[Date Prev][Date Next][Thread Prev][Thread Next][Date Index][Thread Index]

Re: Lojban is *NOT* broken! Stop saying that! (was Re: [lojban] Re: Vote for the Future Global Language)

John E Clifford, On 06/01/2011 18:41:

From: And Rosta<and.rosta@gmail.com>
Lojban's so-called formal grammar does nothing but define a
set of structures of phonological strings. What a real grammar would do is
define a set of correspondences between sentence forms and sentence meanings.

However, even though Lojban has no true formal grammar, I think it would be
easier to write one for Lojban than for almost any other language that has a
speech community, though one expects it would be hard for the community to
accept it as definitional.

**Are we quibbling here about the difference between syntax and grammar?  There
is a use of "grammar" that is all-encompassing, from phonology through
pragmatics, and Lojban certainly doesn't have that, though it lacks only the
last two chunks,


I don't think there's quibbling going on here. For a language you need a level of form, the stuff that gets interpreted phonetically, and a level of meaning, the stuff that gets interpreted pragmatically, and correspondences between the two levels. What you call the levels and the correspondence rules is a separate matter.


But, since these have resisted formulation in Linguistics so
far, even at the theoretical level, it seems unfair to criticize Lojaban for
lacking what Logic and Linguistics have yet to provide good models -- or even
criteria -- for.  Efforts along this line tend to involve and idealized
representational language, almost all of which end up looking a lot like first
order predicate logic, meaning that the crucial step in the process from Lojban
form to meaning would be -- with a few caveats -- a snap.


Hopefully it would be a snap, but it's these rules that the formal definition/specification of the language requires, and not the formal grammar (save for whichever bits of the formal grammar are necessary for the form--meaning correspondence rules). Regarding the question of whether it would indeed be a snap, the requisite rules would in most cases need to be invented, so there'd be a political difficulty at least as much as a linguistic one.


The truth of the matter is that you really
*can* say anything you want in Lojban; LNC and alis prove that
pretty conclusively, I think.


This is debatable in a number of ways. First, the formal specification doesn't
explicitly cover everything ordinary language might require (cf. problems with
"if", with alternatival questions, etc.). Second, the claim could be true in
only the trivial sense that the basics of predicate structure are sufficient to
express all needed meanings; i.e. you can ignore everything but predicate
structure and define new predicates to express whatever meaning you need. Third,
some of the conventions that have arisen in usage to express needed meanings are
not compositional, so their status as licit Lojban is questionable.

** I need to be reminded of what "compositional" means here


The meaning of the whole is predictably composed from the meaning of the parts.


and see some
examples of problem cases.  The problems with "if" and the milk-or-cream joke
are real enough but clearly don't need solutions outside the existing syntax,
only a better use of what is already there (stiop thinking of them as
connectives being one useful approach).


I don't think anything needs solutions outside the existing syntax. But there is still stuff that needs solutions (within the existing syntax).


The design of the language itself has little intrinsic excellence (when viewed
ahistorically), and it is naive to deny that it is massively incomplete. The
achievement has been in building and sustaining the user-community, so that of
all languages with a user-community, Lojban is the one that comes closest to
being an explicitly specified logical language. The language itself could not
have been substantially improved without great detriment to the user-community.

**But, of course, a large portion of that community came to Lojban precisely
because of the claim to be unambiguous in one fairly major way.  Without that
claim, the group would be significantly smaller, nearer, say, toki pona (maybe
50 with a little fudging and an awareness base pf a few hundred).


It does seem that the great majority of Lojbanists are attracted by its aim or claim to be a logical language, but there are very few who are so dissatisfied with the design and/or specification that they would risk weakening the community by strengthening the language design. To put it another way, the great majority of Lojbanists are also attracted by its having a flourishing user-community, and rank the maintainance of the community higher than the quality of the language.

--And.

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "lojban" group.
To post to this group, send email to lojban@googlegroups.com.
To unsubscribe from this group, send email to lojban+unsubscribe@googlegroups.com.
For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/lojban?hl=en.