Origin: FOLDER__ - 0028 - Lojban From: LOGICAL LANGUAGE GROUP PRIVATE To: JIM HENRY Date: 09/08/96 at 02:09 Re: CONLANG: Errrr, log˙˙˙˙˙˙ ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ ˙@TO :jim.henry N ˙@FROM :lojbab@ACCESS.DIGEX.NET N ˙@SUBJECT:Re: CONLANG: Errrr, log loj? N ˙@UMSGID :<199609080609.CAA07286@access1.digex.net> N From owner-conlang@diku.dk Sat Sep 7 23:34:58 1996 Received: from vidar.diku.dk (daemon@vidar.diku.dk [130.225.96.249]) by altmail .holonet.net with ESMTP id XAA10459; Sat, 7 Sep 1996 23:34:58 -0700 Received: (from daemon@localhost) by vidar.diku.dk (8.6.12/8.6.12) id IAA06350 for conlang-outgoing; Sun, 8 Sep 1996 08:09:40 +0200 Received: from access1.digex.net (ql/6O0AY1b.Cw@access1.digex.net [205.197.245. 192]) by vidar.diku.dk (8.6.12/8.6.12) with ESMTP id IAA06341 for ; Sun, 8 Sep 1996 08:09:37 +0200 Received: (from lojbab@localhost) by access1.digex.net (8.6.12/8.6.12) id CAA07 286 ; for conlang@diku.dk; Sun, 8 Sep 1996 02:09:34 -0400 Date: Sun, 8 Sep 1996 02:09:34 -0400 From: Logical Language Group Message-Id: <199609080609.CAA07286@access1.digex.net> To: conlang@diku.dk Subject: Re: CONLANG: Errrr, log loj? Sender: owner-conlang@diku.dk Precedence: bulk Priority: non-urgent Reply-To: Logical Language Group Chris Palmer asked: >I have a silly question for you, one to which I know I >should know the answer. What are loglan and lojban? I know they are >supposedly "logical" conlangs, but what does that mean??? And where can >I find out more? Bruce Gilson answered: >Loglan was a language originally developed by James Cooke Brown, presented >about 35 years ago in Scientific American magazine, which involved the enco- >ding of symbolic logic in a language. At some point there was a schism when >certain persons, led by Bob LeChevalier, wanted to take the language in a >slightly different direction from JCB, and JCB insisted that it was "his" >language and no changes could be made without his approval. Both languages >remain rather similar, though Lojban, the language of LeChevalier and his >allies, had to completely change the vocabulary while the Loglan Institute >(really JCB) was threatening to sue for copyright violation. >Each language has its own presence on the Net. Bob LeChevalier will undoubt- >edly give you more details about where you can find more (he is on the >Conlang list) and so will the Loglan supporters on the list. I imagine that >each will have their own spin on the history as well. Someone else has posted the contact and information addresses, so I won't repeat (or at least not outside of my .sig %^) Bruce is almost correct on the story, but there are some critical differences. I'll try to avoid "spinning" in such a way that any TLI supporters feel the need to rebut me %^) The seeds of the schism were planted in a power struggle within TLI during the 1982-84 timeframe, when some people thought JCB was retiring and passing on management of the langauge and the organization to others. JCB did not do so, and fought successfully to regain control of both the organization and the language, but most of the active volunteers were alienated and stopped working on the language. Things stagnated, and I was one person who, not knowing the situation, stepped in as a volunteer to try to get things moving again. When I contacted people without going through JCB, including some who had opposed him, JCB thought I was also working against him and siding with his opponents. In particular, he took offense at my freely sharing word lists and the like as part of a shareware program. He then took an assertive attitude about TLI's intelelctual property rights over the language. The critical difference between all of this and Bruce's explanation is that neither I nor anyone else at the time had any interest in taking the language in a "slightly different direction from JCB", and no one was proposing any changes. Only when the argument over what we could do with the words and the language in general under his copyright festered and JCB refused to seel mme dictionaries that I wanted to use in teaching a Loglan class to some people I had recruited, did one of the students in that class suggest remaking the words of the language so that we would be free of even the remotest sort of copyright claim. We then started to do so, more as a negotiation tool than as a serious attempt to "take the language a new direction", though we did make some changes to the morphology and phonology rules as part of that word making effort (the original intent was to come up with soem original "first principles" to serve as a logical basis and evidence of "original scholarly research" a key phrase in copyright law). That summer, JCB sent a delegate to a gathering I organized. He no longer claimed any constraint on us for copyright, but instead claimed that we were using TLI's "tools" and violating TLI's trademark in the name "Loglan". Meanwhile, Jeff Prothero (known to many people on this