Re: [lojban] thoughts on numerical language

[And Rosta <arosta@uclan.ac.uk>]

>>> <thinkit8@lycos.com> 12/03/01 05:23pm >>>
#When trying to put together a binary-encoded language, I noticed 
#some interesting things.  Lojban serves as a great model, for one.  
#I noticed some things became a lot easier--you don't have to worry 
#about fitting things into human pronunciation.  Depending on how 
#compact you want it to be, there's a lot less compromises to be 
#made.  This becomes even more freeing (perhaps this is an extention 
#of the hypothesis...maybe our vocal cords limit our thought).

It's an essential feature of human language that the basic ingredients
of phonological structure are independent of meaning and function;
a language has one set of rules for defining valid phonological structures
and another whooly separate set of rules governing their mapping to
semanticosyntactic structures. So it should be possible to change the
phonology -- which is what I assume you mean by binary-encoding --
without affecting syntax/semantics. Our vocal tract limits not what
we can express, but only how quickly we can express it.

--And.