#2144
5:23 AM Sat 1 Jan
 Subject:  Re: On  international applications of Lojban
 From:  And Rosta

From: "And Rosta" a.rost-@pmail.net

Here's a combined reply to Lojbab and Brook.

> From: "Bob LeChevalier (lojbab)" lojba-@lojban.org
>
> At 09:20 PM 12/30/99 +0000, And Rosta wrote:
> > > From: "Bob LeChevalier (lojbab)" lojba-@lojban.org
> > > At 04:09 PM 12/29/99 +0000, And Rosta wrote:
> > > >My response to the Top-Down idea of IAL or Lojban adoption
> > > >is to wonder why it should be a good thing for the adopting
> > > >body? Take the European patent organization: it would be
> > > >a trivial task to develop a language that shares Lojban's
> > > >virtues of nonambiguity and other areas of suitability to
> > > >the formulation of patents but is much simpler and easier
> > > >to learn;
> > >
> > > Really?  If it were so easy, why haven't they done so?
> >
> >Either because they haven't perceived the need or because some
> >cost/benefit analysis doesn't justify it.
> >
> > > Personally, I don't think you can get much simpler than
> > > Lojban and still do the job. The primary extraneous feature
> > > of Lojban not applicable to patents is the attitudinal/evidential
> > > system.  Even audible unambiguity has some value.
> >
> >There is nothing relevant that Lojban can do that standard
> >predicate logic notation can't.
>
> It can be spoken and written (unambiguously), and it is languagy enough
> that someone can learn it as a language (I doubt that many can learn
> predicate logic as a language).

There's nothing to say but that we disagree, in that I do think that
people could learn it at least at the intellectual level that people
learn programming languages. They mightn't be able to learn it as
a natlang, but on the other hand, for a limited purpose like legislative
texts this might not be a bad thing, and anyway, Lojban too, taken as
a whole, might be insuperably unnatural.

> By this argument, the efforts to develop an interlanguage for machine
> translation would need only use predicate calculus.  But instead the
> closest that anyone has come to successfully using an
> interlanguage was the DLT project that used Esperanto.

I don't know why this was. Maybe they wanted to translate aspects of
form as well as meaning. And very probably it was easier to work out
the mapping from natlangs to Esperanto than from natlangs to something
as stark as predicate logic form.

> >  In a Polish/Reverse Polish predicate
> >logic notation you need nothing but predicates, variables,
> >one or two quantifiers and two or three connectives. In other
> >words, setting aside how variables are handled, you could have
> >a language with only 3 cmavo! I'll admit that that number might
> >be expanded a bit, e.g. to include numbers, but even an expanded
> >cmavo inventory would be only a tiny proportion of Lojban's.
> >Likewise, the entire syntax could be formulated in a single
> >sentence.
>
> But could human beings use it to describe a patent?

I don't see why not.

> And what happens when you need to translate an indirect question?  After
> all, haven't you just found that it is a fairly intractible problem for
> predicate logic?

Hopefully it is tractable. But I'd use a special WH quantifier if the
language had to be done today.

> > > >  logicians have been using such languages for decades.
> > >
> > > 1) What language have logicians used that could be used for writing a
> > > patent description?  Key here is "description", and description takes
> > > meaningful content words.  Patents include both things and
> processes, and
> > > both have to be describable, hence tanru and description sumti both
> > > requiring content words and both capable of being disambiguated
> > > semantically to an arbitrary degree of specificity as well as
> > > grammatically.
> >
> >Of course the predicate words' senses have to be defined. But in
> Lojban the
> >predicate words' senses are not defined -- this task has been left to
> >'usage' to achieve.
>
> And patent translation would be a large amount of usage.

Exactly. I don't know anything about patents, but a great deal of law
involves decreeing definitions of terms.

> > > 2. The language of logic that most people have seen is the predicate
> > > calculus.  Being a reasonably bright sort of guy who
> struggled to barely
> > > pass a self-paced college level course in the stuff, I
> daresay that many
> > > would call the predicate calculus easy to learn.
> >
> >Is that irony?
>
> No, a typo.  Substitute few for many.
>
> >  If so, I guess that they problem with predicate calculus is
> >that there's no fudgeability with it, which nonfudgeability is
> exactly why
> >one wants a logical language.
>
> But fudgeability is fine for patent translation (maybe even desirable to
> the lawyers), so long as the fudguing does not create an ambiguity
> comparable to those of natlangs.

By fudgeability, I mean the possibility of being ambiguous when you
can't be bothered to disambiguate, or when disambiguation is more
trouble than it's worth.

> >  Note also that predicate logic is a subset
> >of Lojban, so if you learn Lojban you learn predicate logic plus a load
> >of extra stuff.
>
> You learn the forms of predicate logic, more or less (but how many people
> actually use the full set of Lojban logical connectives, for
> example?).  But you do not learn to reason according to the rules of
> inference along the lines of the predicate calculus.

True, but that's also true even if you learn pred calc notation.

> If you did learn this
> inherently while learning Lojban without having to study the subject, I
> daresay that the original SWH concept for Loglan will have been proven.
>
> I also think that a lot of that "extra stuff" is exactly the sort
> of thing needed for patents, technical writing, formal specification, etc.

Which stuff? I can't think of any, but I exempt MEX from this statement
because I don't know it or the scope of its applicability.

> Again,
> the attempts I know of anguages for these arenas have tended to have some
> logical construct to them, but have always had to fall back on a natlang
> like form.  If not enough like a natlang, they haven't been learnable; if
> too much like a natlang, they haven't been sufficiently unambiguous.

Given that pred logic notation differs from natlangs in its extreme
simplicity, it would be interesting to find if some system can be so
simple it is unlearnable.

> > > >  Likewise for an IAL; if the EU did decide it
> > > >would be economically advantageous (tho I think it wouldn't),
> > > >for what reason (other than idiocy) would it opt for the
> > > >halfarsed candidate IALs currently on the market?
> > >
> > > If it were easy to develop a better one, I am sure that
> people would have
> > > done so already.
> >
> >Why? Most of the people who invent IALs are total lunatics, and
> most of the
> >rest are either ignorant or dim.
>
> But there is a market for an unambiguous specification language,
> which is what we are talking about.  It would be usable in the
> computer industry for software development, security
> verification, proof of program correctness.  They were trying
> to solve the problem when I was still working on that kind of
> stuff in the mid-80s, and I have not heard that the problem has
> been solved.  They invent computer-languages to try
> to do this kind of thing, but they never catch on as a standard,
> probably because you can't speak LISP.  But you CAN now "speak
> PROLOG", given the known mapping from a Lojban subset to PROLOG.

Maybe an advantage of Lojban here is that it is public domain and
culturally-neutral in the sense of not, say, being the progeny of
a single commercial organization. The Linux of logical languages,
as it were.

But if I wanted a logical lang that was only going to be used
in-house, then numerous modifications to Lojban could be made to
make the language easier to learn than Lojban, and yet as
effective. Basically, the main modifications I'd make would
involve discarding tons of stuff and changing the gismu forms to
lightly modified English.

> > > It isn't merely money that is lacking (though money would
> > > be nice) - Interlingua had money backing it, and of course
> DLTs machine
> > > translation internal interlanguage based on Esperanto had
> money backing
> > > it.  A language sufficient to do the job will have to be sufficiently
> > > complex, and G-d knows that balancing complexity vs. needed
> > > features is far from easy.
> > >
> > > Then there is the key advantage of an existing language in
> that there are
> > > people who already know it and who therefore can serve as
> > > teachers, already written teaching materials that people can learn the
> > > language from without teachers if necessary.  It took 3 years
> of teaching
> > > material development to get Lojban to the point that Nick
> Nicholas could
> > > teach himself the language from the materials and be able to
> write cogent
> > > Lojban without a lot of coaching, and it took him a few more years of
> > > work before he felt himself skilled at the language.  Only with the
> > > advent of the Book have we had significant numbers able to teach
> > > themselves Lojban, and a goodly number have said that even that is not
> > > sufficient for them.  Going from raw language concept to the Book is
> > > dozens of person-years of effort.  Going from there to even
> the current
> > > level of Lojban prowess is many more person-years of effort
> on the part
> > > of self-teachers.  And we don't yet have enough to teach the European
> > > patent community (hence by initiation of this thread), much
> less the rest
> > > of Europe.  There is a likelihood that Esperanto could come
> up with the
> > > needed teachers reasonably quickly, especially given that for many it
> > > would their first chance to make money using the language
> (which can be
> > > a strong motivating force for many who have half-learned Esperanto,
> > > probably including a goodly portion of this list).
> >
> >I'm not sure what point you're making.
>
> The point is that any top-down application of an artificial language big
> enough to point the way to large scale usage will inherently require that
> the language be easy to learn, with sufficient language learning
> materials
> that many can learn it by self-study and most anyone with more
> than minimal
> verbal ability can learn it with a teacher.  The latter will of
> course take
> sufficient skilled Lojbanists to serve as teachers.  In short it is the
> "rapid bootstrap" problem that anything really new tends to have a steep
> and time-expensive learning curve.  We have to reduce that steepness to
> make Lojban successful.
>
> >  I agree that there are these
> >obstacles to the adoption of Lojban. And as I've said, I think Lojban
> >and Esperanto would be poor choices for a patent language, or for a
> >European IAL.
>
> As a patent language it has to go beyond pan-European. Our German
> proponent of the Lojban patent effort cited the difficulty of
> translating Japanese patents as a strong reason in Lojban's favor.

Two different things are getting confused here. A patent language (which
I am actually thinking of a more broadly a legal language), and an EU
IAL.

> > > >In my view, the Bottom-Up approach is the only viable one
> > > >for Lojban and currently extant IALs.
> > >
> > > But is the bottom-up approach viable at all?  I think that it is a
> > > necessary step - necessary to build the infrastructure of teachers and
> > > teaching materials and lexicon, but the key problme of bottom-up is
> > > achieving any sort of critical mass.
> >
> >I've never believed Lojban to be viable in the sense that you mean, and
> >have no burning desire to assist it to become viable.
>
> I understand.  But I raised the topic in order to find out if there are
> ways to overcome the viability issues provided that the application shows
> up.  You may not be interested in the possibility, but it is certain that
> many others are.
>
> > > Lojban has probably achieved critical mass enough to survive it
> > > inventors (which makes it one of the most select of conlangs),
> >
> >I am certain this is so. There's now the Book, which contains pretty
> >much all there is to know about the language, and I imagine it will
> >always attract small numbers of people who find Lojban appealing.
> >
> > > but not necessarily enough to gain a respectable "market
> > > share" among the languages of the world.  (I think Lojban has the
> > > advantage that it needs a lot smaller number than other conlangs to
> > > achieve critical mass, because Lojban unlike most conlangs DOES have
> > > the sort of specialty application like patent law and
> > computer-communications
> > > that is economically viable with only a small fraction of the world
> > learning
> > > it.  And economic viability is the key to "top down" - a top down
> > > approach will work when someone with power sees a way to make
> money using
> > > the language.
> >
> >I very much doubt that this will happen, though it happening is Lojban's
> >only real hope for achieving critical mass.
>
> Yes.
>
> >But at any rate, I don't see why you should care so much. I
> recognize that
> >you've decided that the validation for all the efforts you've invested in
> >Lojban is the creation of a living language rather than just a language,
> >but I don't understand why you should make that the validation,
> especially
> >when it's so improbable.
>
> I see it as my job as President of LLG to work towards the goals of all
> Lojbanists, including some that you may feel are less practical.  I got
> into this project out of a sense of duty, which later expanded to
> become a sense of mission.  There are people who want to seriously work
> on finding applications for Lojban.   I need to make sure that LLG
> provides the resources needed to make such efforts realizable,
> regardless of whether the goals that the efforts are aiming at will be
> achieved.  The best thing I can do is to make it so that when people
> try to promote Lojban for a top-down goal, that there is enough
> substance backing them that they do not seem foolish just for trying.
> And if I do that, real money might "happen", since venture capitalists
> these days are betting on a lot of things with
> even slimmer odds for success than Lojban.

Okay, now I do see why you should care so much.

> >  And the original idea that a loglan-speaking
> >community would test sapirwhorf, I've always regarded as a bit of blarney
> >baloney by JC Brown who really wanted to invent a language but
> was trying to
> >(a) gain respectability for an ill-respected activity, (b) differentiate
> >the product from others, (c) attract adherents.
>
> I know the history enough to be sure that it was not blarney at the
> time.  Remember that in the mid-50s, testing SWH was a big deal.
> Remember also that JCB came from the Campbell school of science fiction
> which I think had a certain amount of SWH built into it.  He does seem to
> have conceived of Loglan before the SWH became big, but I think that he
> seriously wanted to make the language a research tool.

