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[lojban] Re: (no subject)/Borges

Arika Okrent wrote:

I've told you this before, Bob, but I am always impressed by your
willingness to come to the defense of JCB, in spite of all that has
happened.  It is a testament to your generous spirit.


%^)
I wasn't defending JCB, but rather my concept of the project. But I'll take the compliment anyway. Thanks.
Actually, as I note below, I have some very strong disagreements with certain of JCB's ideas, so calling me a defender of JCB suggests that I may have given you a false impression by something I said. 


My "culture-free" interpretation stems from his reported purpose of a
guarantee of metaphysical neutrality.


OK.


To know that something is
metaphysically neutral seems to require that you know what the
metaphysics are. 

I'm less sure about this.


But "we know not what thing the universe is."  Or
in this case, we know not what assumptions we are making.
That may be true about the universe, but I am less sure that it is true about the language(s) that we speak/invent. 

> For

example, the speaker of Guugu Yimidhirr has no way to express his
particular metaphysics in Loglan because Loglan spatial reference is
defined with respect to the speaker, and not, as in his own language,
with respect to an absolute reference frame.
I won't pretend to know that language, but I suspect that if someone figured out how it worked, we would find a way to express it in Lojban (we would need to ask pc, who was our expert on strange tense systems, if it was already considered).
Or I would argue for adding a way. This is what I meant by cultural neutrality through accommodation, combining JCB's two seemingly separate goals in one. 

> Okay, maybe this exotic

aboriginal language doesn't need to be accounted for, the point is,
you don't realize the assumption about reference frame is being
"forced" on anyone until someone trots out one of these crazy
languages.

Conlangers have a word for a situation that comes up a lot in their
world.  Just when you think you've come up with the craziest, most
far-out feature for your conlang, someone will inevitably burst your
bubble by pointing out a natural language that has just that feature.
It's "anadewism" -"another natlang's already dunnit except worse"
-ism.  Never be too sure your conlang is outrageously original, and
likewise, never be too sure your neutral metaphysics are really
neutral.
We aren't sure. JCB said he was trying to MINIMIZE the number of metaphysical assumptions necessary, not eliminate them.
I actually have a better example, which Mark Shoulson can probably explain better, since he was, I believe, the one who first pointed it out. Lojban's gadri system divides things up a certain way, and there have been issues about the meaning of the various words, especially "lo", which makes it even harder to identify the assumptions, since we don't all agree on the fine details of how things work. But however we determine the meaning, Mark argued that we are still dividing things up. Put in terms of features like +/-definite +/-specific +/-veridical, we do not have gadri that correspond to all possible feature distinctions, and thus cannot represent a language accurately that makes a distinction that we do not.
But I am not sure that is really true. We may not make that distinction grammatically, through the gadri system, just as we do not make the distinction between singular and plural through the gadri system (a much more common distinction that is made in languages), or even singular/dual/plural. But we can certainly express plurality and duality.
So, no, we do not necessarily eliminate the metaphysical assumptions that we have made and do not know about. But does the language have the flexibility to accommodate alternatives if and when they are discovered? I think we may come close (at least within human language - I won't promise to translate alien languages or even Dolphin into Lojban).
The real test might be if someone tries to express all of the features and assumptions of sign language into Lojban. This was something that came up once (I'm assuming it wasn't you - the person, whose name I can't remember, but s/he was especially interested written transcriptions of sign language, I think based on choreography notation - seemed to think Lojban could meet the challenge, if in no other way by coming up with verbal representations of written sign language). You may be in a better position to evaluate, having examined sign language linguistically. 


So, I still think you can have fun in the attempt and learn a lot.
But I don't think that was JCB's intention.
My main point is that I don't think JCB was worried about a Loglandic culture forming that would, by that formation, impose a new cultural bias apart from one imported from any existing language. JCB probably wasn't worried about this, but especially in light of your comments, I think it is something worth watching for especially since it might lead to a false reading on a Sapir-Whorf test.
For example, we heard a lot at LogFest/jbonunsla about "the Singularity", and Lojban probably because of its Internet-based community, has attracted a lot of "computer geeks" and "libertarians" (Loglan actually attracted these before the Internet, of course), as well as science fiction fans. There have been attempts at various times to add vocabulary peculiar to these fields, which could be classified as jargon-formation. But could jargon-formation in a newly devised language itself impose cultural assumptions? Someone back in the TLI days wanted to make a primitive root (gismu) for the concept of "personal space" and the invasion thereof. Another wanted a primitive corresponding to the English slur "turkey" (of course "turki" was the proposal). And another wanted a word for what in Esperanto is "krokodili" - to speak ones native language when Esperanto/Loglan would be a better choice.
At this stage, one could avoid using words with particular cultural assumptions built in, but at what point such culture might become so pervasive that a Sapir Whorf effect (if such exists and can be meaningfully defined, but that is a different debate) might be masked, I'm not sure. (I think careful use of controls with second-language speakers learning Lojban could isolate cultural effects added because of the language features of Lojban, but linguists tend to think poorly of using 2nd language speakers in linguistics research - "careful" meaning a test far more sophisticated than JCB proposed in Chapter 7 of Loglan 1, which I rejected as flawed and inadequate on first reading - I do NOT defend JCB's understanding of proper scientific research).
And if we indeed fail, and cannot represent Guugu Yimidhirr spatial tenses, or some other such, I am not sure that invalidates the use of Lojban for a Sapir-Whorf test (barring a problem of the sort described in the last paragraph). The differences between Lojban and other major natural languages should be sufficient to provide such effects, if they exist, and thus our concern is to know the metaphysical assumptions embedded in the languages we are comparing, not the ultimate metaphysics of the universe itself. 

lojbab



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