[lojban] Re: LA/LO/LE: Three Perspectives on Language

["Chris Capel" <pdf23ds@gmail.com>]

On Wed, Sep 3, 2008 at 13:45, Jorge Llambías <jjllambias@gmail.com> wrote:
> Obviously non-human. Such "center embedded" phrases are notoriously
> hard for humans to parse: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Center_embedding>

Oddly, that link to center embedding leads (with one intermediate
page) to this[1] page containing what appears to be a rather egregious
misrepresentation of Lojban, Loglan, and the split between them.

[1] http://specgram.com/CLI.2/02.mlp.html

"You could demand more precision from language. If you travel too far
down that road you arrive at Loglan and Lojban, the so-called
"logical" constructed languages. But their history clearly illustrates
both that human nature and politics will prevail over any constraints
of language, and that humans are not adept at ferreting out ambiguity
in language to the nth degree. The early proponents of this
"universal" language, which is geekier than Klingon and less useful
than Volapük, fought so bitterly that they divided their already
limited resources into two isomorphic but mutually unintelligible
languages. That, and the fact that being so carefully logical is so
hard that no one can speak either language at speed. And, lo, I have
digressed."

Odd coincidence.

Chris Capel
-- 
"What is it like to be a bat? What is it like to bat a bee? What is it
like to be a bee being batted? What is it like to be a batted bee?"
-- The Mind's I (Hofstadter, Dennet)


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