You know the history better than me. The main reasons why I came to the
above
conclusions are firstly that it seems improbable that anyone would seriously
propose Loglan as a psycholinguistic experiment, since the experiment is
so uncontrolled and it takes so much effort to set up, and secondly that
thereafter JCB showed himself much more interested in all the designing
and tinkering and so forth that conlangers are so familiar with, and also
introduced additional design goals. If he'd been serious, he could have
genuinely invented a speakable predicate logic in a short span of time,
and then, say, raised funds to pay people to learn and use it or to
participate in experiments that oblige or incentivate them to learn and
use it.

> > > >  The only hope for
> > > >Lojban to succeed Top-Downly is that some organization is
> > > >intelligent enough to see the merits of adopting a logical
> > > >language, but stupid enough to choose Lojban to do the job.
> > >
> > > Gee, thanks. %^)
> >
> >What I mean is this. First, the overriding goal of the Lojban project was
> >always to get a minimally adequate product out into the world. The policy
> >was "if it's not broken, don't fix it". But if you're an
> organization that
> >is so dissatisfied with existing natural languages that you want to
> >adopt a logical language, you're probably an organization that wants the
> >language to be as good as is practicable. Secondly, and more importantly,
> >Lojban was designed as a compromise between many different goals. It is
> >probable that an organization adopting a logical language would have
> >different and fewer goals, and that Lojban would be a relatively poor
> >solution for these goals.
>
> I agree up to a point.
>
> But that point is the realization that the development of a language
> superior to Lojban for a more focussed problem would be at least
> as big an effort as has gone into Loglan/Lojban, but on a shorter
> timescale.

I disagree on this. It depends on the nature of the more focused problem,
but for the patent/legal problem, I claim that the lg could be done
quickly, possibly be using parts of Lojban.

> And that is too much to be feasible.  Furthermore, a redevelopment
> would almost certain be attempted as a proprietary effort because of the
> needed investment, and I think TLI Loglan and DLT both demonstrated the
> folly of trying to make a proprietary artificial language.  Lojban's
> strength has been the diverse breadth of input that has gone into the
> language.

I agree. Also important is that none of the adopters are to blame for
any faults they perceive in the language, and no adopter has to
swallow stuff created by a rival.

> The question is whether Lojban, or a subset thereof is "good enough" for
> some application.  I think it is.  Time will tell.  We certainly have the
> creative and bright minds needed to find such applications that exist.
>
> >I suppose that once one organization used Lojban, that would then become
> >a reason in itself for other organizations to use it too. But I really
> >can't see it being a sensible decision for any organization to adopt it
> >otherwise. True, it already exists, so would save labour in concocting
> >an alternative language, but if you're going to invest so much in getting
> >your organization to use it, a redesign would probably save you cost
> >in the long run.
>
> Therefore we have to make the investment for an organization
> small compared to the alternatives.  I think we can.  Having a public
domain
> language is a good start.
>
> >I'm not hostile to Lojban. If the United Nations decided to choose a
> >language to be a global general purpose second language, and if I
> >had a vote, then if the choice had to be made from an existing language
> >then I would vote for Lojban. And even if there was the option of
> >designing a new language I would vote for Lojban to avoid the risk
> >of the designed language being worse than Lojban.
>
> %^)

I should perhaps have said "*not as good as* Lojban" rather than "worse
than Lojban".

> > > >(This isn't an attack on Lojban. Lojban is more complex
> > > >than it needs to be for limited, formal, written applications
> > > >because it needs also to be usable for the full range of
> > > >linguistic functions.
> > >
> > > What linguistic functions other than attitudinals are not needed
> > > for patent work?
> >
> >Lojban is designed to be general purpose, flexible, nonconstraining,
> >culturally neutral, etc. etc. The only two of its goals necessary
> >for patent work are logicality and nonambiguity.
>
> Culturally neutral is a biggy.  Nonconstraining and flexible are probably
> important, because patent writeups in various natlangs to be translated
> into Lojban will have their own natlang style and idiosyncrasies.  And
> patent writeups tend to use very complicated language structures.

I'm probably displaying my ignorance of patent write-ups then. I was
assuming that all that counts is their pure content, and that issues
of style and the structures used in the source language are irrelevant.

> > > More importantly, how much simpler could a language optimally
> > > designed for a limited purpose be than a Lojban subset that
> simply omits
> > > those features not needed.  After all, a large portion of the
> > > Loglan/Lojban concept is optionality of features.
> >
> >If you pared Lojban down to the smallest adequate portion you'd still
> >be left with unnecessary stuff (e.g. zo'u, terminators) and what remained
> >would be Lojban only in as much as that unnecessary stuff would remain
> >and that the vocabulary items would be Lojban. And the vocabulary items
> >being Lojban would be a positively unnecessary hindrance to efficient
> >use of the language. It would be much easier for all concerned to use
> >a posteriori European vocabulary.
>
> In other words "Anglan".
>
> > > Again, if it were so easy to do much better than Lojban, why
> hasn't anyone
> > > even come close?
> >
> >First, it is not so easy to do better than Lojban if you have
> the same goals
> >as Lojban. It is easier to do better than Lojban only if you have a more
> >restricted set of goals. Second, if it is possible to do better
> than Lojban,
> >with the same set of goals, this is largely because it is
> possible to learn
> >from Lojban's 'mistakes', i.e. it is by standing on Lojban's
> shoulders that
> >Lojban can be bettered. Third, even if it were easy to improve
> upon Lojban's
> >design, there remains the matter of the huge amount of labour
> necessary to
> >get any language to the level of completion that Lojban has attained.
>
> #3 is a biggie.
>
> >Also, in a certain sense, it has been proved that it is easy to do better
> >than Lojban, because over the years people have often proposed valid
> >improvements that were not adopted (on the grounds that completion was
> >a more important goal than improvement).
>
> It is not clear that the various proposals were mutually compatible and
> workable; lots of things sound nice till you have to make them work in
> usage.  As it is, Lojban suffered from "bells and whistles
> syndrome" as we hung new features on because they were easy and did not
> conflict with the past.  There was also a 4-5 year period at the beginning
> when improvement was still considered, so long as certain basics were not
> lightly challenged.  Nick and Cowan came in right at the end of that
> period, and in fact may have ended it simply by being able to do what they
> then did with the language.
>
> lojbab

> From: Brook nellard-@concentric.net
>
> On Thu, 30 Dec 1999, And Rosta wrote:
> > From: "And Rosta" a.rost-@pmail.net
> >
> > > From: "Bob LeChevalier (lojbab)" lojba-@lojban.org
> > >
> > > At 04:09 PM 12/29/99 +0000, And Rosta wrote:
> > > >My response to the Top-Down idea of IAL or Lojban adoption
> > > >is to wonder why it should be a good thing for the adopting
> > > >body? Take the European patent organization: it would be
> > > >a trivial task to develop a language that shares Lojban's
> > > >virtues of nonambiguity and other areas of suitability to
> > > >the formulation of patents but is much simpler and easier
> > > >to learn;
> > >
> > > Really?  If it were so easy, why haven't they done so?
> >
> > Either because they haven't perceived the need or because some
> > cost/benefit analysis doesn't justify it.
>
> I'd be surprised if a roomful of patent lawyers *didn't*
> recognize the need for clarity in language. The intelligent
> ones would realize that much of the
> ambiguity in patents is due to the vagueness of most human
> languages. Whether
> or not they would go from there to the concept of another
> language, I don't
> know, but I suspect most of them are familiar enough with the concepts of
> formal semantics (at least, the ones in software patents would be).
>
> And the cost/benefit analysis is  what you're *both* talking
> about. However, at
> the risk of putting words in peoples' mouths, it seems that:
>
> a) lojbab thinks the cost of creating an IAL is high, the cost of
> switching to one might be high (but is lower the more established the
> language is) and the benefit of using one might be high, depending on
> the application.
>
> b) And Rosta thinks the cost of creating an IAL is low, the cost
> of switching to one is high, and the benefit of using one is probably low,
> especially for patents.

No. I think the cost of creating an artificial language for patent/legal
texts is lowish (relative to alternatives) and certainly low compared
to the cost of switching, which I do think is high. I think the benefit
of using a general purpose IAL is low, unless the IAL is a logical one,
like Lojban. I think the benefit of using your average IAL for patents
is zero. I think the benefit of using a logical language for patents
and other legal texts is immense, vast, humungous.

> Lojbab is suggesting that using an existing IAL (like lojban)
> reduces the cost dramatically. I think And would agree, but that
> doesn't seem to matter, as And feels that the cost is low to begin with.

Correct, if you mean the cost of providing the lg rather than the cost
of switching to it.

> We all seem to agree one way or another that the cost of *finding* a
> suitable IAL is low (whether that involves using lojban (for lojbab) or
> creating one (for And)).
>
> Switching costs are discussed below.
>
> Right now, let's get into utility:
>
> > > Personally, I don't think you can get much simpler than
> > > Lojban and still do the job. The primary extraneous feature
> > > of Lojban not applicable to patents is the attitudinal/evidential
> > > system.  Even audible unambiguity has some value.
> >
> > There is nothing relevant that Lojban can do that standard
> > predicate logic notation can't. In a Polish/Reverse Polish predicate
> > logic notation you need nothing but predicates, variables,
> > one or two quantifiers and two or three connectives.
>
> This is true in the sense that this is all you need to be
> Turing-equivalent.
> Actually, you don't even need that much - the Lambda calculus is
> Turing-equivalent and all it really has are lambda expressions (functions)
> (which are just lists of other lambda expressions) and
> applications of those
> expressions (i.e., calling a function).

i don't know enough to comment. All I meant was that the truth conditional
content of any natlang sentence can be expressed in predicate language
notation. (I may be wrong, but that was the claim.)

> But this neglects an important part of *expressiveness* - just because
> something *is* Turing-equivalent, does not mean it is an effective way to
> express it. Minimize too much and you make it cumbersome and
> long-winded to say anything useful. Put too much in, and you've made
> somethign too complex.

I agree. But I think that pred log notation does not minimize expressiveness
so drastically, that the minimization of expressiveness is not so important
for legal texts, and indeed is possibly even beneficial, and that any
detrimental loss of expressiveness is more than compensated for by the
gain in learnability.

> Finally, looking at predicate calculus (or *any* calculus, for
> that matter) is misleading because it ignores the question of *vocabulary*
> (a point lojbab makes below). Try programming in Prolog with no libraries.
> Sure, you can write quick-sort in a couple of lines, but what are you
going
> to *do* with it? And how do you map it to the real world?
>
> Lojban has that in the form of gismu - predicate calculus does not.

It's precisely because this is an area of noncomparability that this issue
is a red herring. Pred logic notation is proposed as an alternative to
Lojban syntax and cmavo. As I originally said, you need predicates. I
don't think Lojban gismu are adequate, because they're not yet defined,
but if you think they're adequate, then the Lojban gismu could be used
as the predicates in the language I'm mooting.

> > In other
> > words, setting aside how variables are handled, you could have
> > a language with only 3 cmavo! I'll admit that that number might
> > be expanded a bit, e.g. to include numbers, but even an expanded
> > cmavo inventory would be only a tiny proportion of Lojban's.
>
> A perfect example of going too far towards minimalism.  Sure,
> AND, OR, and NOT are all you need to make any other truth function
> but you better believe people that build ICs for a living don't
> recreate a one-bit adder from AND, OR, and NOT every time they need
> one - they don't even use one-bit adders - they pull more useful
> things from a library - 32-bit add, multiply, etc. and a whole lot
> of other stuff.

I can't think of which Lojban cmavo represent huge savings in
convenience over a combination of predicates and basic connectives
and quantifiers.

> > Likewise, the entire syntax could be formulated in a single
> > sentence.
>
> Yeah, and how would you say the classic "Colorless green ideas sleep
> furiously"? Bet it would be a lot longer. A lot.

I don't see why you've chosen that sentence in particular, which as
you must know is standardly cited as an example of a pragmatically
anomalous sentence. But be that as it may, I cannot see where Lojban
has any particular advantage in brevity over what I would propose.

FWIW, I'd suggest something approximately like

  Ex and colourless x and green x and furious x sleep x

where Furious is a 2 place predicate whose second argument is the
predication [sleep x].