list) who had helped develop one of those "tools" sent me a new version of a Loglan parser intended to evade JCB's claims to JEFF of copyrights on the grammar (which Jeff had done much of the earlier development of). Only when we had this new parser could it be said that we had even drifted slightly from JCB's language, and that was primarily because the different parsing algorithm did not necessarily embed some of JCB's hard-coded workarounds in quite the same way. But the real "change in direction" in Lojban only came about because JCB at that point started claiming that the Loglan grammar was a "trade secret" and insisting that anyone who wanted access to it would have to sign a trade secret agreement. Thereafter I had no direct source for whatever JCB considered to be the current grammar, and neither did most other Loglanists, and when he made changes (which he did) TLI Loglan drifted away from the publicly known version. Only then did we realize that we were effectively committed to redevloping the whole language from scratch in order ot be free of JCB's intellectual property claims, and it took another 5 years until court cases up to the circui tCourt of Appeals (next step below the Supreme Court) formally removed his invalid trademark claim. In redeveloping the grammar from scratch, we chose to eliminate some obviously fixable bugs in the public TLI grammar, but the first "new direction" that we t ook was not until mid 1988, over a year after we started, when we decided to develop a grammar for MEX (mathematical expressions) a subset of Loglan that JCB had left unresolved. Even this was pretty much an addition to the language , and one that JCB had long wanted. It was not until I wrote chapter 3 of a new Loglan-88 (as we originally called Lojban) textbook, that I came up with an insight that led the language in a "new direction" that differed from what JCB had thus far said. This was in early 1989, well after the schism, though we did not give up on reuniting the community for a couple of years after that point, and it was not until after the court case was over and JCB still was not negotiating with us that the Lojban community declared that "Lojban is Loglan" and that we would no longer consider JCB to have special authority over the language. ------ As Bruce said, both languages remain similar, and indeed most texts can be translated between the two laanguages by appropriate word for word substitution. John Cowan and Nora and I can probably all write TLI Loglan text as well as the best people JCB has, though of course we have no interest in doing so (and trying would cause serious cross-talk in our using Lojban - even though Nora seldom has seen TLI Loglan text in the last 10 years, she still someties uses the TLI Loglan word instead of the Lojban word in her Lojban conversation). But up to this point I do not think there has ever been any significant philosophical differences regarding the language design between me and JCB-as-I-have-understood-him. Some things have slipped into Lojban that JCB might not approve of, but they are largely additions proposed by others. meanwhile there has been some drift because JCB does not consider freezing the language development to be desirable and HE has made some changes (most changes that TLI has made public however, are almost identical to changes that we had made in Lojban a bot earlier, so even in this sense drift has been very slow). ------- Enough history. The other major difference is that Lojban is irrevocably in the public domain. All of our design materials including our draft book on the language, are freely available on the net. And we have demonstrated fluent and extended conversation, including conversation between people of several different native languages (though of course all of these knew English as well and learned Lojban from various English language publications.) . Lojban List, our net-based community organ is quiet these days, partly because peopel are waiting for the book to be done (it is being indexed and then will be prepared for printing right now), and partly because Lojban List and Conlang List have enough overlap in membership that when things are active here they quietr down in that list. lojbab ---- lojbab lojbab@access.digex.net Bob LeChevalier, President, The Logical Language Group, Inc. 2904 Beau Lane, Fairfax VA 22031-1303 USA 703-385-0273 For the artificial language Loglan/Lojban, see powered.cs.yale.edu /pub/lojban or see Lojban WWW Server: href="http://xiron.pc.helsinki.fi/lojban/" <*> Origin: FOLDER__ - 0028 - Lojban From: MARK P LINE PRIVATE To: JIM HENRY Date: 09/09/96 at 15:41 Re: CONLANG: Errrr, log˙˙˙˙˙˙ ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ ˙@TO :jim.henry N ˙@FROM :mline@ix.netcom.com N ˙@SUBJECT:Re: CONLANG: Errrr, log loj? N ˙@UMSGID :<32349D36.53DF4936@ix.netcom.com> N From owner-conlang@diku.dk Mon Sep 9 16:01:04 1996 Received: from vidar.diku.dk (daemon@vidar.diku.dk [130.225.96.249]) by altmail .holonet.net with ESMTP id QAA24750; Mon, 9 Sep 1996 16:01:04 -0700 Received: (from daemon@localhost) by vidar.diku.dk (8.6.12/8.6.12) id AAA11739 for conlang-outgoing; Tue, 10 Sep 1996 00:44:49 +0200 Received: from dfw-ix8.ix.netcom.com (dfw-ix8.ix.netcom.com [206.214.98.8]) by vidar.diku.dk (8.6.12/8.6.12) with ESMTP id AAA11732 for ; Tue , 10 Sep 1996 00:44:46 +0200 Received: from knecht (mark@sea-wa15-14.ix.netcom.com [205.184.165.110]) by dfw -ix8.ix.netcom.com (8.6.13/8.6.12) with SMTP id PAA20341 for ; Mon, 9 Sep 1996 15:44:34 -0700 Message-ID: <32349D36.53DF4936@ix.netcom.com> Date: Mon, 09 Sep 1996 15:41:58 -0700 From: "Mark P. Line" Organization: Open Pathways, Bellevue WA X-Mailer: Mozilla 2.02 (X11; I; Linux 1.2.3 i486) MIME-Version: 1.0 To: conlang@diku.dk Subject: Re: CONLANG: Errrr, log loj? References: Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: owner-conlang@diku.dk Precedence: bulk Priority: non-urgent Reply-To: "Mark P. Line" Chris Palmer wrote: > > yes well i visited their (Loglan) web site and it seemed very interesting > to me, very. However, i thought the Whorf-Sapir/Orwell hypothesis was > already disproven??? so why are they bothering to try to test it? just > for fun, or maybe the disproof wasn't sufficient? Results of research crystallized around a distinction between the "strong S-W hypothesis" (which has been disproved) and the "weak S-W hypothesis" (which has not, TMK). The strongest form of the strong hypothesis is that thought proceeds in the form of unspoken utterances, and hence only thoughts which can be uttered can be thought. Although this seems to be true of some subjects, it's very much a matter of cognitive style -- verbal cognition is just one kind among many (visual, tactile ...), so the strong hypothesis is very easy to disprove. The weak hypothesis is just that a subject's linguistic categories provide default categories for some cognition. The questions continue to be explored as to what kinds of cognition are affected, what kinds of linguistic categories are implicated, and how, when and why these _default_ categories are overridden by conscious effort. There's all kinds of evidence that supports some form of the weak hypothesis. Falsification would involve finding another source of cognitive defaults that _correlate_ with the subjects' linguistic categories but are not caused by them. I wouldn't hold my breath. The single largest body of empirical research on the weak hypothesis is that on color terms -- different languages divide up the basic colors in different ways, providing different kinds of default terms when you're not trying to be very specific. The second largest area of research involves the way in which morphosyntactic categories create a default structure for time and space. > I am referrring to what i read in Stephen Pinker's "The Language > Instinct" wherein he says it is impossible for language to precede or > shape thought, because otherwise we never would have had an original > thought. Uh huh. Have you never uttered an original sentence? > I am sure Chomsky would probably rail > against it (the w-s hypothesis) as "behavioral." No doubt. Chomsky has been railing a bit less these days, though, ever since he was forced to write the Minimalist book. Talk about painting oneself into a corner... [It's hard for those of us who never bought into the Chomskyan paradigm to refrain from saying "I told you so". It's made easier by the fact that most of us no longer have jobs in linguistics ...] -- Mark (Mark P. Line ---- Bellevue, Washington ---- mline@ix.netcom.com) <*> Origin: FOLDER__ - 0028 - Lojban From: LOGICAL LANGUAGE GROUP PRIVATE To: JIM HENRY Date: 09/08/96 at 01:13 Re: CONLANG: Familial In˙˙˙˙˙ ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ ˙@TO :jim.henry N ˙@FROM :lojbab@ACCESS.DIGEX.NET N ˙@SUBJECT:Re: CONLANG: Familial Inflect N ˙@UMSGID :<199609080513.BAA06034@access1.digex.net> N From owner-conlang@diku.dk Sat Sep 7 22:34:31 1996 Received: from vidar.diku.dk (daemon@vidar.diku.dk [130.225.96.249]) by altmail .holonet.net with ESMTP id WAA08136; Sat, 7 Sep 1996 22:34:31 -0700 Received: (from daemon@localhost) by vidar.diku.dk (8.6.12/8.6.12) id HAA05093 for conlang-outgoing; Sun, 8 Sep 1996 07:13:45 +0200 Received: from access1.digex.net (ql/6O0AY1b.Cw@access1.digex.net [205.197.245. 