Re: Planned languages

[Bob LeChevalier-Logical Language Group <lojbab@lojban.org>]

At 06:22 PM 4/20/99 +0100, you wrote:
>From: Colin Fine <colin@kindness.demon.co.uk>
>vecu'u le notci po'u <371C54B3.AEB9F4EA@bcc.bilkent.edu.tr> la Robin
>Turner <robin@Bilkent.EDU.TR> cu cusku di'e
>>From: Robin Turner <robin@Bilkent.EDU.TR>
>
>Note also that the respects in which Loglan was supposed to have
>influence in the Sapir-Whorf sense were NOT primarily in vocabulary. It
>had to have a vocabulary, so some strategy was required to generate it;
>but the unique properties were to be in various aspects of the
>grammatical structure.

The intent was to devise a vocabulary that was learnable by a meaningful
strategy, but sufficiently unlike any one natlang so as to bias the
linguistics.  I am not sure how much JCB was thinking about this, but the
problem of semantics transfer is far worse when the words are cognates.
This is clear in looking at the Esperanto/Interlingua family of languages,
with especially Glosa suffering from English semantics transfer.  (And of
course "Basic English" relies on English idiom almost totally to convey
complex meanings, as the ultimate example of the weakness of cognate
languages).

>>AFAIK this is the case.  It would have been pretty hard for JCB to claim
>>copyright on the structure, since this would really mean claiming
>>copyright on predicate logic!  

JCB did claim copyright on the formal grammar when he found that we had
remade the words to evade his copyright claims on them.  But he was on even
weaker ground there because the YACC grammar had been originally written by
people other than JCB who never granted him rights.

>>The other problem was that not only was JCB
>>claiming copyright, but he was continually changing the language.  This
>>combination frustrated people somewhat.
>
>Actually it was never accepted that he could copyright even the words,

Indeed - we remade the words because we thought it silly to get into an
expensive legal battle over an artificial language design, only to be
forced into it two years later anyway.

>but the devisers of Lojban took the opportunity to rebuild the
>vocabulary from an updated set of languages, and with some new
>guidelines concerning combining forms.

Actually we withdrew some of the sound changes for combining forms that he
had made in 1982, so that Lojban's sound combinations are more conservative
of the 1975 language than the so-called original.

We started with a vocabulary rebuilding because we thought this would show
the need for compromise, and I had a class full of people who wanted to
learn the language.  (JCB refused my order for 10 copies of the Loglan
dictionary needed to teach the class I had started here in Virginia,
because I had not agreed to his copyright claims).  There was no
contemplation of change, nor of making a "new" language until months later.

>>>  Far from being all but dead, I see Loglan building for
>>>  greater activity than ever before.  The listserv is getting
>>>  significant participation from those whose native language is not
>>>  English, including native speakers of Russian, Ossetian, German, and
>>>  Esperanto.  (Actually, most of the Esperantists are not native

>>>  speakers; but not all of them know English nor Loglan, so there is
>>>  interest in developing a Loglan-Esperanto / Esperanto-Loglan
>>>  dictionary).

A bit exaggerated, IMHO. The Loglanists List has been noteworthy for weeks
of silence between messages, and the non-English posters prior to the last
week could be counted on one hand.  The most prolific poster on Lojban List
in the last few years has been Spanish-native Jorge Llambias.  Jorge and
Goran Topic of Croatia, along with several others, kept a running Lojban
conversation going on the Lojban mailing list for a couple of months back
in 1996.

>>I must admit I was surprised at this resurgence of activity (as postings
>>on the Lojban list show as well).

Lojban List now has close to 150 subscribers and 30-40% were clearly non-US
the last time I looked.

>>According to what you've just said, it means "It's bluer", which kind of
>>obliges you to either fill in the missing argument or supply a default
>>value in the definition.
>>
>The trouble with the Loglan standard of making most or all 'adjectival'
>predwords two-place is that they either require or imply (I'm not sure
>which) that there is a scale of (in this case) blueness. I accepted this
>when I was using Loglan, but now that it has been questioned, I am
>dubious.

The prototype model of semantics does seem to be the predominant one these
days (the cogling people may know this better than I do),  It would require
that comparative "blanu" mean something like "X is more similar than Y to
prototypical blue, and not more similar to some other basic color prototype
than it is to blue.

lojbab
----
lojbab                     ***NOTE NEW ADDRESS***           lojbab@lojban.org
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