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

From: Robert LeChevalier <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 09 Oct 2002 14:58:43 -0400

At 12:52 PM 10/9/02 -0400, Invent Yourself wrote:
>On Wed, 9 Oct 2002, Robert LeChevalier wrote:
> > At 11:12 PM 10/8/02 -0400, Invent Yourself wrote:
> > >On Tue, 8 Oct 2002, Robert LeChevalier wrote:
> > > > You can detect incompleteness.
> > >
> > >Is Lojban incomplete?
> >
> > Yes. The jboske discussions that result from "How do you say X"?" indicate
> > this. (Not the fact that they exist, but the fact that often there is no
> > ready answer.)
>
>Aren't you conflating the incompletion of the language with the ignorance
>of the students?

Well, we are all students at this point. And if no student knows the 
answer, and none can figure it out trivially, the language is not 
completely defined.

>Or are you using some tricky philosophical result such as
>"if a language is defined on paper and no one speaks it, is it really a
>language?"

Well, I've said that and don't think it is tricky, but I don't see how it 
would apply here.

> > > > In terms of current Lojban, my guess is that a level 4 person, when
> > > > confronted by ANY "how to say it" question that is worthy of weeks of
> > > > jboske debate would know the answer off the top of his head, and it 
> would
> > > > be unarguably correct. (A level 5 speaker could come up with 
> multiple ways
> > > > to say it and explain the pros and cons and nuances of each in 
> terms that
> > > > everyone would recognize as unarguably correct
> > >
> > >Isn't it exciting to imagine such a thing?
> >
> > Yes. But I don't expect to see it in this generation.
>
>That's not the spirit!

The world of artificial languages is dominated by idealistic leaders who 
make excessively grandiose claims for their language, which in turn has led 
to their disparagement by the mainstream world which is decidedly NOT 
idealistic. I learned long ago that mainstream acceptance of artificial 
languages (and especially by linguists) will require that we err on the 
side of realism or understatement in our claims.

lojbab

-- 
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