exist in the wild
simply because they don't?

So the following irritations come
forth out of this opposition:

-why so many arguments for one stem? Why not express these with
prepositions? This would be more logical and would cause the number of
illogical arguments one would have to learn in order to be able to use a
stem to it?s fullest extense to decrease tremendously. There is no language
that would refuse to express prepositional phrases in such manner. Because
this is more logical ?nd it decreases complicated lines of thoughts when
using a stem. For example:

barja              bar               x1 is a tavern/bar/pub ?serving x2 to
audience/patrons x3?
The x2 and x3 can be expressed more logically with some basic prepositions
in my opinion, which would save everybody a lot of puzzling.


Lojban does not "refuse to express prepositional phrases". Lojban does
have prepositions, but they are (for historical reasons) called
"modals".[2]

The position of the makers of Lojban, however, was that prepositions
are inherently underspecific. When you go "to" Boston, or you send
mail "to" Boston, the relationship between yourself and Boston is only
superficially similar. Natural languages cope very well with this
underspecification, and so does Lojban. But if you want to be very
exact, you can do so in Lojban, with only a marginal increase in prolixity.

-why use separate stems for compounding? It does make the entire utterance
shorter, but it also increases the number of forms to be learned. Even more
so, there is no unambiguous way to derive the compound-stem from the
original stem! Why not choose for a simple head-dependent construction? It
will increase the entire compound with one syllable only. Most languages
work just fine with this system. Some do use a possessive marker, such as
Roman languages, or a clitic such as Bantu-languages. The only languages
(consistently) changing a stem are root-based languages with a skeletal
character (Afro-Asiatic) . Either switch to that (for the sake of logic
and/or consistency) or accept that a compound will end up with four
syllables. Never hurt nobody.


This system is indeed difficult, but many (me included) have managed
to learn a substantial part of it -- not by rote, but by exposure. The
intention of this rampant allomorphism is to keep lexicalised and
non-lexicalised compounds grammatically separate. To take an example,
"minra sance" translates roughly to "mirror sound", and the relation
between 'mirror' and 'sound' is left deliberately unspecified, where
as the corresponding lexicalised compound, "mirsna", we now agree
means "echo".

Nevertheless I will check out these pages regularly. I do think you are on
to something.


Nice!

You may also want to join the Lojban mailing list; this can be done at
http://www.lojban.org/lsg2/ . Volume is mostly less than 5, but
sometimes up to 20 messages in one day.

By the way: how does one derive causative forms, stative forms etc.?  Are
they derived from the same root or do they have separate forms? I think the
first option would be more logical.


Lojban does not have derivation per se, only compounding. Hence,
compounding with -gau (gasnu; 'bring about') as the final stem will in
many cases correspond to causatives. (But not always; as I implied
earlier, the semantics of affix compounds have no prescriptive
grammar.)

As regards stative forms, if you assume that brivla are verbs, some of
these could be called stative, since they predicate nouny things. For
instance, in "mi nanmu", 'I am a man/we are men', "nanmu" is a word
that for most intents and purposes acts like a verb, but means "is man".

---
[1] For a discussion of how a part of Lojban grammar is used
differently to the designers' expectations, see Nicholas,
Nick 2002. Folk Functionalism in Planned Language: The Long-Distance
Reflexive vo'a in Lojban. Journal of Universal Language. 3:1. 133-167.

PDF at: http://www.unish.org/unish/DOWN/PDF/Nick_Nicholas(133%7E167).pdf
[2] http://www.lojban.org/publications/reference_grammar/chapter9.html

--
Arnt Richard Johansen                                http://arj.nvg.org/
Let's have some real examples from a real, non-English language.