> > > >  logicians have been using such languages for decades.
> > >
> > > 1) What language have logicians used that could be used for writing a
> > > patent description?  Key here is "description", and description takes
> > > meaningful content words.  Patents include both things and
> processes, and
> > > both have to be describable, hence tanru and description sumti both
> > > requiring content words and both capable of being disambiguated
> > > semantically to an arbitrary degree of specificity as well as
> > > grammatically.
>
> Here's lojbab making the vocabulary point I referred to above.
>
> > Of course the predicate words' senses have to be defined. But
> in Lojban the
> > predicate words' senses are not defined -- this task has been left to
> > 'usage'
> > to achieve.
>
> What? Okay, lojbab is hard at work on a dictionary (in his, I'm
> sure, copious spare time) but gismu are as well defined as any word
> you care to name in any language - better, in fact, because they only
> ever have *one* definition (try looking up "run" or "fork").

Either you have in mind some notion of "defined" that I cannot apprehend,
or what you say is wrong. Lojban Central correctly declares that gismu
aren't defined and that definition will be left to usage. In other
words, in its gismu definitions Lojban will operate like a natural
language rather than an invented language. In natural languages, usage
has already defined the meanings of words, and on them there is
intersubjective agreement, such that they are a fit subject for
rational debate and quasiempirical research (in the subfield of linguistics
usually called 'lexical semantics').

> > > 2. The language of logic that most people have seen is the predicate
> > > calculus.  Being a reasonably bright sort of guy who
> struggled to barely
> > > pass a self-paced college level course in the stuff, I
> daresay that many
> > > would call the predicate calculus easy to learn.
> >
> > Is that irony? If so, I guess that they problem with predicate
> calculus is
> > that there's no fudgeability with it, which nonfudgeability is
> exactly why
> > one wants a logical language. Note also that predicate logic is a subset
> > of Lojban, so if you learn Lojban you learn predicate logic plus a load
> > of extra stuff.
>
> Mmm, I agree with your content, but not your point. Having
> learned lojban, I would agree someone could then learn predicate calculus
> pretty easily (though I'd bet a "native" lojban speaker would have a hard
> time seeing the point of predicate calculus

Why? Predicate calculus is a systematization of reason. The notation is
language pared to the minimum.

> (but then, I believe in Sapir-Worff)). But learning
> predicate calculus is not the same as learning a language. Kids soak up
> language without having to be taught. No one does that with
> predicate calculus.

It has never been put to the test whether kids could soak up a language
with the grammar of predicate logic notation. Or, on another view, many
linguists believe that this is effectively what all children do: Deep
Structure in the Generative Semantics version of Transformational
Grammar, and Logical Form in the Government-Binding version (and its
equivalent in the Minimalist version) are close approximations to
certain versions of predicate logic notation.

> Now, unless you believe that "subject", "verb", and "object" are
> hardwired into brains, I'd submit that a young child exposed to a
> fluent lojban speaker could pick it up easily enough (I'm not fluent,
> but my three-year-old daughter seems to get the hang of lojban easily
> enough).

I don't understand. Since we agree that a subset of Lojban is a close
approximation of predicate logic notation, surely if a child picks
up Lojban, they have picked up predicate logic notation.

> [...]
>
> > Why? Most of the people who invent IALs are total lunatics, and
> > most of the rest are either ignorant or dim.
>
> Please - go say that on Auxlang - I want to watch you get toasted.

The content of remarks will go some way to explaining why I don't
subscribe to that list...;-)

> [lojbab talks about how having an existing body of speakers
> speeds adoption of a language)
>
>  > I'm not sure what point you're making. I agree that there are these
> > obstacles to the adoption of Lojban. And as I've said, I think Lojban
> > and Esperanto would be poor choices for a patent language, or for a
> > European IAL.
>
> I would agree on use of either for an IAL - IMNSHO, YMMV, etc.
> But for patents,
> I think having a common, unambiguous language would be a boon. The biggest
> barrier is probably patent lawyers, who have spent years learning
> how to deal
> with the ambiguity in a natural language.
>
> > > (I think Lojban has the
> > > advantage that it needs a lot smaller number than other conlangs to
> > > achieve critical mass, because Lojban unlike most conlangs DOES have
> > > the sort of specialty application like patent law and
> computer-communications
> > > that is economically viable with only a small fraction of the
> world learning
> > > it.  And economic viability is the key to "top down" - a top down
> > > approach will work when someone with power sees a way to make
> money using
> > > the language.
> >
> > I very much doubt that this will happen, though it happening is Lojban's
> > only real hope for achieving critical mass.
>
> Yes, well, I never would have thought that getting millions of
> people to write
> differently would be viable, either, but the Palm Pilot did it.
> Lojban needs
> its "killer app," and the only way to find one is to try lots of them.
>
> > But at any rate, I don't see why you should care so much. I
> recognize that
> > you've decided that the validation for all the efforts you've
> invested in
> > Lojban is the creation of a living language rather than just a language,
> > but I don't understand why you should make that the validation,
> especially
> > when it's so improbable. And the original idea that a loglan-speaking
> > community would test sapirwhorf, I've always regarded as a bit
> of blarney
> > baloney by JC Brown who really wanted to invent a language but
> was trying to
> > (a) gain respectability for an ill-respected activity, (b) differentiate
> > the product from others, (c) attract adherents.
>
> flamebait, flamebait, flamebait. At least on a *lojban* list it is.

Not really. Only a small proportion of the people active on this list
over the years have had much interest in sapirwhorf or reverence for JCB,
or, indeed, propensity for flaming (there has never been any flamage
whatever on this list as far as I can recall).

> > > >  The only hope for
> > > >Lojban to succeed Top-Downly is that some organization is
> > > >intelligent enough to see the merits of adopting a logical
> > > >language, but stupid enough to choose Lojban to do the job.
> > >
> > > Gee, thanks. %^)
> >
> > What I mean is this. First, the overriding goal of the Lojban
> project was
> > always to get a minimally adequate product out into the world.
> The policy
> > was "if it's not broken, don't fix it". But if you're an
> organization that
> > is so dissatisfied with existing natural languages that you want to
> > adopt a logical language, you're probably an organization that wants the
> > language to be as good as is practicable.
>
> Um, but you may also recognize that "Better is the enemy of good
> enough," and see the reduced costs of using something in existence, even
> if it isn't quite what you were looking for.

I do.

> In other words, if the reduction in benefit from using lojban (as opposed
> to something tailor-made) leaves the cost benefit ratio positive
(including
> switching costs), then you still make the switch, because doing otherwise
> takes longer and incurs other costs, making the cost benefit of a custom
> solution less appealing.

I wasn't ignoring this. I was reckoning that when you add up all the costs
and all the benefits, certain alternatives to Lojban rate higher.

> Classic "buy vs build." la lojban needs to find the situations
> where it makes sense to be bought.

We agree on this.

> > Secondly, and more importantly,
> > Lojban was designed as a compromise between many different goals. It is
> > probable that an organization adopting a logical language would have
> > different and fewer goals, and that Lojban would be a relatively poor
> > solution for these goals.
>
> Can you give a concrete example of the needs of an organization?

Lack of ambiguity in key communications is the most obvious one where
a natural language is not a sufficient solution.

> > I suppose that once one organization used Lojban, that would then become
> > a reason in itself for other organizations to use it too. But I really
> > can't see it being a sensible decision for any organization to adopt it
> > otherwise. True, it already exists, so would save labour in concocting
> > an alternative language, but if you're going to invest so much
> in getting
> > your organization to use it, a redesign would probably save you cost
> > in the long run.
>
> Hmmm, maybe, if your organization didn't get killed by the
> short-run damage.
> Again, a classic example of network businesses - the first fax machine was
> useless. The *second* fax machine had some utility, but not much. The
> 100,000,000th fax machine has a great deal of utility. These
> kinds of things grow very slowly for long periods of time, then suddenly,
> they're huge (look at Microsoft).
>
> > I'm not hostile to Lojban. If the United Nations decided to choose a
> > language to be a global general purpose second language, and if I
> > had a vote, then if the choice had to be made from an existing language
> > then I would vote for Lojban. And even if there was the option of
> > designing a new language I would vote for Lojban to avoid the risk
> > of the designed language being worse than Lojban.
>
> Boy, you sure couldn't tell that from the above.

But I think anyone who'd been on the list for a few years would know
it, and would know that there's a hallowed tradition of me being impolite
to Lojbab. But I promise you I'll be giving him a big hug when I meet
him, assuming he's the sort of chap who acquiesces in being given big
hugs by people who've spent years being impolite to him...

> > On the other hand,
> > of course, if the United Nations decided to entrust the task of
> > designing the language to me, then I would not choose Lojban...;-]
>
> Be our guest - design it, let us know about it.

Why? I have not found a community of people interested in such things,
and my own conlanging efforts are spent in other directions.

> > > >(This isn't an attack on Lojban. Lojban is more complex
> > > >than it needs to be for limited, formal, written applications
> > > >because it needs also to be usable for the full range of
> > > >linguistic functions.
> > >
> > > What linguistic functions other than attitudinals are not needed
> > > for patent work?
> >
> > Lojban is designed to be general purpose, flexible, nonconstraining,
> > culturally neutral, etc. etc. The only two of its goals necessary
> > for patent work are logicality and nonambiguity.
>
> Flexibility isn't necessary for describing *inventions*?

I wouldn't have thought so. By flexibility, I was thinking of "having
many ways to say the same thing". Not "being able to say lots of
things".

> Non-constraining isn't necessary? Okay, maybe not strictly *necessary*
> in some sort of Turing-equivalence sense, but so useful as to be
> necessary for practical purposes.

I'd have thought not, but then I've no experience of patent descriptions.

> And cultural neutrality seems like a very desirable trait for patent
> description in the *European Union*! Even more so for global patent uses.

For global, yes. But the EU is very eurocentric and there is no tradition
whatever of cultural neutrality; rather, europeanicity is celebrated at
every opportunity.

> > > More importantly, how much simpler could a language optimally
> > > designed for a limited purpose be than a Lojban subset that
> simply omits
> > > those features not needed.  After all, a large portion of the
> > > Loglan/Lojban concept is optionality of features.
> >
> > If you pared Lojban down to the smallest adequate portion you'd still
> > be left with unnecessary stuff (e.g. zo'u, terminators) and
> what remained
>
> Your particular examples of zo'u and terminators seem again, perhaps not
> strictly *necessary* but so useful to merit inclusion.

Again, I don't see why, but I guess that would be more appropriate for
discussion on some generic loglang list.

> > would be Lojban only in as much as that unnecessary stuff would remain
> > and that the vocabulary items would be Lojban. And the vocabulary items
> > being Lojban would be a positively unnecessary hindrance to efficient
> > use of the language. It would be much easier for all concerned to use
> > a posteriori European vocabulary.
>
> Em, no, I'd disagree - look to the incredibly broad applications
> of patents in software that are being put in place, in part because of
> ambiguity of definitions (see "run" and "fork" again, only talk about it
> to a computer programmer).

I don't understand what you mean. I was making a point about the etymology
or mnemonicality of lexis and your response seems not to bear on this.
Perhaps you are saying that for wholly new ideas we need wholly new words?

> [...]
> > My own language is a general purpose one like Lojban, and has
> to grapplie
> > with a similarly disparate set of design goals, and the difficulty is
> > mainly in the amount of work involved. I could design the basis for
> > a European patent language in scarcely more than the time it
> would take to
> > decide on the phonology.
>
> Please, do so. Show it to us.

Why? See response above.

> [...]
> > First, it is not so easy to do better than Lojban if you have
> > the same goals as Lojban. It is easier to do better than Lojban only
> > if you have a more restricted set of goals.
>
> Sure - an application-specific language *might* be simpler, but I
> would suggest
> that patents, by being descriptions of new inventions, are
> sufficiently broad
> that this in fact, would not be the case. But I'd love to be proven wrong.

I was assuming that for patents, all that counts is an unambiguous encoding
of truth-conditional meaning. That of course is a very restricted set
of goals.

> > Second, if it is possible to do better than Lojban, with the same
> > set of goals, this is largely because it is possible to learn
> > from Lojban's 'mistakes', i.e. it is by standing on Lojban's
> > shoulders that Lojban can be bettered.
>
> Please, do so! :-)

I'm not clear why you keep responding in this way. If you had a genuine
idea to explore the way in which we think Lojban might be bettered, we
could start a Loglang list and discuss it there, or we could discuss it
on Conlang, even. But you don't seem to have such an interest, and I
suspect that you intend a rhetorical device to indicate something
adversarial, such as skepticism maybe.

