[lojban] Re: [hobyrne@gmail.com: Alphabet]

[John E Clifford <lojban-out@lojban.org>]

--- Hugh O'Byrne <hobyrne@gmail.com> wrote:

> John E Clifford wrote:
> > 
> > --- Hugh O'Byrne <hobyrne@gmail.com> wrote:
> > 
> >>Yay!  I'm on the list now.  I can defend my message!
> > 
> > coi xius
> 
> coi
> 
> I'm trying out a new writing system in replying to this e-mail.  Please
> don't take offense, I'm doing it to see if it helps with my focus in
> writing a reply, and maybe if it helps in communicating what I wish to
> express.  I'll try to make all my "point" summaries value-neutral, as
> easily pointed at me as at you, to be fair.

Not sure what this means; nothing is visibly different.
 
> > ...
> > Well, Hangul is designed to serve one language, VS is meant to be able to represent all (or a
> > significant portion of all) languages.  It is thus more complete in the sense of covering more
> > possibilities, including those not found in some particular language.  This means, of course,
> that
> > it includes a lot of stuff that any particular language does not need.   It is consequently
> not so
> > useful for a particular language (internally, not for explaining to someone outside).  For
> > example, it has two sets of velars, which, while phonemic isn some languages are not in
> Lojban. 
> > The distinction has, therefore to be ignored â?? somehow â?? for use in Lojban (either opting
> for
> > one â?? which is inaccurate in some places â?? or dropping the distinctive features involved,
> > which means in effect not using VS).
> 
> Point: agreed (changed my mind).
> 
> In another post, I come to the realise that the core Lojban alphabet is
> best a *phonemic* one, *not* a phonetic one.  Phonetics are *too*
> specific, and numerous past the point of being burdensome.
> 
> So, my aim shifts from implementing a representative phonetic alphabet,
> to a representative phonemic alphabet, preferably based on an existing
> representative phonetic alphabet (to avoid duplication of work, and
> provide an easy bridge to the study of phonetics).

Lojban's alphabet is phonemic.  English's is not (not even archephonemic -- covering the variety
of phoneme systems that go by the name "English.")
 
> >  As for regularity, in its area I donâ??t see how Hangul
> > could be more systematic (what I take â??regularâ?? to mean).  It is not iconic any more or
> less
> > than VS.
> 
> Point: muddy semantics.
> 
> When I see a larger system with a lot of regularity, next to a smaller
> system with a lot of regularity, I will say that the larger system is
> more regular.  I concede the point that VS and Hangul may have similar
> 'density' of regularity, but I maintain my point that with VS covering
> more space, it has more of the 'substance' of regularity.  It's a bit
> like saying wood is lighter than water, but a branch is heavier than a
> raindrop (only with 'space' and 'substance' reversed).

I see the point, but calling it "more regular" does some violence to ordinary English.  
 
> > (screed on â??logicalâ??) Lojban is logical in the sense that its grammar is based upon
> Applied
> > First-Order Predicate Logic.
> 
> "screed", I'd never come across that word before. :)

Set piece of complaint that is repeated over and over on every possible (and some impossible)
situation.

> 
> Rhetorical point:  We are working from different definitions of the same
> words.

Well, I know what mine is and so do you.  I also know a handful of related uses of "logical"
(valid, sound, plausible nd the like applied to arguments).  I do not know what you mean by
"logical."  My point is that the "logical" in "logical language" applied to Lojban is officially
and primarily  my sense.  to be sure, once the label gets applied others have tried to add other
features (tried to justify featutres already there) by calling them "logical" in some more or less
nebulous sense.  In Lojban, "logical" comes to mean little more than "I like it" for each speaker.
 Any actual arguments about the merits of a proposal or a feature needs to be framed in other
terms,  ("Logical" is the first word that students in logic classes learn to avoid.)
 
