Bob LeChevalier wrote:
Arika Okrent wrote:example, the speaker of Guugu Yimidhirr has no way to express his particular metaphysics in Loglan because Loglan spatial reference is defined with respect to the speaker, and not, as in his own language, with respect to an absolute reference frame.I won't pretend to know that language, but I suspect that if someone figured out how it worked, we would find a way to express it in Lojban (we would need to ask pc, who was our expert on strange tense systems, if it was already considered).
There's already a link to the future article about that language - look at [[kanguru]]. Want to write it?
The real test might be if someone tries to express all of the features and assumptions of sign language into Lojban. This was something that came up once (I'm assuming it wasn't you - the person, whose name I can't remember, but s/he was especially interested written transcriptions of sign language, I think based on choreography notation - seemed to think Lojban could meet the challenge, if in no other way by coming up with verbal representations of written sign language). You may be in a better position to evaluate, having examined sign language linguistically.
Are you thinking of Sign Writing / Sutton Movement Writing? phma