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Re: [lojban] Re: [lojban-announcements] Essay on the future of Lojban, with a simple poll for the community.



I fail to see how your think leaving behind the predicate grammar would be necessary to make Lojban non-mind-bending...  It isn't all that mind-bending right now; one or two small changes, which would preserve the current structure/logical/lack of ambiguity would be sufficient to bring it into line with how human language works...

On Fri, Apr 9, 2010 at 10:43, Matt Arnold <matt.mattarn@gmail.com> wrote:
Christopher,

I no longer believe most of that list is true. Making it true would
require leaving behind the predicate grammar, resulting in a language
so new as to be almost unidentifiable as belonging in the Lojban
family.

-Matt

On Fri, Apr 9, 2010 at 1:37 PM, Christopher Doty <suomichris@gmail.com> wrote:
> From lojban.org:
>
> Lojban is designed to be used by people in communication with each other,
> and possibly in the future with computers.
> Lojban is designed to be culturally neutral.
> Lojban has an unambiguous grammar, which is based on the principles of
> logic.
> Lojban has phonetic spelling, and unambiguous resolution of sounds into
> words.
> Lojban is simple compared to natural languages; it is easy to learn.
> Lojban's 1300 root words can be easily combined to form a vocabulary
> of millions of words.
> Lojban is regular; the rules of the language are without exception.
> Lojban attempts to remove restrictions on creative and clear thought and
> communication.
> Lojban has a variety of uses, ranging from the creative to the scientific,
> from the theoretical to the practical.
>
> Where in here is there anything about being mind-bending?  There are, as I
> count them, seven things which imply that Lojban is trying to be accessible,
> easy to learn, etc., and in the last point, it is clearly point out that
> Lojban "has a variety of uses."  If the use of Lojban is to bend minds, what
> does this list mean, and why is that item missing?
> On Fri, Apr 9, 2010 at 10:34, Matt Arnold <matt.mattarn@gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> Christopher,
>>
>> Lojban has no goal of being widely used. It can be logical and
>> consistent while also being mindbendingly unusable. That is its past,
>> current, and continuing plan.
>>
>> -Matt
>>
>> On Fri, Apr 9, 2010 at 1:32 PM, Christopher Doty <suomichris@gmail.com>
>> wrote:
>> > On Thu, Apr 8, 2010 at 17:21, Robin Lee Powell
>> > <rlpowell@digitalkingdom.org>
>> > wrote:
>> >>
>> >> Acutally, no, I meant exactly what I said: Lojban was formed to test
>> >> the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, and while that's largely irrelevant to
>> >> me, it *is* important to me, and many other people, that Lojban is
>> >> not like any natural languages in a lot of respects.  Makes it all
>> >> mind-stretching and stuff.
>> >
>> > This is an interesting issue, I think, because I see the idea of
>> > "mind-bending stuff," while certainly very cool, to be diametrically
>> > opposed
>> > to any hope of having Lojban widely adopted as an
>> > international/auxiliary/talking-to-computers/whatever language--there
>> > are
>> > plenty of things that natural languages do which are plenty mind-bending
>> > to
>> > speakers of English, but they don't violate general principles of what
>> > languages do and what they don't do, while Lojban does in any number of
>> > respects.
>> > If Lojban wants to be mind-bending, awesome. If it wants to be a
>> > language
>> > which is logical and consistent, and thus primed to make in-roads in
>> > being
>> > widely used, also awesome.  But it can't do both of those things.
>> >
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