> Lojban is logical in more ways than just that.  (More on this below.)
> 
> >  Consequences of this include that arguments are more transparent
> > than in ordinary language and that the surface forms of sentences are less remote from the
> deep
> > structures.
> 
> Right.
> 
> >  Any other sense of â??logicalâ?? applied to Lojban needs to be rephrased in some
> > other terms to be evaluated.
> 
> I would counter that Lojban has several logical features,

Name one and explain why it is to be called "logical."

> and what you
> seem to be calling *the* logical feature of Lojban is just one of them,
> and is better called 'first order predicate logic' for reasons of
> precision.  The terms 'logic' and 'logical', by themselves, represent
> something more general.

A lot of people hold this view but theyare generally unable to explain what they mean or why the
term is appropriate.  I confess I have been assuming that you will fall in with the generality; I
hope I am wrong (but even then would think it were a better thing to have used whatever phrase you
come up with as explanation).

  I opine that the way in which I'm using the
> terminology is more valid, 

"Valid" is the second word that students learn to avoid.  It usually means about the same as
"logical."

and the term you're using should be qualified
> with 'first order predicate' to more accurately represent it.
> 
> >  The prima facie evaluation under â??logicalâ?? is that it does not
> > apply.
> 
> Point: conditionally conceded.
> 
> Reading your word "logical" as "first order predicate logic", I concur.

Whether there is another sense that applies is yet to be demonstrated.
 
> >  Beyond that (and, indeed, including that) Lojban is *meant* to be easy (how well it
> > succeeds is another issue).
> 
> Opinion point:  We have different values.
> 
> Mmm.  My take on it is that Lojban is meant to be *good*.  The better it
> is implemented, the easier it will be (in general; but naturally, a more
> complete and subtle implementation will inevitably become harder again 
> in some respects), but getting the language easy is a bonus symptomatic 
> side-effect rather than a goal.  It may even be a benchmark, during the
> development of the language, but it is still secondary.

Lojban has a particular goal (though it is sometimes hard to figure out just what it is).  That
goal is embodied in its grammar.  Everything else is made as simple as possible (given that it is
to be a complete speakable language) to allow this goal to be realized without outside
difficulties.  Even the grammar is taken to be simple in the senses noted.  (Of course, to what
extent these simplifications are in fact simple and do not interfere with the goal is a largely
unanswered -- even undiscussed -- question.)

 
> >  Lojban has been stripped of all the froo-froos (tense, cases, etc.)
> > of natural languages, completely regularized (and, so simplified).  Even the vocabulary is
> meant
> > to be recognizable by most literate speakers (speakers of the major languages) because the
> words
> > (the gismu at least) are partially familiar.  
> 
> Point: agreed.
> 
> That you put this in the paragraph under "screed on 'logical'", I hope,
> is an indication you can appreciate that the term 'logical' extends
> beyond 'first order predicate logic'.

Sorry, the screed just runs through the bit about what "logical" in "logical language" is meant to
mean.
 
> Right.  I read that much of the basic vocabulary was designed to match
> words from several major world languages, weighted by the population
> that speaks that language.  It struck me as so utterly, utterly gimmicky
> that I laughed out loud.  As a friend said, "when you mix all the 
> colours, you'll always get *brown*".  Even though I laugh at it, I 
> admire it, because it does embody the spirit of the language.

It does indeed.  It was part of the plan to make everything other than the grammar as easy to
learn as possible, so that the effects of the grammar could be tested more or less directly.
 
> The words for the digits are deliberately placed far from each other in
> sound-space; I consider this to be a logical feature of Lojban too. 
> Where information is frequently represented in a very dense form, it 
> makes good sense to have that form as error-tolerant as possible, even 
> more so than more common but less critical everyday use.

Yes, this is a good practical plan.  How is that logical?  It follows from a description of the
situation and familiar general principles of information theory?  Surely there are better words
for this than "logical:" "it makes good sense" does very well, for example. Notice that it is
scarcely a principle decsion, since other, equally important clusters of concepts have been
clustered down to differing by only an unstressed vowel.
  