192]) by vidar.diku.dk (8.6.12/8.6.12) with ESMTP id HAA05086 for ; Sun, 8 Sep 1996 07:13:42 +0200 Received: (from lojbab@localhost) by access1.digex.net (8.6.12/8.6.12) id BAA06 034 ; for conlang@diku.dk; Sun, 8 Sep 1996 01:13:33 -0400 Date: Sun, 8 Sep 1996 01:13:33 -0400 From: Logical Language Group Message-Id: <199609080513.BAA06034@access1.digex.net> To: conlang@diku.dk Subject: Re: CONLANG: Familial Inflect Sender: owner-conlang@diku.dk Precedence: bulk Priority: non-urgent Reply-To: Logical Language Group Bruce Gilson: >Forgive me if someone has already mentioned this (I'm catching up on some old >posts I never got around to reading before) but in Loglan, and I presume >Lojban too, sonce the basic structures are similar, all content-words are >essentially verbs. (The Lojbanites hate to use traditional grammatical >terminology in discussing their language, but a close study of the language >would make it clear that "all content-words are essentially verbs" is a fair >statement.) So the word "farfu" in original Loglan (and whatever is its >current equivalent in 1996 Loglan and in Lojban) means "is the father of" >exactly as your example. patfu, BTW. The reason why we do not like Lojban brivla (content-words) called "verbs" is justified. It is true that using a traditional Latinate structure analysis that a bare Lojban brivla can appear in a place corresponding to a verb in a standard Indo-European grammar. So the unmarked form is in that sense a verb. But that same unmarked form can appear as a modifier of another brivla - and hence is also an adverb using the same terminology. Similarly, with an article marking it, it can become what Bruce would call a noun, but the bare form can modify that "noun" and hence is also an adjective. Other forms, though marked, allow the word to be used in a preposition-like manner. Furthermore, some of these words are hard to think of as verbs for many people - we have had difficulty getting people to think of "blanu"="blue" as a verb; those who are able to do so think of it as a "stative verb", but this id not a meaningful category in Lojban: how can you tell what brivla are stative and which are active, and why must one presume that a blue thing is not actively "bluing"? So we avoid traditional grammar terminology because it is not really useful in decribing the language and indeed can lead to misconceptions. A language wh ich is supposed to be strongly different from English and similar languiages cannot afford to have people making erroneous deductions from the assumption that Lojban brivla are verbs, as to what can and cannot be said in the language using them. This does not mean that we don't point out in teaching materials when a structure resembles an English part-of-speech, but "resembles" is not "identity" and it is the constructu and not the word (though the construct in some cases consists of a single word, it doesn't necessarily HAVE TO be so) that resembles the traditional part of speech. lojbab ---- lojbab lojbab@access.digex.net Bob LeChevalier, President, The Logical Language Group, Inc. 2904 Beau Lane, Fairfax VA 22031-1303 USA 703-385-0273 For the artificial language Loglan/Lojban, see powered.cs.yale.edu /pub/lojban or see Lojban WWW Server: href="http://xiron.pc.helsinki.fi/lojban/" <*> Origin: FOLDER__ - 0028 - Lojban From: GRANT HOULDSWORTH PRIVATE To: JIM HENRY Date: 08/13/96 at 17:56 Re: CONLANG: Loglan or Lojban ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ ˙@TO :jim.henry N ˙@FROM :100111.2572@compuserve.com N ˙@SUBJECT:CONLANG: Loglan or Lojban? N ˙@UMSGID :<960813215636_100111.2572_EHQ75-3@CompuServe.COM> N From owner-conlang@diku.dk Tue Aug 13 15:14:00 1996 Received: from vidar.diku.dk (daemon@vidar.diku.dk [130.225.96.249]) by altmail .holonet.net with ESMTP id PAA19735; Tue, 13 Aug 1996 15:14:00 -0700 Received: (from daemon@localhost) by vidar.diku.dk (8.6.12/8.6.12) id AAA16943 for conlang-outgoing; Wed, 14 Aug 1996 00:00:13 +0200 Received: from arl-img-1.compuserve.com (arl-img-1.compuserve.com [149.174.217. 131]) by vidar.diku.dk (8.6.12/8.6.12) with ESMTP id AAA16925 for ; Wed, 14 Aug 1996 00:00:09 +0200 Received: by arl-img-1.compuserve.com (8.6.10/5.950515) id RAA18804; Tue, 13 Aug 1996 17:59:37 -0400 Date: 13 Aug 96 17:56:37 EDT From: Grant Houldsworth <100111.2572@compuserve.com> To: Conlang Group Subject: CONLANG: Loglan or Lojban? Message-ID: <960813215636_100111.2572_EHQ75-3@CompuServe.COM> Sender: owner-conlang@diku.dk Precedence: bulk Reply-To: Grant Houldsworth <100111.2572@compuserve.com> Jim Henry, you asked: >If I wanted to learn either Loglan or Lojban, which would y'all >recommend and - more importantly - why? Loglan is essentially the creation of James Cooke Brown. Nothing in the language can change or develop without his assent - and he is reputedly unwilling to give this assent to anyone. Lojban is the creation of several dozen people under the reputedly more genial control of Robert LeChevalier. [In this respect, Loglan resembles Volapuk, while Lojban resembles Klingon. Note that Schleyer's propritorial attitude killed the former, while the latter is still expanding.] I have been unable to find any 'Teach Yourself Loglan' texts that were not too technical and complex for my poor brain. Textbooks and dictionaries have been published (under the titles Loglan 1, Loglan 2...Loglan 5) but are VERY difficult to find. The Loglan Home page is at: http://www.halcyon.com/loglan/welcome.html Most of the (draft) Lojban reference grammer is available as: ftp://ftp.access.digex/pub/access/lojbab/refgram.zip [Note