Re: [lojban] Loglish: A Modest Proposal

[John E Clifford <clifford-j@sbcglobal.net>]

--- Ben Goertzel <ben@goertzel.org> wrote:

> 
> Hi,
> 
> In the spirit of irritating and hopefully also
> intriguing and/or
> entertaining the nice people on this list, I
> present the following hastily
> typed-in Web page:
> 
>
http://www.goertzel.org/new_research/Loglish.htm
> 
> which proposes a "new" language defined as a
> hybridization of English and
> Lojban.
> 
> The language definition is rough and probably
> needs some kinks worked out,
> but I guess the basic idea should be clear to
> anyone who knows the rudiments
> of Lojban (which is all I know...).
> 
> Probably many people have thought of defining a
> language of this nature, but
> I haven't seen the idea formalized or
> explicitly described anywhere (if you
> know of some source that I've overlooked,
> please let me know).
> 
> As noted at the end of the document, I fully
> realize that Loglish as I
> define it does not fulfill all the goals of
> Lojban, but I think it does
> fulfill the goal of being a language grounded
> in predicate logic which would
> be significantly easier to gain true, full
> conversational and written
> fluency in than Lojban.
> 
> Followup thoughts are welcome...

After saying "Oh, shit! Not again!" I took a look
at your proposal, which seems to be a bit more
thorough than the usual casual suggestion, a bit
less than some (there was a fairly thorough
version for Loglan somewhere around 79-81, I seem
to recall -- not very clearly, obviously).  From
the other end (insofar as the aim is to make use
of the precision of Logic's grammar and
structure), there are a number of attempted
specifications of "regimented English,"  from
which FOPL can be derived just by remaplacing
words with symbols.  This is mainly to be found
in textbooks influenced by Quine (who does bits
and piece here and there in his own work).  And,
of course, there is the implicit specification in
Montague's own grammar works. 

The Anglan page arj cites covers the main
objection to your proposal from the point of view
of the Lojban Project.  Others have noted (in
other contexts of a similar sort -- Basic
English, for example, or spoken C and the like)
that, for a native speaker of English, sticking
to the regimentation is practically impossible,
and for folks who aren't English speakers the
system offer no advantages (taken by itself) over
learning the underlying formal language alone.   

Even if the claim that learning Lojban vocabulary
is a snap (or, at least easier than for other
languages) is a sort of cruel joke, the rewards
of doing it (for folks who will get something out
of Lojban) repays the time and trying to duck
around that task cuts one off from much of the value.