From thinkit8@lycos.com Mon Dec 03 09:23:43 2001 Return-Path: X-Sender: thinkit8@lycos.com X-Apparently-To: lojban@yahoogroups.com Received: (EGP: mail-8_0_0_1); 3 Dec 2001 17:23:43 -0000 Received: (qmail 80275 invoked from network); 3 Dec 2001 17:23:42 -0000 Received: from unknown (216.115.97.171) by m9.grp.snv.yahoo.com with QMQP; 3 Dec 2001 17:23:42 -0000 Received: from unknown (HELO n22.groups.yahoo.com) (216.115.96.72) by mta3.grp.snv.yahoo.com with SMTP; 3 Dec 2001 17:23:43 -0000 X-eGroups-Return: thinkit8@lycos.com Received: from [10.1.4.82] by n22.groups.yahoo.com with NNFMP; 03 Dec 2001 17:23:42 -0000 Date: Mon, 03 Dec 2001 17:23:39 -0000 To: lojban@yahoogroups.com Subject: thoughts on numerical language Message-ID: <9ugcer+goq9@eGroups.com> User-Agent: eGroups-EW/0.82 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Length: 959 X-Mailer: eGroups Message Poster X-Originating-IP: 12.224.27.33 From: thinkit8@lycos.com X-Yahoo-Profile: thinkit41 When trying to put together a binary-encoded language, I noticed some interesting things. Lojban serves as a great model, for one. I noticed some things became a lot easier--you don't have to worry about fitting things into human pronunciation. Depending on how compact you want it to be, there's a lot less compromises to be made. This becomes even more freeing (perhaps this is an extention of the hypothesis...maybe our vocal cords limit our thought). In particular, it became clear that various parts of lojban are shaped by things like the number of vowels. Like the so'a-so'u series. This is really just a base-6 system of representing an approximate scale. I would encode this as .X, given in a specified base. Also, the fa-fu system and limit of 5 arguments for a given gismu. This is a useful shortcut given the 5-vowel system. Not having to be short and tidy, I found it easier to assume a 2 argument system with extra tags.