Subject: Re: [humanmarkup] Introducing the Logical Language Group

From: John Cowan <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 8 Mar 2001 00:31:59 -0500 (EST)

Ranjeeth Kumar Thunga scripsit:

> John Cowan: Good to have you join HumanMarkup--if what Len says is true, I
> welcome your relentless attitude to our group :).

I'm a rather dogged fellow, except when I burn out completely.
Hopefully that won't happen for a while.

> Yes, it is a lot to digest (give it to us piecemeal John),

Oh yes.

> The parallels between the efforts are obvious...of course, HumanML is
> focused specifically on developing XML standards, and focused exclusively on
> meta 'human' characteristics of communications (not so much the language
> itself).

My proposal is that HumanML and Lojban share a model, at least in
the four areas I mentioned; similarly, the "logical" parts of Lojban
share a model with RDF (subject-verb-object statements, although
Lojban is a lot richer than RDF of course). Naturally I am not
proposing that HumanML be done directly in Lojban!

> It would be very
> interesting to hear personal testimony of using Lojban in daily life, to
> determine what type of benefits are achieved through this more *explicit*
> language.

There are very few people who can actually use Lojban in daily life,
as its aficionados are scattered across the world. It is a current
limitation that you have to know English to learn Lojban, as well,
though we do have a hard-copy version of the grammar book for
people who aren't on the Net.

> Additionally, I would like to know if Lojban is organic (are
> there new terms added periodically?).

New terms have not been added to the emotion vocabulary, although there
is a "private use" space which can be used to add them as needed.
The basic (predicate) vocabulary is open in several ways: it can
form new terms by compounding simpler ones, or by borrowing from
other languages. The emotion vocabulary only finally stabilized in 1989,
as part of a push to make the language definite enough to be learnable
once and for all, not subject to further tinkering: a point of
great psychological importance to prospective language learners.

> Each paradigm in psychology and spirituality has a different way of
> describing human characteristics--the {E x C x S} model sounds very
> efficient. Yet, how does it account for other theories or paradigms for
> different beliefs or models of human emotion and intent? Or is that
> something that exists as part of the context of the communication itself
> (i.e. no special system).

The latter, I think. We thought it necessary to establish one basic
system, knowing that it would not serve all needs, so that fundamental
communication would be possible. The system is as flexible as we
could make it while still retaining a definite form.

> [W]e very much welcome the input from yourself, and Lojban, in cultivating
> universal standards for human expression based on XML.

Thank you, and I will definitely be participating. I note that there
is already some cross-membership between the lists.

-- 
John Cowan [email-masked]
One art/there is/no less/no more/All things/to do/with sparks/galore
--Douglas Hofstadter