Subject: Geoff Sampson's review of CLL

From: "Nick Nicholas <[email-masked]>" <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 13 Jan 2003 06:30:46 -0000

J. Linguistics 35 (1995), 447-448. Printed in the United Kingdom
© 1999 Cambridge University Press

SHORTER NOTICE

John Woldemar Cowan, The complete Lojban language. Fairfax, VA: The 
Logical Language Group, Inc., 1997. Pp. x+608.

Reviewed by GEOFFREY SAMPSON, University of Sussex

A leading idea, among linguists who believe in a `language instinct', is th=
at 
there could be hypothetical languages which would provide for all human 
communicative needs, but would nevertheless be unlearnable and unusable 
because they failed to conform to the genetic blueprint. A community of 
people are now engaged in a project which might be seen as testing that 
idea. Lojban is an artificial language which has been designed in the light=
of 
modern linguistics, philosophical logic, and computer science to be a super=
ior 
alternative to naturally-evolved languages, suitable for talking or writing=
about 
everything people want to discuss, rational, and even euphonious. It differ=
s 
from natural languages in many respects, at least some of which relate to 
matters claimed to be part of the biological `language instinct'. Lojban ha=
s a 
following of enthusiasts (see http://xiron.pc.helsinki.fi/lojban/) who are =
trying to 
bring it into use as a living language.
The genesis of Lojban lay in an idea published in 1960 by James Cooke 
Brown. Although artificial, Lojban is very different from the late nineteen=
th 
century international languages, such as Volapük and Esperanto, which are 
essentially European languages simplified and regularized. Lojban has more =

in common with seventeenth century `philosophical languages' such as John 
Wilkins's `Real Character'. But seventeenth century artificial languages 
focused on vocabulary, seeking to classify all possible concepts rationally=
. 
The developers of Lojban appreciate that human thought is too dynamic to 
allow vocabulary to be constrained by any aprioristic scheme; their goal, 
rather, is to rationalize grammar.
Lojban aims to satisfy the following criteria:

Full explicitness. Natural languages do not communicate exclusively through=
 
words. Writing makes heavy use of punctuation, typographic variation, and 
spacing; speech depends crucially on intonation and `body language'. Lojban=
 
verbalizes everything. A complex technical book, or a lively social 
interchange, should be translatable into Lojban, without communicative loss=
, 
as a punctuation-free sequence of uniform alphabetic characters, or a 
phoneme stream that might be generated on a monotone by a speech 
synthesizer. Expressive intonation, or typographical variety, should only 
reinforce the wording, not add to it.

Logical transparency. As Cowan puts it (411), `Lojban was designed to be a =

language that makes predicate logic speakable'. Its grammar is intended to =

reflect ontological and epistemological assumptions which are respectable b=
y 
the standards of modern philosophical logic. (Quine's (1960) Word and objec=
t 
was an important influence on the language design.) Instead of nouns, verbs=
, 
adjectives and adverbs, Lojban has two open-ended word classes: 
predicates and proper names. On the other hand, Lojban has about 120 
classes of grammatical words, designed to enforce precision about matters 
such as the individual/mass/set distinction, quantification, negation, moda=
lity, 
and so forth. Literal glosses of Lojban often have the somewhat Martian 
flavour of B. L. Whorf's attempts to convey the alien world-view which Whor=
f 
ascribed to Hopi; thus (196) the English sentence I am a traveling cosmetic=
s 
salesperson for Avon goes into Lojban as a sentence glossed `Avon sells a-
mass-of face paint with-goer me'.

Parsability. The grammatical structure of a Lojban text is mechanically 
recoverable from the sequence of letters or phonemes it comprises. Written =

Lojban not only lacks punctuation but in principle need not even include 
word-spaces; word boundaries are determinable from the consonant and 
vowel patterns in the character stream – otherwise, spoken Lojban could not=
 
be parsed.

User-friendliness. In theory, standard predicate-logic notation could itsel=
f be 
made speakable, by assigning pronunciations to signs such as brackets and 
comma. But - leaving aside the fact that any standard logical system ignore=
s 
many humanly-important considerations which Lojban does express, such as 
a speaker's emotional attitude to the propositions he states – such a 
language would be unusable. It would be grossly cumbersome, and would do 
nothing to cater to speaker's needs to foreground or suppress particular 
elements, or structure information into different perspectives. These thing=
s are 
facilitated in English by mechanisms alien to logical notation, such as the=
 
passive construction. Lojban generalizes devices such as the passive, and 
the contrast between forethought and afterthought sequencing (`if p then q'=
 
versus `q, if p'), to provide even more flexibility than is typical of natu=
ral 
languages.

Cowan discusses a fifth design feature, cultural neutrality, though one mi=
ght 
question whether this can ever meaningfully be ascribed to a language 
capable of expressing the spectrum of human concerns. (In practice the 
American cultural assumptions of most of the language's designers show 
through often enough; for instance, the vocabulary for rulers apparently (3=
79) 
recognizes no distinction between head of government and head of state.) 
Apart from this last issue, though, the aims listed have been rather fully =

realized.
Admittedly, some aspects of the language definition seem weaker then 
others. The `attitudinal' particles embody some questionable analyses of 
human emotion. (The chapter on attitudinals also seems to contain more 
misprints than other chapters.) The choice of argument places for predicate=
s 
sometimes seems eccentric; why should the list of arguments for the predica=
te 
`doctor' include the ailment treated and the treatment applied (282)? But 
these are curable blemishes. In general, Lojban constitutes a strikingly 
thorough working-out of its creators' goals, and its design is responsive t=
o a 
rich, subtle understanding of linguistics and philosophical logic.
Some readers may nevertheless feel that a topic like this is just a curios=
ity, 
unworthy of scholarly attention. That would be a mistake, I believe. No 
artificial language is likely to come into widespread use; but linguists ou=
ght to 
care whether the circle of Lojban enthusiasts prove capable of turning the =

language into a living communicative medium among themselves. If so, then 
the question will arise why natural languages are not more like Lojban (if =

people can speak logically transparent languages, why don't they?). If not,=
 
then one will ask what differences between Lojban and natural languages 
make the latter but not the former usable. The creators of Lojban have put =
into 
their language everything which we know to matter for human 
communication; if the language fails, natural languages must have crucial 
properties that we have not yet noticed. Either way, the Lojban project 
deserves to be taken seriously.

REFERENCE

Quine, W. van O. (1960) Word and object. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Author's address: School of Cognitive and Computing Sciences,
University of Sussex,
Falmer, Brighton BN1 9QH
U.K.
E-mail: [email-masked]
(Received 13 May 1998)