> > Third, even if it were easy to improve upon Lojban's
> > design, there remains the matter of the huge amount of labour
> necessary to
> > get any language to the level of completion that Lojban has attained.
>
> Ehrm, sounds like you just said using lojban is a good thing, but
> before you were saying it wasn't.

I was saying it wasn't for something as limited as I was envisaging
legal/patent texts being. Or for an EU general purpose IAL.

> > Also, in a certain sense, it has been proved that it is easy to
> do better
> > than Lojban, because over the years people have often proposed valid
> > improvements that were not adopted (on the grounds that completion was
> > a more important goal than improvement).
>
> A cost/benefit tradeoff - did the change improve things enough to
> destabilize the design? I wasn't there, but I'll bet it didn't.

Whether it did or didn't, that wasn't an issue. However much it did improve
things, it would only be permitted to destabilize the design if the
design were shown to be failing to meet the language's explicit goals
(e.g. if a hitherto unnoticed syntactic ambiguity were discovered). The
rationale for this was as I stated before.

--And.

--------------------------- ONElist Sponsor ----------------------------

    GRAB THE GATOR! FREE SOFTWARE DOES ALL THE TYPING FOR YOU!
Tired of filling out forms and remembering passwords? Gator fills in
forms and passwords with just one click! Comes with $50 in free coupons!
  <a href=" http://clickme.onelist.com/ad/gator4 ">Click Here</a>

------------------------------------------------------------------------
To unsubscribe, send mail to lojban-unsubscrib-@onelist.com
#2145
9:12 AM Sat 1 Jan
 Subject:  prosa gutci lipabi
 From:  michael helsem

From: "michael helsem" graywyver-@hotmail.com

fu'eje'unai .o'usai na capu fasnu fa la rolstifle .i paunai
xu da poi tepygau se cradi zo'u su'oda ka'e milxe naldra
fu'o

--------------------------- ONElist Sponsor ----------------------------

    GRAB THE GATOR! FREE SOFTWARE DOES ALL THE TYPING FOR YOU!
Tired of filling out forms and remembering passwords? Gator fills in
forms and passwords with just one click! Comes with $50 in free coupons!
  <a href=" http://clickme.onelist.com/ad/gator4 ">Click Here</a>

------------------------------------------------------------------------
To unsubscribe, send mail to lojban-unsubscrib-@onelist.com
#2146
10:21 AM Sat 1 Jan
 Subject:  Re: On  international applications of Lojban
 From:  John Cowan

From: John Cowan cowa-@locke.ccil.org

And Rosta scripsit:

> And very probably it was easier to work out
> the mapping from natlangs to Esperanto than from natlangs to something
> as stark as predicate logic form.

IIRC, the main advantage was that it was easier to check the
interlingua for correctness, becasue that merely required people who
understood Desperanto (Esperanto + small number of hacks).

> Given that pred logic notation differs from natlangs in its extreme
> simplicity, it would be interesting to find if some system can be so
> simple it is unlearnable.

JCB believed that Loglan '60 (the version documented in Scientific
American, which was really really close to speakable-predicate-logic)
was indeed too small to be learnable; he described it as
"rattling around in learners' heads like a pea", IIRC).

> I was assuming that for patents, all that counts is an unambiguous encoding
> of truth-conditional meaning. That of course is a very restricted set
> of goals.

IMNSHO, having read or rather decoded a fair number of patents, I believe
that what counts is to disclose everything, thus claiming legal protection,
while in fact revealing nothing to one's competitors.  For these purposes,
what is wanted is a language which is a mass of ambiguity and can be twisted
into meaning, post hoc, almost anything one wants it to mean, while
remaining utterly unintelligible on the surface to anyone except the writers.

--
John Cowan                                   cowa-@ccil.org
       I am a member of a civilization. --David Brin

--------------------------- ONElist Sponsor ----------------------------

    GRAB THE GATOR! FREE SOFTWARE DOES ALL THE TYPING FOR YOU!
Tired of filling out forms and remembering passwords? Gator fills in
forms and passwords with just one click! Comes with $50 in free coupons!
  <a href=" http://clickme.onelist.com/ad/gator4 ">Click Here</a>

------------------------------------------------------------------------
To unsubscribe, send mail to lojban-unsubscrib-@onelist.com
#2147
12:20 PM Sat 1 Jan
 Subject:  Re: On international  applications of Lojban
 From:  Bob LeChevalier (lojbab)

From: "Bob LeChevalier (lojbab)" lojba-@lojban.org

At 01:27 PM 01/01/2000 +0000, And Rosta wrote:
>Here's a combined reply to Lojbab and Brook.
>
> > It can be spoken and written (unambiguously), and it is languagy enough
> > that someone can learn it as a language (I doubt that many can learn
> > predicate logic as a language).
>
>There's nothing to say but that we disagree, in that I do think that
>people could learn it at least at the intellectual level that people
>learn programming languages. They mightn't be able to learn it as
>a natlang, but on the other hand, for a limited purpose like legislative
>texts this might not be a bad thing, and anyway, Lojban too, taken as
>a whole, might be insuperably unnatural.
>
> > By this argument, the efforts to develop an interlanguage for machine
> > translation would need only use predicate calculus.  But instead the
> > closest that anyone has come to successfully using an
> > interlanguage was the DLT project that used Esperanto.
>
>I don't know why this was. Maybe they wanted to translate aspects of
>form as well as meaning. And very probably it was easier to work out
>the mapping from natlangs to Esperanto than from natlangs to something
>as stark as predicate logic form.

I would contend that form sometimes is part of meaning.  We know for
example that sumti/object ordering can put convey emphasis.

But it is precisely the problem of working out mappings from natlangs to
predicate logic vs. Lojban that makes the difference.  To map to predicate
logic, you have to explicitly think of things that are subliminal in
Lojban, like prenex/quantification issues.  There is also brevity: I
believe pc once said that quantifiers other than the standard logical
quantifiers in pure predicate calculus form get extremely verbose.

That is why learning something as a natlang or quasi-natlang is critical to
these sorts of applications.  It is a matter of speed and confidence that
you've done it correctly.  Programming languages come close but fall a
little short of the mark of knowing you've done it right just by writing it
out, as well as of fluency in writing.

And the fact that not all programmers are good lawyers and vice versa
suggests that there is a distinction in skills between the kinds of
accuracy in logic that are needed.

> > >  In a Polish/Reverse Polish predicate
> > >logic notation ...
> > >Likewise, the entire syntax could be formulated in a single
> > >sentence.
> >
> > But could human beings use it to describe a patent?
>
>I don't see why not.

I said human beings.  And maybe I should have included "read" a patent
too.  Human beings wrote Principia, but very few human beings can read it
with any understanding.

> > And what happens when you need to translate an indirect question?  After
> > all, haven't you just found that it is a fairly intractible problem for
> > predicate logic?
>
>Hopefully it is tractable. But I'd use a special WH quantifier if the
>language had to be done today.

 From what pc has said, different schools believe different things, and
that in itself means that the problem is intractable at a logical
level.  At a language level it is tractable because language is more
tolerant of ad hoc conventions than predicate calculus.

Legal language is of course nothing but a full raft of conventions that
have been established based on natlang understandings.  The closer a
"coding language" can come to mimicking the natlang conventions, the easier
it is to get judges to agree that the conventions are understood the way
that the lawyer intends.  That translating legal language into a new
language in itself runs a risk of destroying conventional precedents that
is as hard an argument to overcome as any linguistic one; our main
advantage in this case is that the patents have to be translated anyway.

> > >Of course the predicate words' senses have to be defined. But in
> Lojban the
> > >predicate words' senses are not defined -- this task has been left to
> > >'usage' to achieve.
> >
> > And patent translation would be a large amount of usage.
>
>Exactly. I don't know anything about patents, but a great deal of law
>involves decreeing definitions of terms.

Yes.  And you can define Lojban predicate words, so that is not a
problem.  Law would not rely on "usage" in Lojban any more than it does in
English.  Important terms will be carefully defined.

> > >  If so, I guess that they problem with predicate calculus is
> > >that there's no fudgeability with it, which nonfudgeability is exactly why
> > >one wants a logical language.
> >
> > But fudgeability is fine for patent translation (maybe even desirable to
> > the lawyers), so long as the fudguing does not create an ambiguity
> > comparable to those of natlangs.
>
>By fudgeability, I mean the possibility of being ambiguous when you
>can't be bothered to disambiguate, or when disambiguation is more
>trouble than it's worth.

Well then fudgeability is IMPORTANT for legal translation, because there
are places where lawyers WANT to leave meaning a little
ambiguous.  Ambiguity can allow two sides in disagreement to come to terms,
leaving the ambiguous areas to be worked out later if necessary.  You need
to be arbitrarily precise in some areas, but Lojban's allowing of ambiguity
when precision is too much trouble (or agreement is impossible) is an
advantage.

> > You learn the forms of predicate logic, more or less (but how many people
> > actually use the full set of Lojban logical connectives, for
> > example?).  But you do not learn to reason according to the rules of
> > inference along the lines of the predicate calculus.
>
>True, but that's also true even if you learn pred calc notation.

I think though that you have to learn to reason with predicate calculus in
order to accurately write in it.  You also need to be able to do so with
Lojban.  In looking at the indirect question discussion that you recently
conducted, I can imagine identifying and discussing the logical problems
with everyone's formulations entirely in Lojban.  I cannot imagine doing so
entirely confining ourselves to predicate notation.  Maybe some logicians
can, but not me.

> > If you did learn this
> > inherently while learning Lojban without having to study the subject, I
> > daresay that the original SWH concept for Loglan will have been proven.
> >
> > I also think that a lot of that "extra stuff" is exactly the sort
> > of thing needed for patents, technical writing, formal specification, etc.
>
>Which stuff?

Brook answered this better than I did.

 > Again,
> > the attempts I know of anguages for these arenas have tended to have some
> > logical construct to them, but have always had to fall back on a natlang
> > like form.  If not enough like a natlang, they haven't been learnable; if
> > too much like a natlang, they haven't been sufficiently unambiguous.
>
>Given that pred logic notation differs from natlangs in its extreme
>simplicity, it would be interesting to find if some system can be so
>simple it is unlearnable.

Not unlearnable - just too difficult to use fluently.  The computer
language APL was loved by some people for its terseness, but the terseness
also prevented some people from being able to use it effectively.  They
couldn't grok things that were so terse.  I have similar problems with
C.  I understand what "i++" means (increment the variable    i), but when
it is used in a C program written by skilled C programmers, too often my
understanding hits a wall when I hit that usage.

>Maybe an advantage of Lojban here is that it is public domain and
>culturally-neutral in the sense of not, say, being the progeny of
>a single commercial organization. The Linux of logical languages,
>as it were.
>
>But if I wanted a logical lang that was only going to be used
>in-house, then numerous modifications to Lojban could be made to
>make the language easier to learn than Lojban, and yet as
>effective. Basically, the main modifications I'd make would
>involve discarding tons of stuff and changing the gismu forms to
>lightly modified English.

"Discarding tons of stuff" means using a language subset.  I wouldn't
expect usage of Lojban for patents to do anything other than use language
subsets.  As for the gismu forms, as I said: you are reproposing "Anglan"
and the advantages people see in the idea just don't pan out in actual
trial.  If you change the morphology, of course, you lose the
self-segregating aspects and thus spoken/written interchangeability.

> > The point is that any top-down application of an artificial language big
> > enough to point the way to large scale usage will inherently require that
> > the language be easy to learn, with sufficient language learning materials
> > that many can learn it by self-study and most anyone with more than minimal
> > verbal ability can learn it with a teacher.  The latter will of course take
> > sufficient skilled Lojbanists to serve as teachers.  In short it is the
> > "rapid bootstrap" problem that anything really new tends to have a steep
> > and time-expensive learning curve.  We have to reduce that steepness to
> > make Lojban successful.
> >
> > >  I agree that there are these
> > >obstacles to the adoption of Lojban. And as I've said, I think Lojban
> > >and Esperanto would be poor choices for a patent language, or for a
> > >European IAL.
> >
> > As a patent language it has to go beyond pan-European. Our German
> > proponent of the Lojban patent effort cited the difficulty of
> > translating Japanese patents as a strong reason in Lojban's favor.
>
>Two different things are getting confused here. A patent language (which
>I am actually thinking of a more broadly a legal language), and an EU
>IAL.

