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

Christopher Doty wrote:

 >From lojban.org <http://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?
In the full introductory brochure that list was taken from, which is now the book "What is Lojban?", I think you will find that the 'mind-bending' comes in from the "Lojban attempts to *remove restrictions* on creative and clear thought and communication". 

http://www.lojban.org/tiki/Lojban+Introductory+Brochure&fullscreen=y
It is known that people's ideas and thought change somewhat when they learn a foreign language. It is not known whether this change is due to exposure to a different culture or even just getting outside of ones own 
 culture. It is also not known how much (if any) of the change is due to
the nature of the language, as opposed to the cultural associations. 
Unique features of Lojban remove constraints on language in the areas of
logic, ambiguity, and expressive power, opening up areas of thought that have not been easily accessible by human language before. Meanwhile, the formal rigidity of the language definition allows speakers to carefully control their expressions (and perhaps therefore their thought processes). This gives some measure of predictive power that can be used in designing and preparing for actual Sapir-Whorf experiments.
"opening up areas of thought that have not been easily accessible" = "mind-bending".
The simple exercise of looking at random tanru of 2 or 3 gismu and trying to figure out how they would be used, was one of the earliest games for Lojban learners. The random sentence generator (which has some examples on the wiki somewhere) was another (I really need to get the baseline-language revision up there, if it isn't. I finished it a while ago. But most people aren't into DOS-based programs these days %^)
The area of language acquisition is where this whole thing of "let usage decide" that has dominated this thread came from. The prescription/description thing comes from the issue of how the Lojban language manifests itself in human usage and thinking. Again, from the brochure:
Such a pre-definition, a language 'prescription', makes an AL a unique tool for studying the nature of language. As people learn the language, the way they 'acquire' understanding of that prescription can tell scientists how 'natural' the prescribed forms are. Actual usage of the language can be compared to the prescription providing quantitative data on specific patterns of usage. As the language evolves from its relatively pristine initial state, it may deviate from its prescription. Such deviations will better inform researchers as to the properties of a 'natural' language. The process of language change itself will be open 
to investigation in a way never before possible. Finally, the existence
of a relatively complete language prescription at the birth of the language means that a 'description' of actual usage after that initial state can be more simply created, maintained, and studied. 
Lojban is undoubtedly the most carefully designed and defined AL ever
created. All aspects of its design have been carefully engineered by several people encompassing expertise in a variety of disciplines, including linguistics. The language prescription is similarly the most complete of any language. As such, it serves as a unique basis for the study of language usage and language change. A new language like Lojban, with no native speakers, is a 'pidgin'. As the language evolves, native speakers of other languages will learn it, and will bring into their Lojban usage the perspective and patterns of their native language. This interaction process, called 'creolization', affects all languages, and may be the principle cause of language change. As Lojban is learned by speakers of a variety of natural languages, this process can be studied directly in a way never before possible, with the language prescription serving as a standard by which deviations associated with speaker origin, and evolution of usage, can be measured and described in detail.
My wife Nora tends to think about mind-bending in the random sentence generator sense. I tend to think about it in terms of the effects of learning a new and very different language on human thought. I've long thought that the attitudinals and liberated systematic emotional expression (random attitudinals rather than random tanru? - .ei.e'ero'u.o'anai is mind-bending for me) are more likely to result in "Sapir-Whorf effects" than the formal-logic aspects, but we'll find out.
In this context, we see why my focus has been on language description, rather than prescription, once the baseline is done and (hopefully) a lot more people are learning the language. A language is first and foremost something people use to communicate, and once there is more usage than discussion-about-the-language, I think that the transition in the role of byfy and the language standard effort in general will naturally shift. 

lojbab

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