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

[John E Clifford <kali9putra@yahoo.com>]

----- Original Message ----
From: And Rosta <and.rosta@gmail.com>
To: lojban@googlegroups.com
Sent: Thu, January 6, 2011 1:48:12 PM
Subject: 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.

**OK, but then don't complain if someone calls a syntax a grammar.   When I say 
only lacks two chunks, I should add that every other language also laks those 
chunk and also the one before, which Lojban has (almost?)

> 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.

**I'm not following here.  What is the political difficulty in given obvious 
rules for untangled conjoined terms or predicates or even blobs like briditail.  
There are some less than obvious places, to be sure, but doing the first bit is 
already more than we can do -- even by hand -- for any other language.

>> 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 (stop 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.

Well, yes, success breeds success and all.  I am inclined to think that at least 
a significant portion of the present community would go over to an improved 
language, if they were sure it was improved.  But I fear that the kind of things 
you suggest doing would not be obvious improvements (they may in fact be 
improvements, but it would not be obvious that they are -- see the years of 
xorlo discussions, for example).
--And.

-- 


      

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