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RE: [lojban] Re: Why linguists might be interested in Lojban (was: RE: Re: a new kind of fundamentalism

At 08:57 PM 10/7/02 +0100, And Rosta wrote:

You: Lojban needs to go the Naturalist route in order to be interesting
to linguists.
Me: (A) Why does it need to be interesting to linguists?


That is the circular part.


(B) It is more likely to interest linguists if it goes the Engineerist route.


I have only your word on this.


If I remember rightly, the key purpose in question was to have a
language that was 'whorfianly neutral', so that usage could then be
examined to see if there were any whorfian interferences from the L1.
No. The original JCB purpose was to design a language which was "natural" in the critical regards, but which deviated from natural in one variable that was expected to have a significant Whorfian effect. Hence the "logical" grammar. He was decidedly hazy on what to do next.
By the time Lojban got started, he had more carefully formulated his understanding of Whorf (and he recorded this in the 4th edition of L1: http://www.loglan.org/Loglan1/chap7.html )
I would also read what I wrote in JL, which is on the website, to see how I've explained it in the past, when I was more able to focus on the topic than I can now. 
http://www.lojban.org/files/why-lojban/whylojb.txt
http://www.lojban.org/files/why-lojban/swh.txt
You can read these for yourself, which is probably better than my trying to explain them (especially JCB's, since I realized immediately that JCB's test was bogus). However, JCB's formulation of the hypothesis as applied to language design, I choose to paraphrase as: "language constrains the thoughts of people using the language; therefore, the removal of constraints from a language should lead to detectable removal of constraints in the thoughts of people using the language". Lojban therefore is a combination of unique to the language constraints (e.g. the le/lo/loi etc. distinctions) and removal of constraints (many).
When actually engineering Lojban based on JCBs concept and general design, I sought to maximize these aspects, but I also came up with the idea of Lojban as a "linguistic test bed" and the corresponding concept of "experimental linguistics". If linguistic experimentation is possible, then "engelang"s are necessary - languages engineered as tools for testing linguistic ideas. But if the engineering is not followed up by actual usage, then the engelang is just engineering and not a language. 


But the Naturalist route wants to complete the creation process through usage,
Those aspects which are not explicitly engineered have to be completed some way, preferably in the most naturalistic way possible. 


in which case there is inevitably going to be massive L1
interference, but not of an interesting sort, because it won't
be counterposed to any defined whorfianly neutral grammar.
Sapir-Whorf testing pretty much requires that you are using L1 Lojbanists or at least Lojbanists who have learned the language as already established to the point of natural language standards of fluency. 


> >(1) is an irrelevance. If you're interested in a language with native
> >speakers, you don't look to an invented language.
>
> Precisely.  We need to overcome this prejudice by showing them that a
> language without native speakers can still be linguistically
> interesting.  On the other hand, this takes LOTS of usage - Esperanto
> levels or greater.

Trying to see things from a linguist's perspective, why would lots of
usage make a crucial difference?
Because to a linguist, it isn't demonstratively a language unless it is used linguistically. Anything engineered that is not subjected to the test of usage, is not "language". 


My answer would be that it's all very well designing an Engelang, but
in order to understand its role as a benchmark for natural language,
it has to be seen whether it can ever be spoken fluently.
More importantly, it is HOW it is spoken fluently that tells us whether the language as engineered really is a language. Those parts of Lojban that are designed but which never see usage (most of Mex so far, for example) are still merely engineering. 


(If it can,
then we learn that natural language could be more 'perfect' but just
doesn't need to be. If it can't, then we learn that the language
faculty itself has some kind of constraints limiting linguistic
perfectibility.)
The concept of linguistic perfectibility seems ill-formed to me. I don't even know what a perfect language would be. 


But the sort of usage relevant to this experiment
would have to be usage that strives to apply the principle of "Say
what you mean".


"what you mean" is ill-formed here as a concept. I understand it so as to mean:
"something which your listener will understand as meaning what you intended to communicate" If your communication is vague, then the listener should understand it as correspondingly vague. 


