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Re: [lojban] Re: Is there any demand for LoCCan3?

John E Clifford wrote:

0.  A complete redo of the vocabulary (obviously not back-compatible).
The present vocab clusters in some phonetic spaces and leaves others
bare, increasing the likelihood of confusion in noisy environments (if
Lojban is ever used in one)
The Lojban design actually did take into account the possibility of noisy environments. Perhaps not as much as some would prefer, but it certainly was a factor. Primary place where this is evident is the numerals, 0-hexF, which differ maximally in both consonant and vowel. No gismu differs from another merely by a voiced/unvoiced contrast in one consonant, etc. I actually did ask someone to do further research on the matter of redundancy, but that was one of the cases where someone volunteered and then disappeared.
Perhaps we could have gone further, but it isn't clear that we could have done any better, without ignoring other larger priorities. 


 The only reason for the
present word list is the claimed ease of learning, a claim that has
never been tested on even English speakers,
Actually, there was a limited test (I think I have a dozen or so data sets), but the data has never been analyzed, because it seems that no one but me ever cared. My knowledge of statistics wasn't that good to begin with, and has accumulated 40 years of rust since college. 

> let alone Chinese or other languages or relevant multilinguals.
We do have anecdotal reports from Chinese natives that find the words/memory hooks much more learnable than Esperanto, but that isn't saying much. 


The revamp includes a
revision of the definitions, which could be done separately (with a bit
more compatibility) to make the definitions simpler (generally fewer
places, with many places that occur in many definitions but are rarely
used spun off to prepositions) and more uniform (all words of the same
sort (you are keeping your supply of scare quotes running, I hope) would
have the same pattern of places).
The current place structures already reflect a couple generations of such revisions made before the baselining, as compared with TLI Loglan. 


A general shake down of the cmavo
system is also part of this, sharpening definitions, clarifying roles,
getting rid of detritus, relieving confusion pressure, etc.  For the
most part, this is not Lojban at all but the beginnings of a real third
generation from Loglan.


Correct.


So not going to happen until the next
charismatic nut-case comes along.


Gee thanks!  No one ever accused me of being charismatic before.


2.  Words for individuals and sets and masses arose out of the muddle,
inherited from Loglan and not much tidied up in CLL, about what exactly
'lo broda' referred to.  The old underlying logic had only individuals,
some of which were sets that contained other individuals (or not).  The
problem then was to deal with groups that did not behave like sets in
set theory but could still go in for individual variables.  For some
reason, the notion that ordinary sets could take properties in different
ways from the usual ways for sets did not occur to anyone, so this
remained a problem.  Until xorxes found a book about plural
reference/instantiation.  According to this, a singular noun could refer
to several things at once and a singular variable could be
simultaneously instantiated to several things at once.  Conceptually
differently, but formally the same, sets could be Lesniewskian rather
than Cantorian, so that getting to the members of a set is much easier
(as is talking about what happens).  Once 'lo broda' was taken to refer
to an L-set of brodas, much of the rest fell into place.  Because the
theory is also of the part-whole relation, it is sometimes necessary to
distinguish the relevant individuals (ones with no relevant parts) and
also to be able to talk about wholes (L-sets) in the abstract way that
one normally talks about C-sets.  This means that some of the gadri need
redefinition (or clarification of the given definitions).  There are
also some residual problems with 'lo' left over from Loglan that need
sorting out.  None of this has much affect on current or past text.
I suspect that you may have provided or at least hinted at an explanation of xorlo that might make sense to me, if I were capable of taking it in right now. I've never heard this stuff about Lesniewskian or Cantorian, and have no clue what you are referring to, but maybe someday this would make sense. Examples might help. 


That is what LoCCan3 actively contains at the moment.
I suspect that someone reading through Rosta's stuff would find a few more topics. 

lojbab

--
Bob LeChevalier    lojbab@lojban.org    www.lojban.org
President and Founder, The Logical Language Group, Inc.

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