Subject: [lojban] Why linguists might be interested in Lojban (was: RE: Re: a new kind of fundamentalism

From: "And Rosta" <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 5 Oct 2002 17:32:39 +0100

Lojbab:
> Finally and most importantly for one key Lojbanic purpose, 

Remind us what purpose it is, and why it is important?

> linguists respect such usage-based norms and evolution and do not 
> much respect prescriptivism. 

The sort of prescriptivism contemned by linguists is not what
you call 'prescriptivism', namely language design. 

> So long as prescribers have significant 
> clout over the language, we will have trouble gaining respect as a 
> language (and community) worthy of serious linguistic investigation. 
> Rather, we will be classed with the hoards of conlangs that never 
> stopped prescribing until they drove their prospective users away or 
> forced splintering from those who would not accept the prescription.

Which linguists have you been talking to, or which linguists have
given you this impression?

Why, and under what circumstances, do you think linguists would be
interested in Lojban? Speaking as a linguist, I find it hard to
see how Naturalist Lojban would be of more than sociolinguistic
or cultural-linguistic interest. Well, perhaps it might be of
intrinsic interest to see how it evolves, what blend of the
original design, of L1 influences, of usage norms, etc., compose
the eventual product: but I don't see that any further generalizations
about natural language or the human language faculty could be drawn 
from it. But I may be missing something.

Although Engineered languages have not hitherto been of interest to
linguistics (largely because they never existed, and because their
very possibility has not occurred to linguists), I think they could
be of considerable interest if they are any good. Current Minimalist
(Chomskyan) theory is founded on the postulate that language is
fundamentally "perfect" -- that underlyingly, language works in
the optimal way, in a way that conscious design could not improve
upon. This postulate is not informed by any serious investigation
of what perfection is, because there is no history of people
trying to think how the fundamentals of natural language could be
improved upon. So in principle, intellectually rigorous engelanging
has a role to play in defining Perfection, the limits of perfectibility,
and the relation of natural language to these. Also, recent work
on language evolution has just begun to investigate how natural
language could evolve through normal selectional processes as a
solution to a given design problem. Engelangers could in principle
be ahead of the game here, in their understanding of the design
problem and the range of possible solutions. (Andruc, our erstwhile
Lojban colleague, is currently doing a PhD with two of the best
people in this area, btw.)

My (in this instance, comparatively privileged to some slight
degree) opinions, then, are:

1. Lojban should not feel the need to make itself of interest to
linguists, though it should welcome any interest that linguists do
take.

2. Naturalist Lojban might in its own right be of some intrinsic 
interest to linguistics, but more as a curiosity than as anything
that can advance the central research goals of linguistics.

3. Engineered Lojban as part of a larger program of 'engelangology'
could in principle be of interest to linguists as advancing 
linguistics's central research goals, but in practise it is unlikely
to happen, because of the paucity of competent people motivated
to pursue engelanging for its own sake. However, a study of Lojban
would still be very instructive for anybody interested in studying
natural language as a solution to an engineering problem.

--And.