that 'lojbab' here is not a typing mistake.] After september it will be available in book form, and as a set of HTML pages. I imagine you have guessed that I favor Lojban. GSH <*> Origin: FOLDER__ - 0028 - Lojban From: JOHN COWAN PRIVATE To: JIM HENRY Date: 08/14/96 at 14:55 Re: CONLANG: misc. comme˙˙˙˙˙ ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ ˙@TO :jim.henry N ˙@FROM :cowan@locke.ccil.org N ˙@SUBJECT:Re: CONLANG: misc. comments and q's N ˙@UMSGID :<32122115.46AF@ccil.org> N From cowan@ccil.org Wed Aug 14 13:15:23 1996 Received: from locke.ccil.org (root@locke.ccil.org [205.164.136.88]) by holonet .net with ESMTP id MAA12387; Wed, 14 Aug 1996 12:56:20 -0700 Received: from skunk (cowanj@onyx.interactive.net [208.192.224.6]) by locke.cci l.org (8.6.9/8.6.10) with SMTP id PAA01165 for ; Wed, 14 Aug 1996 15:26:37 -0400 Message-ID: <32122115.46AF@ccil.org> Date: Wed, 14 Aug 1996 14:55:17 -0400 From: John Cowan Organization: Lojban Peripheral X-Mailer: Mozilla 2.0 (Win16; I) MIME-Version: 1.0 To: JIM HENRY Subject: Re: CONLANG: misc. comments and q's References: <8C6350C.0385000EAB.uuout@silver.com> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit On Conlang you wrote: > If I wanted to learn either Loglan or Lojban, which would y'all > recommend and - more importantly - why? Disclaimer: I wrote the Lojban reference grammar, and I'm a member of the board of directors of LLG, the Lojban organization, so obviously I'm biased. I never met James Cooke Brown and was not a participant in either language at the time of the Great Split. 1) Lojban is an open standard. The basic reference documents are available in the public domain, at reproduction cost (i.e. nothing, on the Web, or printing+mailing cost, from LLG). 2) Lojban is far better documented. A proto-dictionary, a textbook, and a reference grammar (each in the range of 600 pages) are available at our web site, and we are in the process of publishing them as books. Loglan doesn't have a textbook (only a primer), its reference grammar is obsolete, and its dictionary is available *only* in computerized form. 3) Lojban is supported by a large group, whereas Loglan is centered on Brown and his policies. 4) Lojban's grammar and vocabulary are supersets of Loglan's: many of the things left implicit in the available descriptions of Loglan are spelled out by the Lojban documentation. Loglan texts can be translated word-for-word into Lojban, as a rule, whereas the reverse is not always possible. Web sites: Lojban at http://pc.xiron.helsinki.fi/lojban/ Loglan at http://www.halcyon.com/loglan Compare for yourself. -- John Cowan cowan@ccil.org e'osai ko sarji la lojban <*> Origin: FOLDER__ - 0028 - Lojban From: LOGICAL LANGUAGE GROUP PRIVATE To: JIM HENRY Date: 09/08/96 at 00:46 Re: CONLANG: Mnemonicit˙˙˙˙˙˙ ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ ˙@TO :jim.henry N ˙@FROM :lojbab@ACCESS.DIGEX.NET N ˙@SUBJECT:Re: CONLANG: Mnemonicity, not recognizability N ˙@UMSGID :<199609080446.AAA05309@access1.digex.net> N From owner-conlang@diku.dk Sat Sep 7 21:53:29 1996 Received: from vidar.diku.dk (daemon@vidar.diku.dk [130.225.96.249]) by altmail .holonet.net with ESMTP id VAA05676; Sat, 7 Sep 1996 21:53:29 -0700 Received: (from daemon@localhost) by vidar.diku.dk (8.6.12/8.6.12) id GAA04446 for conlang-outgoing; Sun, 8 Sep 1996 06:46:24 +0200 Received: from access1.digex.net (ql/6O0AY1b.Cw@access1.digex.net [205.197.245. 192]) by vidar.diku.dk (8.6.12/8.6.12) with ESMTP id GAA04439 for ; Sun, 8 Sep 1996 06:46:21 +0200 Received: (from lojbab@localhost) by access1.digex.net (8.6.12/8.6.12) id AAA05 309 ; for ; Sun, 8 Sep 1996 00:46:16 -0400 Date: Sun, 8 Sep 1996 00:46:16 -0400 From: Logical Language Group Message-Id: <199609080446.AAA05309@access1.digex.net> To: brg@netcom.com, conlang@diku.dk, lojbab@ACCESS.DIGEX.NET Subject: Re: CONLANG: Mnemonicity, not recognizability Sender: owner-conlang@diku.dk Precedence: bulk Priority: non-urgent Reply-To: Logical Language Group >The thing is, as I understand it, Lojban is pretty much finished as I under- >stand it. My understanding is that at this point, all you want to do is teach >the current Lojban to new "converts." (And in fact, at least as far as vocab- >ulary, you were finished years ago: it was this very finished-ness that put >me off joining the Lojban community back then, because I could see that I >could make no contribution to the development process.) Interesting how many people have contributed to the design process who started learning the language after you decided you could not. The areas they helped in were not of course in the areas of phonology and morphology, which were pretty solid by then. But other areas were changed. And actually even you made a difference - I think you were one of those arguing for the ability to eliminate a place from the place structure defining a relationship - at least there were references to Voksigid in the discussion, if I recall correctly. Lojban