> >>BTW, The word 'dyslexic' makes *me* feel dyslexic.  I have this nagging
> >>feeling in the pit of my stomach that it should be 'dislexic'.  That 'y' 
> >>just seems *wrong*. :)
> > 
> > The â??dys-â??, like â??lexicâ?? is from Greek, â??dis-â?? is Latin.  They also work in
> slightly
> > different ways (though they are related).  â??dis-â?? typically points to the opposite of some
> > existing term, â??dys-â?? modifys some term of activity to say it is done badly (as opposed to
> > â??eu-â?? for doing it well). So, â??dyslexiaâ?? is doing lexia badly, not doing the opposite
> of
> > lexia.
> 
> Point: learned.
> 
> :) My wife knows Latin and Greek too.  I get lessons like this from her
> occasionally.  It's fun.
 kalemera. ti kanete
 
> >>>    (Want to mess yourself up?  Take a text and have the computer replace
> >>>    every [dbpq] with a *random* character from [dbpq].  Then try to read
> >>>    it).
> >>
> >>I'm not sure what you're trying to express here.  Take a text and have
> >>the computer replace every [aeio] with a random character from [aeio],
> >>then try to read it.  Pick *any* four (relatively common) letters.  Pick
> >>7.8% (approx. frequency of [dbpq] combined) of the letters in the text
> >>randomly, and shuffle them.  A demonstration only statistically
> >>demonstrates something when there are control cases too.
> > 
> > Messing with the vowels is much less disastrous than with the consonants.  Indeed, we can
> > generally read fairly well passages in which the vowels are missing altogether, clearly not
> the
> > case with consonants.
> 
> Part of point: conceded.
> Part of point: remains.
> 
> Yes, vowels was my first idea, and I realised it wasn't very good.  So I
> came up with other ideas.
> 
> It still remains that a demonstration without a control case (or several
> control cases, as is necessary when several aspects of the experiment
> may be relavent) is not a valid demonstration in a scientific sense.

I havw long since lost what this experiment was meant to demonstrate, so I can't sort out what is
cut down, what remains, what is the control case and so on.  The general point about experiments
is good, of course (statistical inference rules for causal cases require the control probabilities
be known).

> >  Consonants form the core of word Gestalts and we generally (once fully
> > literate) see Gestalts rather than letter strings (English â?? indeed all written languages
> â??
> > are more like Chinese than we at first notice).
> 
> Point: inquiry.
> 
> I don't really understand what you mean by that last bit in the
> parentheses.  Perhaps this is not the forum for it, but I'd be
> interested to learn what property (properties?) of Chinese you're
> referring to.

I see that xorxes has taken this one in his usual beautiful fashion.  The phonological details of
the word we read are rarely of direct concern, just as are the phonological parts of Chinese
characters, we read the word/character as a whole, by its shape, not its components directly.
 
> I seem to remember hearing in a movie (I know, hardly a good source for
> hard data) that some aspects of Chinese words, such as singular/plural,
> perhaps gender, perhaps tense, are manifested by subtle nuances on the
> vowels (well... subtle to an English-speaker... another case of the
> boundaries on the phonemic map being drawn in different places).

Well, Chinese doesn't have gender nor singular/plural nor tense in the sense of familiar Western
languages.  What substitutes for these -- when needed -- are usually added words, many of them
incapable of occurring unsupported.  These then do affect the tones of the words they are attached
to (for some tones anyhow) (One case of gender not in the spoken language is that the third person
pronoun, which pronounced is the same for masculine and feminine, is written with either the woman
or the person character in the conceptual slot depending on whether the referent is female or
male.) Otherwise, this does not seem to hold for Mandarin and I think not for Han altogether, but
may work in some dialects or even other national languages from this family.
 
