Subject: Re: [lojban] Logical translation request

From: "Bob LeChevalier (lojbab)" <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 21 Dec 2001 00:44:50 -0500

At 01:07 AM 12/21/01 +0000, Adam Raizen wrote:
>la lojbab. cusku di'e
> > > > Probably it is ungrammatical either because a) we never thought
>of adding a
> > > > rule for CAhA+NAI because we couldn't think of what such a thing
>might
> > > > mean
> > >
> > >This seems to bias s-w effects, doesn't it?
> >
> > Not likely, since there has been no plan to examine S-W effects
>based on
> > the tense system.
>
>That seems kind of silly. Wasn't the Hopi tense system *the* S-W
>effect par excellence for Whorf? If we're not going to examine S-W
>effects based on the tense system, and not ones based on the
>vocabulary, what are we left with? Just the logic?

All JCB planned for is a "normal" language with the logic aspect skewed to 
the extreme.

Now it turns out that the attitudinal system also may be worthy of a SW 
test, but that system operates more or less independently of the logic 
system. The tense system does not.

It is not clear whether it is advantageous to have lots of potential SW 
effects in unrelated areas in the language, since the test will necessarily 
involve trying to figure out what caused the effect, and if there are too 
many variables from a "standard" language, then we won't know what might 
cause what effect.

But the tense system has never been all that novel. Really it is more or 
less just a superset of all the tense systems of the world languages. Thus 
it removes restrictions but does not really create any new expressive 
capability that is different from natlangs. (The time travel tenses could 
be thought of as something new, but they would have to be useful to give a 
noticeable effect. Most of the bells and whistles of the tense system are 
not particularly useful in everyday situations.)

lojbab

lojbab

> Why don't we just
>see if people's world-view changes when they learn formal logic and
>save ourselves a lot of trouble.
>
>mu'o mi'e .adam.

--
lojbab [email-masked]
Bob LeChevalier, President, The Logical Language Group, Inc.
2904 Beau Lane, Fairfax VA 22031-1303 USA 703-385-0273
Artificial language Loglan/Lojban: http://www.lojban.org