I think I have been sticking solely to the legal/specification language
issue.  Legal language is still a natlang, albeit an extremely
conventionalized one.  (Indeed legal English can be said to be a subset of
English just as legal Lojban would be a subset of Lojban).

> > I see it as my job as President of LLG to work towards the goals of all
> > Lojbanists, including some that you may feel are less practical.  I got
> > into this project out of a sense of duty, which later expanded to
> > become a sense of mission.  There are people who want to seriously work
> > on finding applications for Lojban.   I need to make sure that LLG
> > provides the resources needed to make such efforts realizable,
> > regardless of whether the goals that the efforts are aiming at will be
> > achieved.  The best thing I can do is to make it so that when people
> > try to promote Lojban for a top-down goal, that there is enough
> > substance backing them that they do not seem foolish just for trying.
> > And if I do that, real money might "happen", since venture capitalists
> > these days are betting on a lot of things with
> > even slimmer odds for success than Lojban.
>
>Okay, now I do see why you should care so much.

If I didn't care, I never would have gotten started.  I never had the
"conlang bug" and wasn't all that interested in language or linguistics
before I was forced to do so by my role leading the Lojban effort.

> > >  And the original idea that a loglan-speaking
> > >community would test sapirwhorf, I've always regarded as a bit of blarney
> > >baloney by JC Brown who really wanted to invent a language but
> > was trying to
> > >(a) gain respectability for an ill-respected activity, (b) differentiate
> > >the product from others, (c) attract adherents.
> >
> > I know the history enough to be sure that it was not blarney at the
> > time.  Remember that in the mid-50s, testing SWH was a big deal.
> > Remember also that JCB came from the Campbell school of science fiction
> > which I think had a certain amount of SWH built into it.  He does seem to
> > have conceived of Loglan before the SWH became big, but I think that he
> > seriously wanted to make the language a research tool.
>
>You know the history better than me. The main reasons why I came to the above
>conclusions are firstly that it seems improbable that anyone would seriously
>propose Loglan as a psycholinguistic experiment, since the experiment is
>so uncontrolled and it takes so much effort to set up,

I think that JCB himself has a fundamental lack of understanding of the
problem of controls, as well as the nature of scientific testing.  If he
had understood, he might never have started %^).  Look at Chapter 7 of the
now on-line L1, and you can see what he envisions as a SWH test.  But the
problems are tractable, IMO - they just need a LOT more thinking out.

There were similar criticisms of JCBs scientific procedures during the
redesign of 1979-84.  JCB conducted "taste tests" with Loglan users to
choose among various options for affix formation, but his experiments were
uncontrolled (not to mention only performed by English native speakers),
and his statistical conclusions were apparently, umm, skewed to get the
answers that he wanted.  McIvor wrote a devastating criticism of the
methodology which was a key trigger starting of the political split; McIvor
later reconciled with JCB of course.  I won't say any more, since he can
speak for himself if he wishes (I think he is subscribed at the moment - RAM?)

>  and secondly that
>thereafter JCB showed himself much more interested in all the designing
>and tinkering and so forth that conlangers are so familiar with, and also
>introduced additional design goals. If he'd been serious, he could have
>genuinely invented a speakable predicate logic in a short span of time,
>and then, say, raised funds to pay people to learn and use it or to
>participate in experiments that oblige or incentivate them to learn and
>use it.

Well here is where the history comes in.  JCB did try to do these
things.  His original Loglan, the 1956 version, "rattled around in people's
heads" (Cowan quoted this more accurately than I did), (I've never seen a
copy of the 1956 'book', of which only a couple hundred mimeo copies were
made), and people couldn't learn or use it effectively.  So he started
adding flesh to the language, developed his peculiar learnability schemes
(the word making algorithm is something he actually claims to have tested
on groups of students, unlike most other aspects of the language, though
again we have no idea what typo of controls he used).

With his first wife, JCB apparently did a fair amount of serious language
work more aimed at teaching rather than fiddling in the early 60s.  In many
ways I think that we he went through then was something akin to what we
went through in the few years of writing the Book - questions came up which
he made decisions on, but he did not have the advantage we had of an
Internet community to poke holes in his occasional 'brain farts'.  He
published the first L1 in microfilm in the mid 60s, which was the first
chance more than a couple people had to actually look at what he was
working on, but few changes were made in the language until after 1974.

The book publishing in 1974-5 shows that he probably thought that the
language as "done" then.  He DID stop fiddling, and started research grant
proposal writing to get funding for SWH experiments and such.  Put
politely, his 1976 proposal was mabla.  Meanwhile the computer people
showed him that the language wasn't as unambiguous as he had thought, the
attempts of the earliest to try to write in the language showed copious
flaws, and then the fact emerged that he had screwed up the "pretty little
girls school" analysis and omitted needed cases. Meanwhile NSF told him the
proposal was inadequate, and JCB reacted by producing two more proposals
that were even worse (not having worked in academia for 15 years, he
apparently did not know the standards for proposal writing), and then
declared war on the NSF evaluators, using its formal protest procedure to
the utmost while having no valid issues.  That was the end of the
possibility for JCB/TLI ever conducting funded research.

I think that JCB turned to language fiddling only because the research
aspect was closed to him and the fiddling was where the action was in the
community that was left.  I think he has always wanted to see people using
his language, as the necessary step to wherever, and the fiddling was in
his mind probably kept to the minimum necessary to gain usage (as well as
to keep control once we started outdoing him).  TLI's attitude towards
change was MUCH more conservative than LLG's until we baselined.  I think
JCB honestly thought the language was done in 1974 and then again in 1984,
but in both cases his community showed him he was wrong; now he cannot
commit to saying it is done, because at that point he will lose control
(actually, he HAS lost control, because we exist and thrive relatively
speaking, but TLI has nothing left once JCB ceases to be the hub of the
wheel of change).

>I disagree on this. It depends on the nature of the more focused problem,
>but for the patent/legal problem, I claim that the lg could be done
>quickly, possibly be using parts of Lojban.

And I have no qualms against using a language subset.  It is changes and
not subsetting that would hurt the project.  Use of a language subset in a
top down application will cause people to look at the rest of the language
for other, less constrained applications, including those where a full
range of communication is more desireable.  (International diplomacy for
example is a superset of international law, but requires all of language
including a thorough set of attitudinals in order to be effective.  What is
the attitudinal for Khrushchev's shoe banging, I wonder?)

> > Culturally neutral is a biggy.  Nonconstraining and flexible are probably
> > important, because patent writeups in various natlangs to be translated
> > into Lojban will have their own natlang style and idiosyncrasies.  And
> > patent writeups tend to use very complicated language structures.
>
>I'm probably displaying my ignorance of patent write-ups then. I was
>assuming that all that counts is their pure content, and that issues
>of style and the structures used in the source language are irrelevant.

They might come to be.  But at first the patent application will be as an
interlanguage for translating patents that were originally written in other
languages.  Once Lojban patent legal conventions were established and
people wrote patents directly in Lojban (which would inevitably happen if
indeed Lojban was adopted as the "real" language for patents), it will be
Lojban conventions that dictate the meaning not the translated stylistics
of a language multitude.

> > Finally, looking at predicate calculus (or *any* calculus, for
> > that matter) is misleading because it ignores the question of *vocabulary*
> > (a point lojbab makes below). Try programming in Prolog with no libraries.
> > Sure, you can write quick-sort in a couple of lines, but what are you
>going
> > to *do* with it? And how do you map it to the real world?
> >
> > Lojban has that in the form of gismu - predicate calculus does not.
>
>It's precisely because this is an area of noncomparability that this issue
>is a red herring. Pred logic notation is proposed as an alternative to
>Lojban syntax and cmavo. As I originally said, you need predicates. I
>don't think Lojban gismu are adequate, because they're not yet defined,
>but if you think they're adequate, then the Lojban gismu could be used
>as the predicates in the language I'm mooting.

If Lojban predicates are not sufficiently defined, I fail to see how any
alternative approach would be better.  You mentioned using English-like
gismu earlier, but that just reduces to the problem of translating into
legal English.  English has ambiguous grossly polysemous words.  Legal
English has conventions to deal with English grammatical
ambiguities.  Legal Japanese has different and incompatible conventions in
both words and grammar.  To write something intelligible to both requires
choosing something that tackles both sorts of ambiguity.  In addition, for
the European world, English-like means un-sellable to the French.

> > > In other
> > > words, setting aside how variables are handled, you could have
> > > a language with only 3 cmavo! I'll admit that that number might
> > > be expanded a bit, e.g. to include numbers, but even an expanded
> > > cmavo inventory would be only a tiny proportion of Lojban's.
> >
> > A perfect example of going too far towards minimalism.  Sure,
> > AND, OR, and NOT are all you need to make any other truth function
> > but you better believe people that build ICs for a living don't
> > recreate a one-bit adder from AND, OR, and NOT every time they need
> > one - they don't even use one-bit adders - they pull more useful
> > things from a library - 32-bit add, multiply, etc. and a whole lot
> > of other stuff.
>
>I can't think of which Lojban cmavo represent huge savings in
>convenience over a combination of predicates and basic connectives
>and quantifiers.

The quantifier 5/mu is much briefer than the predicate logic method of
saying "5".  Lojban's set selection operators and massifiers are much more
flexible than logical objects.  (pc established long ago that logical
connectives are ineffective for truth-tables of 4 or more elements and
aren't that great even for 3).

And then there is tense.  I've looked at pc's book on tense logic.  I will
never understand it.

> > What? Okay, lojbab is hard at work on a dictionary (in his, I'm
> > sure, copious spare time) but gismu are as well defined as any word
> > you care to name in any language - better, in fact, because they only
> > ever have *one* definition (try looking up "run" or "fork").
>
>Either you have in mind some notion of "defined" that I cannot apprehend,
>or what you say is wrong. Lojban Central correctly declares that gismu
>aren't defined and that definition will be left to usage. In other
>words, in its gismu definitions Lojban will operate like a natural
>language rather than an invented language.

The place structures are baselined.  But this I think is incidental since
the gismu alone are not adequate to a legal language.  So there will be
need to coin new words and define new meanings in any event, and that
process will mimic the natlang way.

>  In natural languages, usage has already defined the meanings of words,

For any given language.  But the translation problem makes these polysemous
definitions less than ideal.  I also think that natlang words are often
less well-defined than some Lojban gismu (in that you often don't even know
the implied place structure without contextual interpretation).

>  and on them there is
>intersubjective agreement, such that they are a fit subject for
>rational debate and quasiempirical research (in the subfield of linguistics
>usually called 'lexical semantics').

Which field is understood and followed by lawyers, right?  I wonder if any
percentage of lawyers have ever heard of Montague.

> > (but then, I believe in Sapir-Worff)). But learning
> > predicate calculus is not the same as learning a language. Kids soak up
> > language without having to be taught. No one does that with
> > predicate calculus.
>
>It has never been put to the test whether kids could soak up a language
>with the grammar of predicate logic notation. Or, on another view, many
>linguists believe that this is effectively what all children do: Deep
>Structure in the Generative Semantics version of Transformational
>Grammar, and Logical Form in the Government-Binding version (and its
>equivalent in the Minimalist version) are close approximations to
>certain versions of predicate logic notation.
>
> > Now, unless you believe that "subject", "verb", and "object" are
> > hardwired into brains, I'd submit that a young child exposed to a
> > fluent lojban speaker could pick it up easily enough (I'm not fluent,
> > but my three-year-old daughter seems to get the hang of lojban easily
> > enough).
>
>I don't understand. Since we agree that a subset of Lojban is a close
>approximation of predicate logic notation, surely if a child picks
>up Lojban, they have picked up predicate logic notation.

No.  They have picked up a linguistic manipulation of predicate logic
notation.  I doubt that his daughter could read the notation (if she can
read at all).  We may be getting into an issue over the primacy of speech
vs. writing here.

> > Um, but you may also recognize that "Better is the enemy of good
> > enough," and see the reduced costs of using something in existence, even
> > if it isn't quite what you were looking for.
>
>I do.

I realize and appreciate that.  At one time, you were our pet
iconoclast.  Now you write Lojban.

But I think anyone who'd been on the list for a few years would know
>it, and would know that there's a hallowed tradition of me being impolite
>to Lojbab. But I promise you I'll be giving him a big hug when I meet
>him, assuming he's the sort of chap who acquiesces in being given big
>hugs by people who've spent years being impolite to him...

I keep waiting for the day.  But you'll likely come over here before I have
a chance to get there, alas.

