Re: A couple of questions...

["Robert J. Chassell" <bob@GNU.AI.MIT.EDU>]

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Sender:       Lojban list <LOJBAN@CUVMB.BITNET>
Poster:       "Robert J. Chassell" <bob@GNU.AI.MIT.EDU>
Subject:      Re: A couple of questions...
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   ... I'm not sure where I should begin in a study of Lojban. Should I use
   LogFlash to start getting a handle on some of the vocabulary or should I
   concentrate on other more technical languages...Any suggestions? :-)

For all its dull name, the `reference grammar' is interesting and not
hard to read.  John Cowan is writing it -- the current draft is very
close to final.  Start with the first chapter (an introduction).

I find chapters 10. and 13 especially interesting.

You can down load the chapters from:

    ftp://ftp.access.digex.net/pub/access/lojbab/draft-reference-grammar/

Here is a description of each chapter from
   ftp://ftp.access.digex.net/pub/access/lojbab/README



   This directory contains the current draft reference grammar. This book
   is very close to completion, and should be available by the middle of
   1997. Only the indexing needs to be finished.

   Anyone interested is urged to read the book and send comments to
   John Cowan at <cowan@ccil.org>.

   Here are the individual chapters in plain-text format, with some
   scattered HTML and TeX markup:
    1. Lojban As We Mangle It In Lojbanistan: About This Book (intro.txt)
    2. A Quick Tour of Lojban Grammar, With Diagrams (qtour.txt)
    3. The Hills Are Alive With The Sounds Of Lojban (phon.txt)
    4. The Shape Of Words To Come: Lojban Morphology (morphy.txt)
    5. "Pretty Little Girls' School": The Structure Of Lojban selbri
       (plgs.txt)
    6. To Speak Of Many Things: The Lojban sumti (sumti.txt)
    7. Brevity Is The Soul Of Language: Pro-sumti And Pro-bridi
       (pro.txt)
    8. Relative Clauses, Which Make sumti Even More Complicated
       (rel.txt)
    9. To Boston Via The Road Go I, With An Excursion Into The Land
       Of Modals (places.txt)
   10. Imaginary Journeys: The Lojban Space/Time Tense System
       (tense.txt)
   11. Events, Qualities, Quantities, And Other Vague Words: On
       Lojban Abstraction (abstract.txt)
   12. Dog House And White House: Determining lujvo Place Structures
       (jvoplace.txt)
   13. Oooh! Arrgh! Ugh! Yecch! Attitudinal and Emotional Indicators
       (attitud.txt)
   14. If Wishes Were Horses: The Lojban Connective System (conn.txt)
   15. "No" Problems: On Lojban Negation (negation.txt)
   16. "Who Did You Pass On The Road? Nobody": Lojban And Logic

  as yet unnumbered chapters:
     As Easy As A-B-C? The Lojban Letteral System And Its Uses (lerfu.txt)
     lojbau mekso: Mathematical Expressions in Lojban (mex.txt)
     Putting It All Together: Notes on the Structure of Lojban Texts (text.txt)
     A Catalogue of selma'o (catalog.txt)

       The entire draft is available in a ZIP archive (refgram.zip)
         _____________________________________________________________


If you use Emacs, I can send you a flashcard program written in Emacs
Lisp.  This works on a wider variety of machines than LogFlash.