> >>Lhoerr does seem to be closer to Visible Speech than Hangul.  And it
> >>uses a wider set of features on the symbols, which goes some way toward
> >>addressing the "all letters look alike" argument.  Thanks!  You've
> >>helped me (at least, partially) deflect the biggest argument against the
> >>idea!  I like the look of it, I like it quite a bit; I'll investigate
> >>some more.
> > 
> > Lhoerr apprears to be as arbitrary as VS and not to have any real advantages over it.
> 
> Point: missed (I'm sorry, this one *does* point at you).
> 
> I was not arguing that Lhoerr had advantages over VS in terms of
> arbitratiness.  I was arguing that Lhoerr has an advantage over VS in
> that it has a wider set of features on the symbols. 

But that is not an obvious advantage; if anything it suggests that the symbol is even more
cluttered and hard to read.

> I stated that
> clearly.  What is a very subtle visual cue in VS, a short line, in a
> slightly different place, or a tight curve, is a wider, more sweeping
> change to a symbol in Lhoerr.

Now this -- which you did not mention before -- does count as an advantage for reading (assuming
that there are not so many doodads that they cannot all be taken in). The very small pictures of
Lhoerr that I saw did not make this point apparent.

> A more obvious, larger feature is more
> easily, more quickly processed in the visual field.  Less chance of
> ambiguity when the pen slips slightly, less need to pause and peer at a
> symbol closely, these *are* real advantages.
> 
> >>> It is the non-solution to a non-problem in Lojban.
> >>
> >>You don't see a problem.  I do.  I guess we'll just have to agree to differ.
> > 
> > You do apparently have a problem.  You have an aesthetic which finds the use of the Latin
> alphabet
> > for Lojban  unappealing.  But that is your problem, not Lojbanâ??s or Lojbanistsâ??. 
> 
> Point: emotional.

Not really; just putting the problem in its proper place.  We cannot be expected to be concerned
with what is for us a non-issue.
 
> I am a Lojbanist.  I'm not a member of the ruling elite, or the steering
> committee, I'm not even barely fluent.  I am a Lojbanist.  I do see room
> for improvement, and I do think it's a worthy goal, to improve upon
> Lojban.  I am a Lojbanist.  I am a part of Lojban.  I will not let you
> dismiss me so easily.

I have hardly dismissed you, having spent a couple of hours writing to you,  I am, however, trying
in a friendly way to suggest that your issue is not one that other people in the group are likely
to be interested in beyond reading the first few exchanges.

> Changing my "I do see a problem" to "You do have a problem", from the
> purely logical point of view, or for example if translated into Lojban, 
> is transparently erroneous and glaringly misrepresentative.

Sorry.  Usually, if someone says he sees a problem he implies that there is a problem there (it is
hard to see what isn't there and stay completely rational).  Since I at least do not see a problem
and find nothing in what you say that leads me to think there is one, I conclude (as I would in
the visual case) that there is something the matter with you -- and a problematic thing at that. 
Sorry if I left out the middle step.  With it in place the whole is pragmatically sound.

> From a 
> human point of view, it was low, cheap, petty, and unfair.  I do not 
> deserve that, and I will not let you apply it to me.

Sorry. Occasionally the whole of thirty years reading newbies who have solved all the problem of
Lojban before they can write a grammatical sentence sweeps over me and I dump a small part of it
on  the current person offering the 217th cure for which there is no known disease.
 
> Meta-point: query.
> 
> Why are you going on the offensive?

Proper question is why I have been only defensive so long.  You made the proposal; it is therfore
yours to defend.  So far I have mainly pointed out inadequacies in the defense; a little attack
seems called for.

> I am upset.  I shall have to look at the rest of this post later.
> 
> mi'e .xius.
Sorry to hear it.  Advice: Ask whether you can pay the price of admission into the combat zone
that is one part of this list before you hop in.


To unsubscribe from this list, send mail to lojban-list-request@lojban.org
with the subject unsubscribe, or go to http://www.lojban.org/lsg2/, or if
you're really stuck, send mail to secretary@lojban.org for help.