> > Flexibility isn't necessary for describing *inventions*?
>
>I wouldn't have thought so. By flexibility, I was thinking of "having
>many ways to say the same thing". Not "being able to say lots of
>things".

Flexibility in being able to say things at an arbitrary (but variable)
level of specificity depending on the relative importance of precision vs.
ambiguity.  For example, a patent on exercise equipment (say a treadmill)
may need to distinguish precisely distinguish between "run" and "walk", but
a patent on a procedure that involves a person travelling on foot does not
need to.

> > And cultural neutrality seems like a very desirable trait for patent
> > description in the *European Union*! Even more so for global patent uses.
>
>For global, yes. But the EU is very eurocentric and there is no tradition
>whatever of cultural neutrality; rather, europeanicity is celebrated at
>every opportunity.

But the EU has to deal with patents written in non-European languages,
which is where this thing started.  Hartmut Pilch mentioned the difficulty
of translating Japanese patents into European languages, none of which was
particularly compatible with some of the problems in Japanese language
use.  Lojban is MUCH better than any European language in representing
ARBITRARY language features unambiguously.

 > > If you pared Lojban down to the smallest adequate portion you'd still
> > > be left with unnecessary stuff (e.g. zo'u, terminators) and
> > what remained
> >
> > Your particular examples of zo'u and terminators seem again, perhaps not
> > strictly *necessary* but so useful to merit inclusion.
>
>Again, I don't see why, but I guess that would be more appropriate for
>discussion on some generic loglang list.

There isn't any such thing, and I think expanding this could be informative
(outside the context of multihundred line posts on an unrelated thread %^)

> > Em, no, I'd disagree - look to the incredibly broad applications
> > of patents in software that are being put in place, in part because of
> > ambiguity of definitions (see "run" and "fork" again, only talk about it
> > to a computer programmer).
>
>I don't understand what you mean. I was making a point about the etymology
>or mnemonicality of lexis and your response seems not to bear on this.
>Perhaps you are saying that for wholly new ideas we need wholly new words?

Well it certainly would be nice if people wouldn't reuse old ones.  Lojban
allows useful blending of reuse and coinage both with fu'ivla and lujvo-making.

> > > Second, if it is possible to do better than Lojban, with the same
> > > set of goals, this is largely because it is possible to learn
> > > from Lojban's 'mistakes', i.e. it is by standing on Lojban's
> > > shoulders that Lojban can be bettered.
> >
> > Please, do so! :-)
>
>I'm not clear why you keep responding in this way. If you had a genuine
>idea to explore the way in which we think Lojban might be bettered,

I think such a topic is germane to Lojban List (so long as we don't
actually try to change it).  Knowing limitations and flaws is a useful
thing, especially since Lojban will see no end to criticism whether it
catches on or not.

> > > Also, in a certain sense, it has been proved that it is easy to do better
> > > than Lojban, because over the years people have often proposed valid
> > > improvements that were not adopted (on the grounds that completion was
> > > a more important goal than improvement).
> >
> > A cost/benefit tradeoff - did the change improve things enough to
> > destabilize the design? I wasn't there, but I'll bet it didn't.
>
>Whether it did or didn't, that wasn't an issue. However much it did improve
>things, it would only be permitted to destabilize the design if the
>design were shown to be failing to meet the language's explicit goals
>(e.g. if a hitherto unnoticed syntactic ambiguity were discovered). The
>rationale for this was as I stated before.

In practice, if you look at the set of changes that were incorporated
during the grammar baseline, you will see that we did add things that were
not "broken".  In addition to destabilization, "relearning" was an issue
that affected tradeoffs.  earlier in the development, backwards
compatibility with TLI Loglan was very high in priority because we believed
rapprochement was inevitable.  (I still believe it is inevitable, but
probably not while JCB is still alive to keep his core
together.  Afterwards, similarity between the language versions will be
useful in gaining their support, but it is hardly as important to us as it
was 10 years ago.  Still, eventually reuniting the Loglan community behind
Lojban would greatly enhance our credibility in the auxlang world - there
is a first for everything!)

lojbab
----
lojbab                     ***NOTE NEW ADDRESS***           lojba-@lojban.org
Bob LeChevalier, President, The Logical Language Group, Inc.
2904 Beau Lane, Fairfax VA 22031-1303 USA               703-385-0273
Artificial language Loglan/Lojban:
   see Lojban WWW Server: href=" http://xiron.pc.helsinki.fi/lojban/ "
   Order _The Complete Lojban Language_ - see our Web pages or ask me.

--------------------------- ONElist Sponsor ----------------------------

    GRAB THE GATOR! FREE SOFTWARE DOES ALL THE TYPING FOR YOU!
Tired of filling out forms and remembering passwords? Gator fills in
forms and passwords with just one click! Comes with $50 in free coupons!
  <a href=" http://clickme.onelist.com/ad/gator4 ">Click Here</a>

------------------------------------------------------------------------
To unsubscribe, send mail to lojban-unsubscrib-@onelist.com
#2148
4:58 PM Sat 1 Jan
 Subject:  The Coming Rapprochement
 From:  xod

From: xod xo-@bway.net

On Sat, 1 Jan 2000, Bob LeChevalier (lojbab) wrote:


> compatibility with TLI Loglan was very high in priority because we believed
> rapprochement was inevitable.  (I still believe it is inevitable, but
> probably not while JCB is still alive to keep his core
> together.  Afterwards, similarity between the language versions will be



Do you foresee LLG forsaking baseline, or TLI adopting Lojban after
JCB's passing?



-----
"You cannot achieve speed by speedy practice. The only way to get fast is to
be deep, wide awake, and slow...pray for the patience of a stonecutter. Pray to
understand that speed is one of those things you have to give up - like love -
before it comes flying to you through the back window."
('The Listening Book' by W.A. Mathieu)

--------------------------- ONElist Sponsor ----------------------------

    GRAB THE GATOR! FREE SOFTWARE DOES ALL THE TYPING FOR YOU!
Tired of filling out forms and remembering passwords? Gator fills in
forms and passwords with just one click! Comes with $50 in free coupons!
  <a href=" http://clickme.onelist.com/ad/gator4 ">Click Here</a>

------------------------------------------------------------------------
To unsubscribe, send mail to lojban-unsubscrib-@onelist.com
#2149
9:36 PM Sat 1 Jan
 Subject:  Re: The Coming  Rapprochement
 From:  Bob LeChevalier (lojbab)

From: "Bob LeChevalier (lojbab)" lojba-@lojban.org

At 07:58 PM 01/01/2000 -0500, xod wrote:
>On Sat, 1 Jan 2000, Bob LeChevalier (lojbab) wrote:
> > compatibility with TLI Loglan was very high in priority because we
> believed
> > rapprochement was inevitable.  (I still believe it is inevitable, but
> > probably not while JCB is still alive to keep his core
> > together.  Afterwards, similarity between the language versions will be
>
>Do you foresee LLG forsaking baseline, or TLI adopting Lojban after
>JCB's passing?

LLG will not forsake the baseline.  That is no longer a consideration.  TLI
had many chances to negotiate with us when Lojban was still open for
change.  (Even if I were willing to consider it, the membership voted at a
LogFest a few years ago to close this option).

I don't see TLI surviving as a meaningful organization unless they reach a
rapprochement with us and I'm not sure that is possible - I just think that
the TLI supporters will migrate to Lojban due to a vacuum at TLI).  On
language design issues, that rapprochement will be based on the Lojban
design.  To put it frankly, I don't think TLI has any leverage to ask for
anything else.  We have in place things like the alternate orthography, and
rudimentary tools for inter-version translation that could be
enhanced.  for the language users, we have superior teaching materials, a
superior book, and a lively community (and your efforts are not hurting in
the least, xod).

It is still possible if not especially plausible that JCB will devise a way
to have someone meaningfully assume his role.  He has implied that some
legalities are in place or in process.  But I don't think there is anyone
with the wherewithal and commitment to do the job, because by nature JCB
has not tolerated people of that sort anywhere close to 'power' for very
long.  Most likely, if there is someone who could do the job amongst the
TLI supporters, JCB's legal setup will ensure that that person would not be
the one who got the job.

McIvor has been the person who has kept the technical aspects of the
project together at TLI, and done a most excellent job of maintaining the
unmaintainable (and I would say that even if he wasn't reading %^).  But I
don't think he would want the job of "TLI Loglan Central".  They have a
couple of people who want to use the language, but none have publicly shown
organization leadership.

The only caveat is that TLI is run on a private mailing list that I have no
direct access to.  I have checked on occasion with people plugged in who I
trust, and I haven't heard of anything to change my point of
view.  Something could emerge to keep TLI alive.  But it would be better
for the Loglan project if the TLI version of the language fades away after
transition in favor of Lojban.

Note that I have no evidence implying JCB's impending passing, though he is
79 years old.  Some people including him might think that I would wish for
it to happen, but I have never managed to summon up dislike for JCB, much
less hatred; I understand too well and I personally liked the man a great
deal before the fight.

lojbab
----
lojbab                     ***NOTE NEW ADDRESS***           lojba-@lojban.org
Bob LeChevalier, President, The Logical Language Group, Inc.
2904 Beau Lane, Fairfax VA 22031-1303 USA               703-385-0273
Artificial language Loglan/Lojban:
   see Lojban WWW Server: href=" http://xiron.pc.helsinki.fi/lojban/ "
   Order _The Complete Lojban Language_ - see our Web pages or ask me.

--------------------------- ONElist Sponsor ----------------------------

Get great offers on top-notch products that match your interests!
Sign up for eLerts at:
<a href=" http://clickme.onelist.com/ad/elerts1 ">Click Here</a>

------------------------------------------------------------------------
To unsubscribe, send mail to lojban-unsubscrib-@onelist.com
#2150
1:59 AM Mon 3 Jan
 Subject:  Some peripheral notes on Legalese  Lojban
 From:  pycy-

From: pycy-@aol.com

Actually not on the legalese part at all, but on some remarks that were made
in the discussion.
1) Just Predicate Calculus.  As & showed in his own examples, this is just
not enough.  Even patents (maybe especially) need a) second order predicates
(take predicates or propositions as arguments) and probably second order
quantifiers (though there are technical tricks around both of these which
only occasionally screw up an inference) and b) intensional contexts
(hypothetical situations, for a minimal example).

2) This realization -- late 50's and early 60's -- led JCB to move from his
original program to a richer language (though one without -- thank God -- all
the typographical stuff of L1960).  This was still within his SW project,
since he came to see that he had to have alnaguage the speaker could fully
inhabit, not merely use for a few hours in an artificial project situation,
to give the hypothesis a real test.
  Many of the features that were added grew out of his own and others'
efforts to inhabit the language for real life situations.  Even the small
number of rather limited efforts in that direction (a few dozen stretches of
an hour or so in Loglan only, some attempts to teach various infants in
Loglan) pointed to still further needs.  Even more came from attempts to
translate both literature and ordinary texts -- though many of the
innovations first sought for these proved to be unnecessary, resulting from
inadequate creativity in using available resources (and from incredibly odd
choices in what to try to translate for starters).
  A second source of innovation was heuristics, what was needed to teach the
language effectively.  The Great Morphological Revolution, which mainly made
all compounds uniquely decomposible, was one such, as was the effort to find
a uniquely parsible grammar -- and thus provide at-home checkers for
students.  (I suspect that JCB once thought that the decomposition algortihm
for predcalc would simply carry over to Loglan, no matter how many furbelows
were added.)
  Clearly, a lot of this stuff is not needed in patent applications (most
attitudinals, for example, but not all, are irrelevant).  But, since just
about everything is optional in Lojban, patent attorneys could take what they
want and leave the rest, while someone else might find a yet for some of the
rejected peices for some other international area.
  As for Lojban as an intermediary language in machine translation, etc., my
experience was that it was harder for the linguists of that time (1960-2) to
write English to logical English programs (ditto Russian, and reverse) than
to write English to Russian (or conversely) programs -- not that any of them
of any sort were very good.  Nowadays, of course, more linguists know quite a
bit about predicate calculus and the like (I had my linguistics professors in
my early logic classes at the beginning of that wave) and all the various
possibilities have been expanded quite a bit (ProtoThinker, as I have
mentioned before, has a serviceable English to logical English rewriter and
the reverse and is very small).  I suspect that, given the incentive (e.g., a
body of material to be turned into Lojban and disseminated in a variety of
languages), reasonably good (i.e., as good as any language-language machine
translation) programs would be forthcoming in a very short time.  A good
human editor still would be required at each step, alas.
pc

--------------------------- ONElist Sponsor ----------------------------

Get great offers on top-notch products that match your interests!
Sign up for eLerts at:
<a href=" http://clickme.onelist.com/ad/elerts1 ">Click Here</a>

------------------------------------------------------------------------
To unsubscribe, send mail to lojban-unsubscrib-@onelist.com
#2151
7:58 AM Mon 3 Jan
 Subject:  Re: On international  applications of Lojban
 From:  John Cowan

From: John Cowan jcowa-@reutershealth.com

"Bob LeChevalier (lojbab)" wrote:

>  What is the attitudinal for Khrushchev's shoe banging, I wonder?)