has a cmavo (structure word) that can be used to delete an unwanted place from a place structure- though such usages are a bit cumbersome, we did provide for it. >If I, or someone else, were to spend several months learning Lojban, and add >my two cents to this research, what would come of it? Hey, this is a research project! We would know something more about how people learn vocabulary of foreign languages (which in turn might affect how foreign languages are taught - an effect that would probably be more significant than all the conlangs in the world have thus far had). The results might be used by someone else in developing THEIR conlangs - after all, we do not keep our results provate %^) I think the lack of evidence for the validity of the mnemonic algorithm as a design principle has led to few other conlang developers trying a Loglan/Lojban approach to word making (plus I admit it is a time consuming process, though modern computers could make the Lojban gismu in a small fraction of what my old XT and AT computers spent on the processing). >If a new mnemonicity >measure were developed, it would certainly change the scores of a large >proportion of Lojban's vocabulary, and cause different forms to be preferred >for, I am sure, a vast proportion of the morpheme list. True. This would have one immediate effect - we would use the new scores and scoring algorithm in deciding how to treach the language. Those words with high scores under a mnemonic approach should be taught m,nemonically; those that are not high scoring should not. In addition a new scoring algoirth m MIGHT be used in any future word-making: that word making might be in the distant and nebulous future, after thedevelopment baseline has stood for at least 5 years, but it is not ruled out forever. I doubt that, if the scoring algorithm is suboptimal but that there is a different more optimal algorithm identified, that the existing algorithm will be shown as worthless. rather I think that we would find that there are some features that got scores that should not have gotten as much, and other features that might have been usefully considered but were not. Certainly if we reran a new algorithm from scratch we would get very different words, but only if the new algoirthm gave substantially better results would there be any justifiable argument for actual change. I agree with you that the Lojban community would probably decide against such changes, but it will be a community decision and not mine. >Therefore, though I >would be interested in hearing of any findings, I beg off on actually being >part of the experiment. Your choice and loss of course %^). lojbab ---- lojbab lojbab@access.digex.net Bob LeChevalier, President, The Logical Language Group, Inc. 2904 Beau Lane, Fairfax VA 22031-1303 USA 703-385-0273 For the artificial language Loglan/Lojban, see powered.cs.yale.edu /pub/lojban or see Lojban WWW Server: href="http://xiron.pc.helsinki.fi/lojban/" <*> Origin: FOLDER__ - 0028 - Lojban From: LOGICAL LANGUAGE GROUP PRIVATE To: JIM HENRY Date: 09/10/96 at 04:09 Re: CONLANG: Mnemonicit˙˙˙˙˙˙ ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ ˙@TO :jim.henry N ˙@FROM :lojbab@ACCESS.DIGEX.NET N ˙@SUBJECT:Re: CONLANG: Mnemonicity, not recognizability N ˙@UMSGID :<199609100809.EAA11322@access1.digex.net> N From owner-conlang@diku.dk Tue Sep 10 01:30:59 1996 Received: from vidar.diku.dk (daemon@vidar.diku.dk [130.225.96.249]) by altmail .holonet.net with ESMTP id BAA05685; Tue, 10 Sep 1996 01:30:59 -0700 Received: (from daemon@localhost) by vidar.diku.dk (8.6.12/8.6.12) id KAA27435 for conlang-outgoing; Tue, 10 Sep 1996 10:09:19 +0200 Received: from access1.digex.net (ql/6O0AY1b.Cw@access1.digex.net [205.197.245. 192]) by vidar.diku.dk (8.6.12/8.6.12) with ESMTP id KAA27423 for ; Tue, 10 Sep 1996 10:09:15 +0200 Received: (from lojbab@localhost) by access1.digex.net (8.6.12/8.6.12) id EAA11 322 ; for ; Tue, 10 Sep 1996 04:09:09 -0400 Date: Tue, 10 Sep 1996 04:09:09 -0400 From: Logical Language Group Message-Id: <199609100809.EAA11322@access1.digex.net> To: brg@netcom.com, conlang@diku.dk, lojbab@ACCESS.DIGEX.NET Subject: Re: CONLANG: Mnemonicity, not recognizability Sender: owner-conlang@diku.dk Precedence: bulk Priority: non-urgent Reply-To: Logical Language Group Bruce Gilson replies to me: >>I agree with you that the Lojban community would probably decide against such >>changes, but it will be a community decision and not mine. > >Not to carp, but how often has the Lojban community taken a direction that >you opposed? I rather imagine that the Lojban community defers to you on >any matter on which you feel strongly. And this is probably to be expected. This was true for a long time, but is far less true these days. I got rightfully chewed out for my lack of progress on my share of the book publishing effort, and I lost a battle that I think is very significant in that the membership voted to back the place structures of lujvo