[lojban] Re: Chess-and-Tetris Hypothesis

[Jim Carter <lojban-out@lojban.org>]

On Sat, 17 Dec 2005, Yanis Batura wrote:

> Hereby I describe my hypothesis about speaking Lojban (goi ko'a), called 
> "The Chess-and-Tetris hypothesis", name derivation below.

> --snip--
> HYPOTHESIS 3 (Chess-and-Tetris hypothesis): THERE IS A DIFFERENCE BETWEEN 
> NATURAL-TYPE LANGUAGES AND NON-NATURAL-TYPE LANGUAGES LIKE DIFFERENCE 
> BETWEEN TETRIS AND CHESS. HUMAN BRAIN WILL NEVER GET ACCUSTOMED TO 
> NON-NATURAL-TYPE LANGUAGES TO THE GRADE WHEN IT WON'T THINK WHILE 
> SPEAKING THEM.

I don't have the references right at hand, but there's a current theory of 
linguistics that humans' language processors are innately capable of making 
certain distinctions like consonants vs vowels, and recognizing 
certain semantic categories like actor vs object.  (And many, many more in 
each category.)  These classifications are ordered by importance to produce 
rules of morphology, grammar, etc.  But natural languages vary wildly in 
the importance ranking; e.g. in Chinese and Lojban words must end in vowels 
(or .) and you can't split nonconforming text into words, while in English 
the vowel-consonant distinction at word end is at the bottom of the 
importance list.  

[Constructed] languages which use only innate language processor features 
are in the "tetris" category, while those which go outside, such as 
traditional mathematical typesetting, are like chess, requiring cognitive 
processing.  

I believe that one of the original Lojban/Loglan goals was to produce a 
natural-type language -- although defining "natural-type" is not easy, even 
knowing what we know now, since any experiments on what the human brain can 
innately do are difficult and give vague conclusions.  To the extent that a 
language feature consistently requires cognitive assistance, I would say 
that it's a misfeature, going against the goal of being a natural-type 
language. Of course everything in the language requires cognitive help when 
you're just starting, but I'm talking about features that nobody can get 
right without careful thought.


James F. Carter          Voice 310 825 2897    FAX 310 206 6673
UCLA-Mathnet;  6115 MSA; 405 Hilgard Ave.; Los Angeles, CA, USA  90095-1555
Email: jimc@math.ucla.edu    http://www.math.ucla.edu/~jimc (q.v. for PGP key)


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