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

From: "And Rosta" <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 9 Oct 2002 00:24:57 +0100

Robin.tr:
> > If I remember rightly, the key purpose in question was to have a
> > language that was 'whorfianly neutral', so that usage could then be
> > examined to see if there were any whorfian interferences from the L1.
> > (Correct me if I'm wrong -- you're clearer on this than me.) But
> > the Naturalist route wants to complete the creation process through
> > usage, in which case there is inevitably going to be massive L1
> > interference, but not of an interesting sort, because it won't
> > be counterposed to any defined whorfianly neutral grammar.
> 
> ..iesai From a linguistic point of view, it is exactly this potential 
> tension between grammar and usage which would be interesting. to 
> illustrate the point in a rather absurd way, I once ran a 
> cyberpunk-style role-playing game in which Lojban was a lingua franca 
> for geeks. The two Lojbanisms that really caught on amongst the players 
> were "mabla" (correct usage) and "le do mamta cu gerku" (incorrect, in 
> canonical Lojban).

If the grammar (in the linguistics sense, not the computing sense!) comes 
into being through usage, which is what the Naturalists wish to happen,
then I don't see how there'd be a tension between grammar and usage.
You might say there'd be a tension between the baselined component
and the eventual grammar that evolves out of usage, but one's
prediction is that the eventual grammar would be a fairly predictable
melange of the baseline and L1 influences. If the prediction were borne
out, then one would not feel terribly excited, since the obvious is
seldom exciting.

But you see things differently, so maybe you can explain a bit more.

I don't really get the point about "le do mamta cu gerku". Yes, it's
unmarked figurative usage, but the deprecation of unmarked figurative
usage is more a cultural shibboleth than a real part of Lojban. (it's
certainly not part of Lojban grammar, and I don't think it's really
much of an active element in Lojban culture either.)

--And.