published in the dictionary with the same baseline as for the rest of the language even though they are not getting nearly as careful review, and most of them have never been used or only used a single time. My philosphy has always been to miniumize the freezing of the lexicon to the minimum that will encourag e people to learn it, and the community feels that, at least for the next 5 yea rs or so, that has to be ALL of the material that we publish. John Cowan, in the process of wirting the Lojban reference grammar, has generated most of the changes to the language in the last few years. Nick Nicholas has set forth the philosophy that has effectively been adopted for generating lujvo place structures more or less systematically. I did not exert much force in the former changes, and did not even read Nick's work describing his ideas until I reviewed the version edited for the reference grammar a couple of weeks ago. As a result, that is one area of the language that I have had almost no say in. In matters of logic, which I got a D in college in the suubject, I completely defer to others - mostly John Cowan and John Parks-Clifford (pc), though Argentinian Jorge Llambias and And Rosta also had a lot of influence on late design changes. Lojban writing stylistics is largely an invvention of Nick Nicholas who is the most prolific writer and most fluent speaker of Lojban. In short, while I may have the BROADEST influence on the language these days, in many areas I am not the most influential and some areas I do not even exert any say over. >That project, too, was >essentially a research project; unfortunately the main thing we learned >was that a language can be designed by one person or by a fairly large >committee, but not by a committee of 2 or 3. We on the other hand have found that once the basic principles of the language are settled, small committees working on various aspects of the language were ideal ways to flesh out the details. >Even if Lojban was started as a reaction to JCB's arbitrary changes to >Loglan, As I have said elsewhere, this was not the reason Lojban was started. We certainly have taken a different attitude on this subject, but that was only after we had thoroughly split from JCB's effort. >I think that Lojban is really as much your baby as Loglan is JCB's I don't really want the credit. The basic language design is JCB's. What I did was detail work, and most of that detail work was me working with someone else who deserves equal credit for their contribution. I thus see myself as a leader rather than as a conlang inventor/designer. >He changed things when >he felt they should, but never listened to others who had their own ideas >for change. This is unfair to JCB. He has listened to others, and has made changes. But he has always reserved to himself final say on all language design issues. He has an "Academy", but he is a member and each member has a veto so the group does what JCB wants. JCB also BTW does give credit to others - even I am cr4edited in the lst edition of L1 for a language deign feature that I suggested and JCB accepted, in spite of the persistent dispute between us. >You baselined Lojban early, No. WE baselined PART of the language early - the part that was quite solid after 30 odd years (now 40) of development and testing. The gismu list was baselined several years later, as was the grammar, and the grammar has continued to be changed, albeit under baseline controls, for the last 5 years or so - atotal of something like 48 changes to the formal grammar. >so you refuse to change because you've >reached a baseline that can't change Finally, but only as of the publication of the book later this year. After that it is up to the community of people actually using the language to decide where to go, though we have established that that community will have 5 years to gel before it gets control. lojbab ---- lojbab lojbab@access.digex.net Bob LeChevalier, President, The Logical Language Group, Inc. 2904 Beau Lane, Fairfax VA 22031-1303 USA 703-385-0273 For the artificial language Loglan/Lojban, see powered.cs.yale.edu /pub/lojban or see Lojban WWW Server: href="http://xiron.pc.helsinki.fi/lojban/" <*> Origin: FOLDER__ - 0028 - Lojban From: LOGICAL LANGUAGE GROUP PRIVATE To: JIM HENRY Date: 09/13/96 at 01:12 Re: CONLANG: Some thoughts re ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ ˙@TO :jim.henry N ˙@FROM :lojbab@ACCESS.DIGEX.NET N ˙@SUBJECT:CONLANG: Some thoughts regarding: Errrr, log loj? N ˙@UMSGID :<199609130512.BAA29277@access1.digex.net> N From owner-conlang@diku.dk Fri Sep 13 00:04:23 1996 Received: from vidar.diku.dk (daemon@vidar.diku.dk [130.225.96.249]) by altmail .holonet.net with ESMTP id AAA22536; Fri, 13 Sep 1996 00:04:23 -0700 Received: (from daemon@localhost) by vidar.diku.dk (8.6.12/8.6.12) id HAA29314 for conlang-outgoing; Fri, 13 Sep 1996 07:13:01 +0200 Received: from access1.digex.net (ql/6O0AY1b.Cw@access1.digex.net [205.197.245. 