`She's all right again now,' said the Red Queen.  `Do you know
Languages?  What's the French for fiddle-de-dee?'

`Fiddle-de-dee's not English,' Alice replied gravely.

`Who ever said it was?' said the Red Queen.

Alice thought she saw a way out of the difficulty this time.
`If you'll tell me what language "fiddle-de-dee" is, I'll tell
you the French for it!' she exclaimed triumphantly.

But the Red Queen drew herself up rather stiffly, and said
`Queens never make bargains.'

> I realize and appreciate that.  At one time, you were our pet
> iconoclast.  Now you write Lojban.

Grave Lojban, actually.  zo`o.

--

Schlingt dreifach einen Kreis vom dies! || John Cowan jcowa-@reutershealth.com
Schliesst euer Aug vor heiliger Schau,  || http://www.reutershealth.com
Denn er genoss vom Honig-Tau,           || http://www.ccil.org/~cowan
Und trank die Milch vom Paradies.            -- Coleridge (tr. Politzer)

--------------------------- ONElist Sponsor ----------------------------

    GRAB THE GATOR! FREE SOFTWARE DOES ALL THE TYPING FOR YOU!
Tired of filling out forms and remembering passwords? Gator fills in
forms and passwords with just one click! Comes with $50 in free coupons!
  <a href=" http://clickme.onelist.com/ad/gator4 ">Click Here</a>

------------------------------------------------------------------------
To unsubscribe, send mail to lojban-unsubscrib-@onelist.com
#2152
8:17 AM Mon 3 Jan
 Subject:  Re: Some peripheral  notes on Legalese Lojban
 From:  Bob LeChevalier (lojbab)

From: "Bob LeChevalier (lojbab)" lojba-@lojban.org

At 05:02 AM 01/03/2000 -0500, pycy-@aol.com wrote:
>(ProtoThinker, as I have
>mentioned before, has a serviceable English to logical English rewriter and
>the reverse and is very small).  I suspect that, given the incentive (e.g., a
>body of material to be turned into Lojban and disseminated in a variety of
>languages), reasonably good (i.e., as good as any language-language machine
>translation) programs would be forthcoming in a very short time.  A good
>human editor still would be required at each step, alas.

I wonder whether Protothinker output is sufficiently structured that we
could try to write a "logical English" to Lojban translator that would take
its output as a front end.  Is this a commerical or an academic research
project, and would you have a reference or a contact, in case someone
wanted to pursue the challenge?

lojbab
----
lojbab                     ***NOTE NEW ADDRESS***           lojba-@lojban.org
Bob LeChevalier, President, The Logical Language Group, Inc.
2904 Beau Lane, Fairfax VA 22031-1303 USA               703-385-0273
Artificial language Loglan/Lojban:
   see Lojban WWW Server: href=" http://xiron.pc.helsinki.fi/lojban/ "
   Order _The Complete Lojban Language_ - see our Web pages or ask me.

--------------------------- ONElist Sponsor ----------------------------

Get great offers on top-notch products that match your interests!
Sign up for eLerts at:
<a href=" http://clickme.onelist.com/ad/elerts1 ">Click Here</a>

------------------------------------------------------------------------
To unsubscribe, send mail to lojban-unsubscrib-@onelist.com
#2153
8:44 AM Mon 3 Jan
 Subject:  Re: On  international applications of Lojban
 From:  And Rosta

From: "And Rosta" a.rost-@pmail.net

Lojbab:

This was for me an interesting and instructive reply.

> >But if I wanted a logical lang that was only going to be used
> >in-house, then numerous modifications to Lojban could be made to
> >make the language easier to learn than Lojban, and yet as
> >effective. Basically, the main modifications I'd make would
> >involve discarding tons of stuff and changing the gismu forms to
> >lightly modified English.
>
> "Discarding tons of stuff" means using a language subset.  I wouldn't
> expect usage of Lojban for patents to do anything other than use language
> subsets.
[...]
> >I disagree on this. It depends on the nature of the more focused problem,
> >but for the patent/legal problem, I claim that the lg could be done
> >quickly, possibly be using parts of Lojban.
>
> And I have no qualms against using a language subset.  It is changes and
> not subsetting that would hurt the project.  Use of a language
> subset in a top down application will cause people to look at the rest of
> the language for other, less constrained applications, including those where
> a full range of communication is more desireable.

Ah, well then: we agree that a Lojban-subset would be a fairly good solution.
For me, a Lojban-subset is not Lojban, so my point that Lojban is not the
ideal choice holds good. For you, what counts is that this would still
be a major use and application of Lojban, and would contribute to Lojban-
proper reaching critical mass.

> As for the gismu forms, as I said: you are reproposing "Anglan"
> and the advantages people see in the idea just don't pan out in actual
> trial.

I really find it hard to believe that Anglan wouldn't save loads of effort
in learning vocab.

> If you change the morphology, of course, you lose the
> self-segregating aspects and thus spoken/written interchangeability.

True. For an ideal loglang, I prefer self-segregating morphology. For any
kind of IAL that actually has to get widely learnt, I think a more
transparently a posteriori lexicon would be preferable.

> > > By this argument, the efforts to develop an interlanguage for machine
> > > translation would need only use predicate calculus.  But instead the
> > > closest that anyone has come to successfully using an
> > > interlanguage was the DLT project that used Esperanto.
> >
> >I don't know why this was. Maybe they wanted to translate aspects of
> >form as well as meaning. And very probably it was easier to work out
> >the mapping from natlangs to Esperanto than from natlangs to something
> >as stark as predicate logic form.
>
> I would contend that form sometimes is part of meaning.  We know for
> example that sumti/object ordering can put convey emphasis.
>
> But it is precisely the problem of working out mappings from natlangs to
> predicate logic vs. Lojban that makes the difference.  To map to
> predicate logic, you have to explicitly think of things that are subliminal
> in Lojban, like prenex/quantification issues.

I'm skeptical about whether the difference really is "thought about
subliminally" versus "thought about explicitly" as opposed to "thought about"
versus "not thought about".

> There is also brevity: I believe pc once said that quantifiers other than
> the standard logical quantifiers in pure predicate calculus form get
> extremely verbose.

True, but not always a bad thing, in that explicitness can be preferable
to brevity in some circumstances.

> That is why learning something as a natlang or quasi-natlang is
> critical to these sorts of applications.  It is a matter of speed and
> confidence that you've done it correctly.  Programming languages come close
> but fall a little short of the mark of knowing you've done it right just by
> writing it out, as well as of fluency in writing.
>
> And the fact that not all programmers are good lawyers and vice versa
> suggests that there is a distinction in skills between the kinds of
> accuracy in logic that are needed.

My experience of hearing lawyers talk about language is very limited, but
depressing and deeply troubling. I think a language that forced its users
to think in appropriate ways would be better than a more accommodating
language that allowed users to continue to think in appropriate ways.

> > > >  In a Polish/Reverse Polish predicate
> > > >logic notation ...
> > > >Likewise, the entire syntax could be formulated in a single
> > > >sentence.
> > >
> > > But could human beings use it to describe a patent?
> >
> >I don't see why not.
>
> I said human beings.  And maybe I should have included "read" a patent
> too.  Human beings wrote Principia, but very few human beings can read it
> with any understanding.

I confess I have no intention of ever trying to read the Principia, so I
don't know how readable it is, or even in what language or notations it
is written in, but I am doubtful that the difficulty lay with the
notation rather than the content.

> > > And what happens when you need to translate an indirect
> question?  After
> > > all, haven't you just found that it is a fairly intractible
> problem for
> > > predicate logic?
> >
> >Hopefully it is tractable. But I'd use a special WH quantifier if the
> >language had to be done today.
>
> From what pc has said, different schools believe different things, and
> that in itself means that the problem is intractable at a logical
> level.  At a language level it is tractable because language is more
> tolerant of ad hoc conventions than predicate calculus.

I was thinking that predicate logic notation makes a good foundation for
a language because of its simplicity rather than because of its
consensuality.

> > > >  If so, I guess that they problem with predicate calculus is
> > > >that there's no fudgeability with it, which nonfudgeability
> > > >is exactly why one wants a logical language.
> > >
> > > But fudgeability is fine for patent translation (maybe even
> > > desirable to the lawyers), so long as the fudguing does not create an
> > > ambiguity comparable to those of natlangs.
> >
> >By fudgeability, I mean the possibility of being ambiguous when you
> >can't be bothered to disambiguate, or when disambiguation is more
> >trouble than it's worth.
>
> Well then fudgeability is IMPORTANT for legal translation, because there
> are places where lawyers WANT to leave meaning a little ambiguous.
> Ambiguity can allow two sides in disagreement to come to terms,
> leaving the ambiguous areas to be worked out later if necessary.
> You need to be arbitrarily precise in some areas, but Lojban's allowing of
> ambiguity when precision is too much trouble (or agreement is impossible)
> is an advantage.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think that with the exception of a few
special cases, every Lojban sentence can unambiguously be translated
into a pure predicate logic counterpart. I don't think Lojban has any
mechanisms for fudging logical meaning.

> > > You learn the forms of predicate logic, more or less (but how many
> > > people actually use the full set of Lojban logical connectives, for
> > > example?).  But you do not learn to reason according to the rules of
> > > inference along the lines of the predicate calculus.
> >
> >True, but that's also true even if you learn pred calc notation.
>
> I think though that you have to learn to reason with predicate
> calculus in order to accurately write in it.  You also need to be able to do
> so with Lojban.  In looking at the indirect question discussion that you
> recently conducted, I can imagine identifying and discussing the logical
> problems with everyone's formulations entirely in Lojban.  I cannot
> imagine doing so entirely confining ourselves to predicate notation.  Maybe
> some logicians can, but not me.

I suppose that if you insist so strongly I should believe you. Still, I
could write in something that would be both a version of predicate notation
and proper Lojban. Would you predict that you would be unable to understand
that? Maybe yes, but in that case it would be the case that only certain
subsets of Lojban are comprehensible to you.

> > > > And the original idea that a loglan-speaking community would test
> > > > sapirwhorf, I've always regarded as a bit of blarney baloney by JC
> > > > Brown who really wanted to invent a language but was trying to
> > > > (a) gain respectability for an ill-respected activity, (b)
> > > > differentiate the product from others, (c) attract adherents.
> > >
> > > I know the history enough to be sure that it was not blarney at the
> > > time.  Remember that in the mid-50s, testing SWH was a big deal.
> > > Remember also that JCB came from the Campbell school of science fiction
> > > which I think had a certain amount of SWH built into it.  He does seem
> > > to have conceived of Loglan before the SWH became big, but I think that
> > > he seriously wanted to make the language a research tool.
> >
> >You know the history better than me. The main reasons why I came to the
> >above conclusions are firstly that it seems improbable that anyone
> >would seriously propose Loglan as a psycholinguistic experiment, since the
> >experiment is so uncontrolled and it takes so much effort to set up,
>
> I think that JCB himself has a fundamental lack of understanding of the
> problem of controls, as well as the nature of scientific testing.  If he
> had understood, he might never have started %^).  Look at Chapter 7 of the
> now on-line L1, and you can see what he envisions as a SWH test.  But the
> problems are tractable, IMO - they just need a LOT more thinking out.
>
> There were similar criticisms of JCBs scientific procedures during the
> redesign of 1979-84.  JCB conducted "taste tests" with Loglan users to
> choose among various options for affix formation, but his experiments were
> uncontrolled (not to mention only performed by English native speakers),
> and his statistical conclusions were apparently, umm, skewed to get the
> answers that he wanted.  McIvor wrote a devastating criticism of the
> methodology which was a key trigger starting of the political split; McIvor
> later reconciled with JCB of course.  I won't say any more, since he can
> speak for himself if he wishes (I think he is subscribed at the
> moment - RAM?)
>
> >  and secondly that
> >thereafter JCB showed himself much more interested in all the designing
> >and tinkering and so forth that conlangers are so familiar with, and also
> >introduced additional design goals. If he'd been serious, he could have
> >genuinely invented a speakable predicate logic in a short span of time,
> >and then, say, raised funds to pay people to learn and use it or to
> >participate in experiments that oblige or incentivate them to learn and
> >use it.
>
> Well here is where the history comes in.  JCB did try to do these things.
> His original Loglan, the 1956 version, "rattled around in people's
> heads" (Cowan quoted this more accurately than I did), (I've never seen a
> copy of the 1956 'book', of which only a couple hundred mimeo copies were
> made), and people couldn't learn or use it effectively.  So he started
> adding flesh to the language, developed his peculiar learnability schemes
> (the word making algorithm is something he actually claims to have tested
> on groups of students, unlike most other aspects of the language, though
> again we have no idea what typo of controls he used).

