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[lojban] Re: I love Lojban's approach, but what's the deal with place tags?
OK, fair enough. I hope my comments didn't seem overly dogmatic. If
indeed as you say all these elements are indispensable then I am
wrong, and as I said in my original post, I couldn't be happier!
In that case it would be like me saying that English is flawed because
you can remove all the words of French origin and you'd still have a
complete language. The premise is correct, but the inertia of current
usage means that this will never happen. I just never thought that
such variety could be present in the grammar of a language and not
just the vocabulary.
I suppose I should have really started by giving an example. In
Chapter 2 of Lojban for Beginners (http://www.tlg.uci.edu/~opoudjis/
lojbanbrochure/lessons/less2changeplaces.html), if I have understood
correctly it basically tells me that if I feel like it I can say (and
therefore have to be able to understand):
la suzyn. klama la paris. la berlin. zo'e le karce (English structure)
and
la suzyn. fu le karce fi la berlin. fe la paris. klama (Turkish
structure)
You can imagine how hard it is for native English speakers to get used
to Turkish sentence structure, in fact my parents never quite did. At
least in Turkish when you change the structure of a sentence you do it
for a reason, like emphasis. But Lojban expects me to be able to adapt
mid-paragraph for somebody who uses any and all possible sentence
structures on a whim! My brain would flip!
Everything I know about language tells me that people get used to
expressing themselves according to specific structures. Which is why I
arrived at the conclusion that any population of fluent Lojban
speakers would very quickly get used to ordering certain sentences in
certain ways instead of constantly mixing up their grammar, which
requires conscious thought.
Again, please do correct me if I'm wrong, and I get the feeling I
probably am. I would like to thank everybody who has replied to my
original post for taking it in the spirit intended. You have all
encouraged me to take a closer look at Lojban!
On Apr 5, 5:22 pm, Luke Bergen <lukeaber...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Yeah Joel, I think what you're missing at this early stage in your learning
> is that both FA *and* knowing the place structures are extremely important
> if you want to be fluent.
>
> I understand your concerns. You agreed that I was representing your
> argument accurately. What you may have misunderstood was that my last
> paragraph about "if one group of people liked the place structure.... been
> dropped out of the language by this group)" was mildly sarcastic.
>
> The idea of a group of people using lojban and simply forgetting/dropping FA
> and/or the default place structure of the gismu is completely absurd. It
> could happen, but it would take (my guess) centuries of shifting for that to
> happen. It's so fundamental to a proper understanding of the language that
> if anyone dropped FA or began forgetting the place structures, I would argue
> that it was darn-near a completely different language.
>
> I'd put it on par with English switching to a system more like what they
> have in Turkey (as you describe it). Such a thing would be (at best) an
> extremely bastardized version of English. Likewise, lojban without FA would
> be quite a stretch.
>
> On Tue, Apr 5, 2011 at 6:17 AM, Joel T. <joelofara...@gmail.com> wrote:
> > That was my point exactly. True fluency means completely internalizing
> > a language so that the words just flow out of your mouth without
> > thinking. You're completely "out of the book" to use a chess
> > expression. And a community of truly fluent people would be influenced
> > more by each other than any conscious thought given to the official
> > rules of grammar. A true Sapir-Whorf test would demand nothing less.
>
> > The point I'm making about running two systems side-by-side is that in
> > any community of truly fluent people, either one of them would get
> > phased out, or they would diverge in meaning, usage, connotation etc.
> > At the very least it would become a way of differentiating between
> > cliques, which is the thin end of the wedge for dialectisation. You
> > just can't have two ways of doing exactly the same thing with only
> > whim to choose between them. It's great in class, but in the field
> > it's not tenable. It's not how language works.
>
> > On Apr 4, 10:04 pm, Luke Bergen <lukeaber...@gmail.com> wrote:
> > > I think his point was that these dialectic splits could result in two
> > groups
> > > of people not being able to understand one another.
>
> > > If one group of people liked using the place structure so much that they
> > > just ignored FA what would happen if they saw something like {fi lo zdani
> > cu
> > > klama fa mi lo zarci} and got completely confused (you know, cuz
> > generations
> > > later FA would have basically been dropped out of the language by this
> > > group).
>
> > > On Mon, Apr 4, 2011 at 2:35 PM, Michael Turniansky <
> > mturnian...@gmail.com>wrote:
>
> > > > On Sun, Apr 3, 2011 at 8:08 PM, Joel T. <joelofara...@gmail.com>
> > wrote:
>
> > > >> In any case, surely running two systems side-by-side is asking for
> > > >> dialectisation (is that a word?), where speakers in one area get used
> > > >> to one system while speakers in another prefer the other?
>
> > > > It can, and does. But we consider the flexibility to be a plus.
> > That
> > > > way, any person coming from a natural language background of say,
> > Turkish,
> > > > can from sentences the way that seems most natural to them, while
> > someone
> > > > coming from an English background can form setnences the most natural
> > way to
> > > > them. And both will be understood equally well. We had, for example,
> > a
> > > > while a back, a discussion over which was "better": to use "cu" often,
> > or to
> > > > totally eschew it in favor of sumti that are competely terminated so
> > that
> > > > there was no need for it (i.e. "lo gerku cu barda" vs. "lo gerku ku
> > > > barda"). There are vocal proponents on each side, so it amounts to a
> > > > dialectical split, but.. so what?
> > > > --gejyspa
>
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