The Naturalists' principle of "Say whatever you
like, so long as you are understood (and don't violate any baselines)"
would not tell us anything we didn't already know.
1. It tells you whether it is possible to communicate with understanding within the constraints of the baseline (which means that the engelang really is a lang, since the baseline defines what is engineered)
2. It fills in the gaps in the language design so that we have a complete language that can be learned as a language for experimental purposes. JCB's original "engineering" was so incomplete, that he reported that the users could not use it - it sort of just "rattled around in their brains" - there was not enough flesh on the design for the language to be spoken. We'e spent 40 years since then adding additional design so that it no longer rattles. But it seems impossible to construct a complete language, so at some point usage has to fill in the gaps. 


> >(2) is an objection raised by learners.
>
> It is also one that is raised by linguists who aren't much interested in
> the "search for the ideal language" that is usually at the heart of the
> fiddling.

If any linguists have said "I would be interested in research on this
invented language, so long as it wasn't undergoing fiddling", I'd be
very interested to find out their reasons.
I think rather that they would say that they are only interested in language as it is actually used. The people fiddling aren't using, and what they produce, until it is used, is not language but ideology (i.e. a systematic development of ideas from premises). 


> >I may be wrong, but I suspect that these linguists are people who
> >have had the generosity of spirit to take the trouble to explain to
> >you why they and linguists in general are not interested in Lojban
> >or invented lgs in general, but that they are not people who have
> >said "yes, I or other linguists would be keen to do research on
> >Lojban, if only it changed in the following ways...".
>
> Correct.  I have to work on eliminating the negatives, and THEN I'll worry
> about the positives.  If we never get out of negative interest territory,
> there is no sense worrying about the positives.

I understand that you see your role as to try to realize the original
goals of Loglan, rather than to question whether the goals were sensible
or feasible.
Oh, I've questioned, all right. But I think the language has to be aimed at those goals or it is no longer part of the Loglan project. And my justification for what I did in the 80s in the face of JCB's wrath was that his project and its supporters deserved fulfillment, which he was no longer viably offering. 


But what I've been trying to say in these messages is this:
* Reducing linguists' negative attitudes to Lojban is still going to
leave a complete absence of positive interest.
Perhaps. But I HAVE had inklings of positive interest, when I've been on the stump (which I haven't been for years - we need to show a language in use to bother doing more than we have). 


* The Naturalist programme is likely to reduce the potential for
positive interest.


Obviously arguable, since we are arguing it.


* The Engineerist programme has the potential to be of interest to
linguistics, and most of the putative objections to Lojban become
irrelevant to Lojban as an Engineerist experiment.


But it isn't a human language until human beings speak it.


Ergo:
EITHER (A) Lojban should not set "being of research interest to linguists"
as a criterion for success, [though it could still aim for the lesser goal
of "trying (but not necessarily succeeding) to be of interest to
linguists"]
I know of no other criterion for success in a language, other than "being used linguistically" or "being of interest to linguists" (the latter covering dead languages as well as living ones).
You haven't defined a different purpose for success of a language, that I can tell. 


> Ivan has mentioned Lojban in a paper also (but only as a footnote, IIRC),
> and Nick earlier discussed Lojban in a paper in the machine translation arena. 

I have encountered mention of Loglan, too. But the only case I know of
of a nonlojlanist linguist independently investigating Lojlan is
Alan Libert in his recent book. I haven't read it yet, but as its
about a priori artificial languages, it doesn't count as the sort of
research Lojlan is looking to incite.


At this point, I'll take anything.

Step 1: Lojban is interesting enough that linguists write about it
Step 2: Lojban attracts researchers with linguistic credentials, who therefore can get research funding to actually do direct research involving Lojban Step 3: Lojban researchers start producing real science from such direct research.
We cannot expect more than incidental mention of Lojban until we get people willing to spend money and time doing Lojban research at more than the hobbyist level. We're also unlikely to get any major research results from the language so long as it wholly a spare time endeavor. The incidental mentions we've been getting serve to establish credibility that warrants serious expenditure, but is not the end in itself. 

lojbab

--
lojbab                                             lojbab@lojban.org
Bob LeChevalier, President, The Logical Language Group, Inc.
2904 Beau Lane, Fairfax VA 22031-1303 USA                    703-385-0273
Artificial language Loglan/Lojban:                 http://www.lojban.org