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Re: [lojban] gua\spi
On Sun, 5 Aug 2012, selpa'i wrote:
How complete is gua\spi? If it's as usable as Lojban currently is, I'd say
it's very close to complete.
I can see this discussion flying off on multiple tangents: what does it
mean for a language to be complete? I'd say that there is an equivalence
class of languages that can express predicate logic, including the natural
languages I know, Lojban/Loglan, and gua\spi. Gua\spi's vocabulary is a
slight superset of Lojban (I may have thrown out one or two words, and I
did add maybe 5% more words), so in that sense gua\spi covers just about
the same semantic space that Lojban does.
(Tangent: hard-edged Aristotlean logic is not typical of everyday usage,
and "predicate logic" should be interpreted with fuzzy values of the
predicates.)
"Usable" refers to how easily and accurately the speakers can express what
they want (versus whether it can be done even if kludges are needed). The
vendor hypes the product as being usable.
So if you have some other texts about the language, more grammar
explanations etc, it would be great to be able to read them.
Unfortunately, the material you've already seen in
http://www.math.ucla.edu/~jimc/guaspi/index.html
is all that I've done. Sorry.
Also, you mention that you translated quite a bit of text into gua\spi.
Could you upload that text somewhere? I would like to see some actual
usage of the language.
Actually I said that I'd translated about 20,000 words into Old Loglan.
Sorry again.
So bottom line, how realistic would you consider it to be that people could
start learning gua\spi? Would you be able to support the learners if some
bigger problems arose? Once more than one person (you) is at a good level in
the language, the burden gets distributed and eventually, the language will
get a life of its own.
I'm ambivalent here -- I would be happy to support someone (you) working on
gua\spi, but I need to warn up front that it could not be high-bandwidth
support, e.g. like what Robin Powell does for Lojban. May I squeeze in a
support tidbit (which could be of interest in Lojban also)? From the
reference manual, vocabulary chapter intro: "Frequently I have thought that
some form or meaning required a new primitive word, or even a change in the
grammar, but it has turned out that existing words were more than adequate
if creatively used."
Occasionally someone stumbles across gua\spi and sends me mail about it,
but I think you (selpa'i) are the first one to dig into it deeply.
I think the major value of gua\spi for the Lojban community is in seeing
how a similar language does things differently, particularly in the areas
of compound words and in MEX.
In about an hour I'm going to be on an airplane to Prague, so I may have a
little trouble holding up my end of this thread, but I'll try.
James F. Carter Voice 310 825 2897 FAX 310 206 6673
UCLA-Mathnet; 6115 MSA; 520 Portola Plaza; Los Angeles, CA, USA 90095-1555
Email: jimc@math.ucla.edu http://www.math.ucla.edu/~jimc (q.v. for PGP key)
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