192]) by vidar.diku.dk (8.6.12/8.6.12) with ESMTP id HAA29307 for ; Fri, 13 Sep 1996 07:12:57 +0200 Received: (from lojbab@localhost) by access1.digex.net (8.6.12/8.6.12) id BAA29 277 ; for conlang@diku.dk; Fri, 13 Sep 1996 01:12:54 -0400 Date: Fri, 13 Sep 1996 01:12:54 -0400 From: Logical Language Group Message-Id: <199609130512.BAA29277@access1.digex.net> To: conlang@diku.dk Subject: CONLANG: Some thoughts regarding: Errrr, log loj? Sender: owner-conlang@diku.dk Precedence: bulk Priority: non-urgent Reply-To: Logical Language Group >From what I >have seen (very little, and only of Loglan so far), this looks like the >ultimate conlang...! I'd like to thinks so %^). Certainly it is the most thoroughly documented one. But people have for years been hypothesizing what kind of conlang native Loglan/Lojban speakers would invent as an improved second generation Loglan - so maybe "ultimate" is the wrong word. >i find it sad that there has to be such division and anger around the >schism. It seems to me that there is a lot of pride and greed going on Lots of pride, yes. Greed - I don;t think so. JCB has at times taken actions that some might see as greedy, but I have always interpreted them as him trying to make sure that the language survives him. Knowing how Interlingu a largely collapsed as a movement when the primary funding person died, JCB has wanted to make sure that The Loglan Institute has stable funding that is independt of JCB himself (and inceidentally trying to stop the drain on JCB's finances). As for division, other than between JCB and a few old-timers tehre isn;t that much. I have cordial email relations with a couple of supporters of TLI Loglan, and they are in turn respectful both privately and publicly of our work. The only real "anger" per se is JCB towards me - he apparently feels that I betrayed and/or cheated him, while I think I have made sure that what he wants (that Loglan survive him and eventually come to be used in linguistics research) actually takes place. I have resigned myself to his undying enmity, but we have stopped looking back at TLI and JCB and are looking forward to a worldwide Loglan/Lojban community. > It's a drag >that the schism also detracts from the experimental nature of the lang. I don't think it has done that. Indeed, I think that the fact that we were forced to redesign things due to the intellectual property dispute actually led to some deep thinking about some critical areas of the language. As a result, while the two versions of Loglan look very similar (given vocabuilary substitution), there are subtle areas in the language especially in critical linguistics-research-sensitive areas, that we have made enormous improvements through the rethinking. (Tens, attitudinals, and abstractions nd non-logical connectives are majorly improved, and we of course completed TLI's mathematical expression (MEX), which has been an aborted stub since JCB through out his first effort at MEX sometime between writing it in 1962 and publishing his book in 1975. Oh, and negation: logical, scalar, and metalinguistic negation - is another biggie - one which we owe a lot to L. Horn's "A Natural History of Negation" which I recvommend to anyone interested in the boundary between lingusitics and logic. >So I'm wondering, which of the two competing langs should I learn? Well, I am sure you know MY opinion %^) Seriously, you can learn Lojban with no monetary investment (though we welcome co0ntributions) since virtually all of our stuff is on-line. To learn TLI Loglan, you will have to buy books and other materials which could easily run $100, though I am not sure of his exact price list. >Or >could I learn them both with only a little extra effort, since Bob says >the vocab is the main difference? Axctually the similarity is a little bit of a problem - thos eof us who have learned both are prone to using TLI Loglan words in Lojban sentences, to the mass confusion of others. It is a little like English speakers trying to write Basic English and never step outside of the standard vocabulary - it is hard to forget all those other words %^). >And where can I get texts? About the language? Most of our stuff is on our ftp site and web pages (see my .sig) The latest draft of the soon-publsihed reference grammar is in my personal ftp site: ftp.access.digex.net /pub/access/lojbab/refgram.zip or ~/*.txt In the language? Plenty of stuff on the ftp site, and much more in the Lojban List archives. Also, if you subscribe to Lojban List and write in Lojban you will almost certaoinly get a couple of people answering you in Lojban - there are a few people who post ONLY in response to Lojban text. lojbab ---- lojbab lojbab@access.digex.net Bob LeChevalier, President, The Logical Language Group, Inc. 2904 Beau Lane, Fairfax VA 22031-1303 USA 703-385-0273 For the artificial language Loglan/Lojban, see powered.cs.yale.edu /pub/lojban or see Lojban WWW Server: href="http://xiron.pc.helsinki.fi/lojban/" <*>