[lojban] Re: [hedybos@hotmail.com: Feedback (long, sorry)))]

["And Rosta" <a.rosta@v21.me.uk>]

> I am not anywhere near enough of a linguist to handle this.
>
> -Robin
>
> ----- Forwarded message from Hedy Bos <hedybos@hotmail.com> -----
>
> Subject: Feedback (long, sorry)))
> From: Hedy Bos <hedybos@hotmail.com>
> To: lojban@lojban.org
>
> Dear Sir(s),
>
> I have the following feedback on Lojban:
>
> -The denotation is hell. A period expressing a phoneme? Why?

Its phonetic realization is a glottal stop or silence of perceptible
duration. That's strange allophony, but the symbolization doesn't
seem inappropriate. If orthographic spaces are used, the period
may be omitted.

> And what?s with
> the phobia for the symbol ?h?? If your defence is ?it is used only to
> separate vowels?, then there still would be no reason why the symbol ?h?
> could n?t be used.

The rationale is that 'consonants' and 'vowels' play an important
role in Lojban morphology, but the /'/ phoneme (which can be
realized not only by [h] but also by any voiceless fricative other
than [x, f, s, S]) is not -- in terms of morphological patterning
-- a consonant. But in fact <h> is a permitted allograph of <'>.
That said, <'> does tend to rile people & was not well-chosen.

> The first basic rule in lexicography is ?be consistent?. If you
> choose to go roman, go roman all the way! Don?t use diacretic (and
> illogical) symbols that will chase beginners away instantaneously!
> It?s pretty much illegible like this. The apostrophe I can live with,
> but don?t incorporate something like a period in the system. Many
> languages express a normal phoneme such as a glottal stop with an
> apostrophe (or an alif). Use an ?h? for all I care. Don?t use a dot.

It's rather too late for such advice. The orthography is internally
consistent, but it does jar with traditional use of the roman
alphabet.

> -it?s either under- or overspecified. If it really is such a logical
> language then let logic do it?s job and dare to make a choice for either
> system. Especially the deictic/locative marking is hopelessly
> overspecified in an innatural manner.

I think your points are reasonable. But, you say:

> Nobody needs an superspecified form. If it does, it will come
> naturally, when it?s not a pidgin anymore.

The creators of the language had to choose whether to create just
the rudiments of the language, and leave the majority of the
language up to natural evolution, or to create a fully-fledged
language. Some people preferred the former strategy, some preferred
the latter. The final product is a slightly haphazard compromise.

> -the assumption that natural languages are inadequate aggravates
> me. I am convinced that if something does not occur in a natural
> language this must be for a (simple) reason: it doesn?t work!

I think you're dead wrong. Natural language is as good as it
needs to be to perform the basic functions it evolved to
perform, but it is no better than it needs to be. Its most
obvious deficiency is that it is rife with ambiguity (logical
and syntactic). Because people are such good disambiguators,
the ambiguity is only a problem where precision is really
crucial, such as in academic or legalistic writing, or in
the speech of Vulcan-like people who want to be at pains to
say exactly what they mean.

This is not to say that Lojban solves that problem, but the notion
that natural language cannot be improved upon betrays an ignorance
of the nature of evolution as opposed to conscious design.

> So the following irritations come forth out of this opposition:
>
> -why so many arguments for one stem? Why not express these with
> prepositions? This would be more logical and would cause the number of
> illogical arguments one would have to learn in order to be able to use a
> stem to it?s fullest extense to decrease tremendously. There is no
language
> that would refuse to express prepositional phrases in such manner. Because
> this is more logical ?nd it decreases complicated lines of thoughts when
> using a stem.

Some predicates are somewhat 'bloated' -- that is, they have more
arguments than they need to. There already are preposition-like
words (in word class BAI), so your suggestion already exists in
the language. But tagging arguments with prepositions increases
longwindedness and doesn't simplify the learning process. E.g.:

> For example:
>
> barja              bar               x1 is a tavern/bar/pub ?serving x2 to
> audience/patrons x3?
> The x2 and x3 can be expressed more logically with some basic prepositions
> in my opinion, which would save everybody a lot of puzzling.

If barja still had an x2 and x3 argument, it wouldn't ease the
learning if x2 and x3 had to be marked by prepositions. Certainly
one can have a predicate meaning 'x1 is a tavern', and leave
the other arguments implicit, but since a tavern is a tavern
only by virtue of having patrons, it makes sense to specify this
as an argument.

> -why use separate stems for compounding? It does make the entire
> utterance shorter, but it also increases the number of forms to be
> learned. Even more so, there is no unambiguous way to derive the
> compound-stem from the original stem! Why not choose for a simple
> head-dependent construction? It will increase the entire compound
> with one syllable only. Most languages work just fine with this
> system. Some do use a possessive marker, such as
> Roman languages, or a clitic such as Bantu-languages. The only languages
> (consistently) changing a stem are root-based languages with a skeletal
> character (Afro-Asiatic) . Either switch to that (for the sake of logic
> and/or consistency) or accept that a compound will end up with four
> syllables. Never hurt nobody.

The language has a settled design. Switching to an Afroasiatic-style
morphology would make for a different language, which anybody is
free to create.

There are few people who would defend the design of Lojban's morphology;
it is monumentally perverse. But Lojban did not evolve through a
process in which people kept on revising the design until they got
it right. People wanted to be able to use it as soon as possible,
not wait for it to be perfected. So the end product is another
compromise between people who prioritized a good design and people
who prioritized Lojban's avowed aim of creating a stable and usable
version of Loglan as soon as possible. This is why people who
discover Lojban are so often simultaneously attracted to it and
repelled or grieved by it. If a camel is a horse designed by a
committee, Lojban is a language created by a committee: the
committee had many exceptionally clever members, but inevitably
they were not all of one mind. So what you have is one grossly
imperfect language that you can actually use *now*, instead of
one language that is getting ever closer to perfection but is
not ready to use yet.

--And.



------------------------ Yahoo! Groups Sponsor --------------------~--> 
$9.95 domain names from Yahoo!. Register anything.
http://us.click.yahoo.com/J8kdrA/y20IAA/yQLSAA/GSaulB/TM
--------------------------------------------------------------------~-> 

To unsubscribe, send mail to lojban-unsubscribe@onelist.com 
Yahoo! Groups Links

<*> To visit your group on the web, go to:
    http://groups.yahoo.com/group/lojban/

<*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to:
    lojban-unsubscribe@yahoogroups.com

<*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to:
    http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/