Re: [lojban] Lettorals

[Ivo Doko <ivo.doko@gmail.com>]

On 27 April 2011 07:09, Luke Bergen <lukeabergen@gmail.com> wrote:
> Haha.  If it's better then evolutionary pressure would make it happen.
>  That's why walking is better than flying in a jet in every way.

You've just proven my point with the sarcasm there. We do fly in jets
when it is better than walking, don't we? Case in point that
evolutionary pressure does its job. And yes, for beings such as we,
walking is generally better than flying because handling tools is more
important than being able to fly and evolving wings alongside arms
would require too big a jump from local fitness maximum.


> And yes, English allows you to be unambiguous and clear but the fact that it
> also allows the lazy speaker to be ambiguous and confusing is a flaw in the
> language.

I thought lojban also allowed the speaker to be as much ambiguous or
unambiguous as (s)he wanted. Or did something change while I wasn't
looking?


> I'm confused how you can go through that explanation of what it was that
> mabel sold and say "see, nice and easy" but then gejyspa's explanation of
> "it's a pronoun for whatever last started with that letter" is "messy and
> confusing".

Because it *is* messy and confusing. No natural language features even
remotely similar mechanism for handling pronouns, which can only mean
that our "hardware" is not a priori "wired" in a way in which such
handling of pronouns comes naturally to it. (Which doesn't mean that
I'm saying that it can't be learned - it is an extremely flexible
piece of hardware we are talking about here.) As opposed to that,
inductive reasoning (which I demonstrated in understanding the example
with Mabel) *does* come naturally to the hardware, which is why no
natural language features specific mechanisms for minimising the
requirement of inductive reasoning in understanding of the language.


> Just because it's not your first language doesn't make
> it inherently messy and complicated.

Which is not what I said. English is not my first language either
(although frankly, my first language is an Indo-European language so
it's not like learning English was too much trouble).


-- 
mu'o mi'e .ivan.

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