*IMPORTANT* LOJBAN-RELATED CONFERENCE ANNOUNCEMENT - input wanted

[Logical Language Group <lojbab@access.digex.net>]

Inputs are needed quickly!  I am sending this to Lojban List, and also
directly so some key members of the community who may be filtering list
traffic or otherwise not actively reading, in order to ensure prompt
attention.

I have just received word of an upcoming linguistics conference that
will specifically deal with constructed languages.

Unfortunately, the official deadline for submission of abstracts is the
end of June, so we don't have a lot of time.  (The person who notified
me had checked with the conference organizer and determined that the
conference program is not full, and that there was some flexibility on
this deadline.  John Cowan is calling the organizer today to get more
specifics.

Getting one or more Lojban papers included in the conference would be a
major boon to our credibility in linguistic circles.  Participation is
apparently refereed and papers presented will be published in conference
proceedings.  This allows us to cite linguistically-published material
on Lojban in any future efforts at funding or publication in more
noteworthy journals.

The conference will be 13 October, 1995 in New York City.  A one day
conference on a weekday (that is a Friday) means that few people will be
able to justify travelling to the conference who is not local.  (Anyone
interested PLEASE speak up.)  Luckily we have John Cowan there in NYC.
Perhaps, depending on the rules for the conference, he can arrange to
deliver more than one paper, including someone else's paper as co-author
or something - John is perfectly capable of defending most technical
discussions of Lojban.  In any event, we ought to be able to get at
least one paper into the conference if we work quickly.

In a quick brainstorm, John and I have come up with several topics for
possible papers, some of which would better be written by other people:

- a general discussion of the linguistics research goals for Lojban
  "Lojban - a test bed for linguistics research"
- any number of logic-related issues
- a comparison of predicate language expression and that of other languages
  including whether Lojban predicates are nouns, verbs, or adjectives,
  or something else.
- discussion of some of the tricky semantics issues that we have been
  facing, especially in the last year
- discussion of the comprehensive Lojban tense system (possibly difficult to
  condense in to a short paper)
- discussion of the Lojban attitudinal system
- Nick's work on lujvo - perhaps a modification of his lujvo paper
- Nick's paper on his Prolog implementation of Lojban
- Ivan's work on varieties of metaphorical modification, or perhaps something
  derived from his thesis work, which he says has considerable application to
  Lojban.

I'm sure some of you can think of others.

Following is the text of the flyer:

=================

                 The American Society of Geolinguistics

     with the Esperanto Society of New York and the Academy for the
       Humanities and Sciences of the City University of New York

              invite your participation in a conference on

            CONSTRUCTED LANGUAGES AND LANGUAGE CONSTRUCTION

 PLANNED LANGUAGES AND LANGUAGE PLANNING FROM DESCARTES TO ZAMENHOF, &
     FROM VAUGELAS TO HEINRICH SCHMIDT, & FROM CATALAN TO BOSNIAN

     to be held at The Graduate School & University Center of CUNY
                       42nd Street New York City

                            13 OCTOBER 1995

Abstracts (250 words) in three (3) copies of papers that would take 15
minutes to read at the conference should be sent to reach before the end
of June 1995

        Prof. Wayne H. Finke, Secretary of ASG
        7 East 14th Street, New York NY 10003

and papers are welcome not only on constructed languages such as
Esperanto, Interlingua, etc., but all such "logical" and "a priori"
languages and all broader interpretations of "construction".  The
conference also proposes to address other products of language planning
and conscious reshaping for educational, political, economic, and
cultural purposes.  Papers may discuss any language(s) but are expected
to be delivered in English and offered in camera-ready copy (details
from the AGS editor, Prof. Jesse Levitt, 485 Brooklawn Aenue, Fairfield
CT 06432) in English (maximum 12 pages including notes) for publication
in the proceedings.  The abstracts will be read by a jury consisting of
the following:

          Prof. Kenneth H. Rogers, University of Rhode island
                Prof. Joan McConnell, Stanford Univerity
     Ms. Cecile Low, President of The Esperanto Society of New York

They will announce the program of the conference in June 1995.

========

Because of the short deadline, I ask that anyone planning to respond to
this from the Lojban community at the very least coordinate with John
Cowan (cowan@ccil.org) and copy your discussion to me at
lojbab@access.digex.net.  In return, I'm asking Cowan to keep informed
of any details he finds out, anyone who responds to him with ideas or
offering to write or help write a paper, so we can coordinate any Lojban
community representation at the conference.

You can also post ideas for general discussion on Lojban List, but note
that the probable time-critical nature of our response demands that we
not spend a lot of time on debate.

My public thanks to Mr. Lynn Bartlett for letting me know about this
conference.

lojbab
----
lojbab                                                lojbab@access.digex.net
Bob LeChevalier, President, The Logical Language Group, Inc.
2904 Beau Lane, Fairfax VA 22031-1303 USA                        703-385-0273
 For the artificial language Loglan/Lojban, see ftp.cs.yale.edu  /pub/lojban
    or see Lojban WWW Server: href="http://xiron.pc.helsinki.fi/lojban/";