Re: Dr. James Cooke Brown

["Robert A. McIvor" <rmcivor@macsrule.com>]

At 11:53 AM -0600 2/18/00, Steven Belknap wrote:
>From: Steven Belknap <sbelknap@uic.edu>
>textbook. It is important to understand that Loglan was *never*
>baselined.
>
It was never intended that Loglan be baselined. Living
languages
change and grow constantly.

>In my judgement, there is simply not the manpower nor the will to do
>what is necessary to independently get Loglan to baseline. At this
>point, it is still a language "under construction", which tends to
>discourage anyone from learning the language, as it will very likely
>change should a baseline be attempted.

In actual fact, changes to the grammar in recent years are very few and far
between.

> There are a few
>inconsistencies and some areas of incompleteness in the Loglan
>grammer.

I am unaware of inconsistencies in the grammar. Whether or not it is
complete is a matter of definition. I imagine there are structures in
other languages that have no counterpart in either Loglan or Lojban.
e.g. the Turkish 'gossip' tense that has been recently discussed.

>There is no complete dictionary of predicates.

There has been for years a computerized dictionary not only of predicates
but of most currently used words. I cannot say 'all' as writers can add to
the list at any time, and
new versions of the dictionary come out only occasionally. I believe Loglan is
ahead of Lojban in this regard.

>>There are
>inconsistencies in the place structures of Loglan words, even within
>the last published documentation of the language.

I agree with this criticism, but we try to correct these as effort is
available.

>> I don't think there exists a full grammer. At least I haven't seen one.

There is a published grammar which is conflict free in YACC, and which
parses all currently well-formed Loglan sentences. I believe it is published
on the Loglan web site. Rarely (maybe as much as once a year) someone
produces a sentence that parses or fails to parse as 'da' intended, and
that da feels should. Such a change is discussed by the 'Academy', and, if
approved, the grammar is altered. No major changes have occurred for
years, though there have been some additions.

I suppose
>one could simply make a new Loglan which is identical to lojban in
>grammer, but has the Loglan words instead. That would be nearly
>painless for Loglanders and would be fairly straightforward.
>
Since Loglan is not baselined, I am sure we would accept changes
to the grammar that we could be convinced were desirable for whatever
reason.

>It is certainly important that the two communities treat each other
>with mutual respect during the fusion of the two languages. I like
>the <hoa, xo'a> formalism. If this is done, both communities will
>have a viable means of communicating unambiguously in the same forum.

Agreed.

>Given the greater size and vigor of the lojban communit, I would
>predict that the Loglan lexicon will eventually become an alternate
>historical lexicon, sort of like ancient Greek is to modern Greek.
>

Time will tell.

Sincerely,
Robert A. McIvor
(rmcivor@mac.com)