I've done JCB a partial injustice, then. All the same, this first phase
strikes me as the one that, had it been done thoroughly, would have been
the most instructive. For example, was the problem really one of excessive
simplicity, or was it the cumbersomeness of too few abbreviatory devices,
or was it the fudgeabilitylessness making too many demands on the speaker's
cerebrative powers?

I doubt that it was the simplicity per se that was the problem. The
cumbersomeness probably would be a problem. But the extent to which the
fudgeabilitylessness was a problem is most interesting, because essentially
logicality and fudgeabilitylessness are the same thing. Hence introducing
fudgeability is a way of relaxing the requirements of logicality, and the
need for fudgeability would show that speakers couldn't cope with a
thoroughgoingly logical language.

I suspect that even though Lojban is defined so that every sentence has
an unambiguous logical meaning, its accommodations of more familiarly
natlang-like forms will allow speakers to communicate in Lojban effectively
without actually mastering its logicality. That is, its logicality is
something that will be circumvented. Hence I predict that speakers' ability
to communicate with each other in Lojban will prove nothing interesting.

> With his first wife, JCB apparently did a fair amount of serious language
> work more aimed at teaching rather than fiddling in the early
> 60s.  In many ways I think that we he went through then was something akin
> to what we went through in the few years of writing the Book - questions
> came up which he made decisions on, but he did not have the advantage we had
> of an Internet community to poke holes in his occasional 'brain farts'.  He
> published the first L1 in microfilm in the mid 60s, which was the first
> chance more than a couple people had to actually look at what he was
> working on, but few changes were made in the language until after 1974.
>
> The book publishing in 1974-5 shows that he probably thought that the
> language as "done" then.  He DID stop fiddling, and started research grant
> proposal writing to get funding for SWH experiments and such.  Put
> politely, his 1976 proposal was mabla.  Meanwhile the computer people
> showed him that the language wasn't as unambiguous as he had thought, the
> attempts of the earliest to try to write in the language showed copious
> flaws, and then the fact emerged that he had screwed up the
> "pretty little girls school" analysis and omitted needed cases. Meanwhile NSF
> told him the proposal was inadequate, and JCB reacted by producing two more
> proposals that were even worse (not having worked in academia for 15 years,
> he apparently did not know the standards for proposal writing), and then
> declared war on the NSF evaluators, using its formal protest procedure to
> the utmost while having no valid issues.  That was the end of the
> possibility for JCB/TLI ever conducting funded research.
>
> I think that JCB turned to language fiddling only because the research
> aspect was closed to him and the fiddling was where the action was in the
> community that was left.  I think he has always wanted to see people using
> his language, as the necessary step to wherever, and the fiddling was in
> his mind probably kept to the minimum necessary to gain usage (as well as
> to keep control once we started outdoing him).  TLI's attitude towards
> change was MUCH more conservative than LLG's until we baselined.  I think
> JCB honestly thought the language was done in 1974 and then again
> in 1984, but in both cases his community showed him he was wrong; now he
> cannot commit to saying it is done, because at that point he will lose
> control (actually, he HAS lost control, because we exist and thrive
> relatively speaking, but TLI has nothing left once JCB ceases to be the hub
> of the wheel of change).

Very interesting indeed. This should all be part of a proper documentation
of the Loglan project.

> >I'm probably displaying my ignorance of patent write-ups then. I was
> >assuming that all that counts is their pure content, and that issues
> >of style and the structures used in the source language are irrelevant.
>
> They might come to be.  But at first the patent application will be as an
> interlanguage for translating patents that were originally written in other
> languages.

This seems relevant only if a translation into Lojban has to preserve
ambiguities in the original. That could be difficult.

> > > Finally, looking at predicate calculus (or *any* calculus, for that
> > > matter) is misleading because it ignores the question of *vocabulary*
> > > (a point lojbab makes below). Try programming in Prolog with no
> > > libraries. Sure, you can write quick-sort in a couple of lines, but what
> > > are you going to *do* with it? And how do you map it to the real world?
> > >
> > > Lojban has that in the form of gismu - predicate calculus does not.
> >
> >It's precisely because this is an area of noncomparability that this issue
> >is a red herring. Pred logic notation is proposed as an alternative to
> >Lojban syntax and cmavo. As I originally said, you need predicates. I
> >don't think Lojban gismu are adequate, because they're not yet defined,
> >but if you think they're adequate, then the Lojban gismu could be used
> >as the predicates in the language I'm mooting.
>
> If Lojban predicates are not sufficiently defined, I fail to see how any
> alternative approach would be better.

That wasn't the claim. I was saying that an alternative approach would
in this respect not be worse. This was in response to you and Brook
saying Lojban would be better.

You yourself recognize that a legal language would have to define its own
predicates:

> > > > Of course the predicate words' senses have to be defined. But in
> > > > Lojban the predicate words' senses are not defined -- this task has
> > > > been left to 'usage' to achieve.
> > >
> > > And patent translation would be a large amount of usage.
> >
> >Exactly. I don't know anything about patents, but a great deal of law
> >involves decreeing definitions of terms.
>
> Yes.  And you can define Lojban predicate words, so that is not a
> problem.  Law would not rely on "usage" in Lojban any more than
> it does in English.  Important terms will be carefully defined.

Quite so.

> You mentioned using English-like gismu earlier, but that just reduces to
> the problem of translating into legal English.

The advantage of English-like gismu, in cases where the learners are
anglophones, is that the gismu forms are easier to learn/remember.

> English has ambiguous grossly polysemous words. Legal English has
> conventions to deal with English grammatical ambiguities.  Legal Japanese
> has different and incompatible conventions in both words and grammar.  To
> write something intelligible to both requires choosing something that
> tackles both sorts of ambiguity.  In addition, for the European world,
> English-like means un-sellable to the French.

My point is nothing more than the one I made earlier -- that for most
IAL purposes, more transparently a posteriori vocab would be better than
what Lojban offers, all things considered.

> > > > In other
> > > > words, setting aside how variables are handled, you could have
> > > > a language with only 3 cmavo! I'll admit that that number might
> > > > be expanded a bit, e.g. to include numbers, but even an expanded
> > > > cmavo inventory would be only a tiny proportion of Lojban's.
> > >
> > > A perfect example of going too far towards minimalism.  Sure,
> > > AND, OR, and NOT are all you need to make any other truth function
> > > but you better believe people that build ICs for a living don't
> > > recreate a one-bit adder from AND, OR, and NOT every time they need
> > > one - they don't even use one-bit adders - they pull more useful
> > > things from a library - 32-bit add, multiply, etc. and a whole lot
> > > of other stuff.
> >
> >I can't think of which Lojban cmavo represent huge savings in
> >convenience over a combination of predicates and basic connectives
> >and quantifiers.
>
> The quantifier 5/mu is much briefer than the predicate logic method of
> saying "5".

I wouldn't treat numbers as quantifiers, but I would admit them as a distinct
selma'o in a logical language.

> Lojban's set selection operators and massifiers are much more flexible than
> logical objects.

I don't mean to challenge your assertion, but can you spell out more fully
what you mean?

> (pc established long ago that logical connectives are ineffective for
> truth-tables of 4 or more elements and aren't that great even for 3).

Does Lojban have logical connectives for truth-tables of more than 2
elements?

At any rate, your point reminds me that I would subsume logical connectives
into the class of predicates, and so since the class of predicates is open,
so is the range of logical connectives that can be defined.

> And then there is tense.  I've looked at pc's book on tense
> logic.  I will never understand it.

I don't see why tense can't be handled straightforwardly by the existing
apparatus of predicates and quantifiers.

> > > What? Okay, lojbab is hard at work on a dictionary (in his, I'm
> > > sure, copious spare time) but gismu are as well defined as any word
> > > you care to name in any language - better, in fact, because they only
> > > ever have *one* definition (try looking up "run" or "fork").
> >
> >Either you have in mind some notion of "defined" that I cannot apprehend,
> >or what you say is wrong. Lojban Central correctly declares that gismu
> >aren't defined and that definition will be left to usage. In other
> >words, in its gismu definitions Lojban will operate like a natural
> >language rather than an invented language.
>
> The place structures are baselined.  But this I think is incidental since
> the gismu alone are not adequate to a legal language.  So there will be
> need to coin new words and define new meanings in any event, and that
> process will mimic the natlang way.
>
> >  In natural languages, usage has already defined the meanings of words,
>
> For any given language.  But the translation problem makes these
> polysemous definitions less than ideal.  I also think that natlang words are
> often less well-defined than some Lojban gismu (in that you often don't
> even know the implied place structure without contextual interpretation).

That's a problem of ambiguity rather than undefinedness.

> > and on them there is intersubjective agreement, such that they are a fit
> > subject for rational debate and quasiempirical research (in the subfield
> > of linguistics usually called 'lexical semantics').
>
> Which field is understood and followed by lawyers, right?  I wonder if any
> percentage of lawyers have ever heard of Montague.

No reason you should know this, but Montague was a formal semanticist rather
than a lexical semanticist. Formal semanticists are concerned with 'logical
meaning', while lexical semanticists are concerned with 'lexical meaning'
(the senses of words).

The little evidence available to me would indicate that lawyers are in fact
shockingly ignorant of lexical semantics even though they practise a
variety of it themselves. A good legal language should have an apparatus
for defining words and for indicating how well-defined words are. Anyway,
my point was that natlang words *are* fully defined, but not that these
definitions are adequate for legal language; they're not, because they're
not explicit enough and not precise enough.

> > > Now, unless you believe that "subject", "verb", and "object" are
> > > hardwired into brains, I'd submit that a young child exposed to a
> > > fluent lojban speaker could pick it up easily enough (I'm not fluent,
> > > but my three-year-old daughter seems to get the hang of lojban easily
> > > enough).
> >
> >I don't understand. Since we agree that a subset of Lojban is a close
> >approximation of predicate logic notation, surely if a child picks
> >up Lojban, they have picked up predicate logic notation.
>
> No.  They have picked up a linguistic manipulation of predicate logic
> notation.  I doubt that his daughter could read the notation (if she can
> read at all).  We may be getting into an issue over the primacy of speech
> vs. writing here.

There is a subset of Lojban that is an approximation of a speakable form
of a version of predicate logic notation. There are official rules of
Lojban that can translate any Lojban sentence into such a subset. If you
master Lojban, then you master those rules, and hence you master the
subset, and hence you master a form of predicate logic notation.

> > > Um, but you may also recognize that "Better is the enemy of good
> > > enough," and see the reduced costs of using something in existence,
> > > even if it isn't quite what you were looking for.
> >
> >I do.
>
> I realize and appreciate that.  At one time, you were our pet
> iconoclast.  Now you write Lojban.

Not for an awfully long time, I'm afraid. Not enough time (and possibly
not enough enthusiasm). I've started to forget stuff, in fact.

> > > Flexibility isn't necessary for describing *inventions*?
> >
> >I wouldn't have thought so. By flexibility, I was thinking of "having
> >many ways to say the same thing". Not "being able to say lots of
> >things".
>
> Flexibility in being able to say things at an arbitrary (but variable)
> level of specificity depending on the relative importance of
> precision vs. ambiguity.  For example, a patent on exercise equipment (say
> a treadmill) may need to distinguish precisely distinguish between "run"
> and "walk", but a patent on a procedure that involves a person travelling
> on foot does not need to.

For this kind of flexibility you just need appropriately defined predicates.
But this is not what I meant. Again, your example is one of being able to
say different things. An example of what I mean is the freedom of word
order in Lojban, and its wellknown one-bird-with-many-stonesiness.

> > > And cultural neutrality seems like a very desirable trait for patent
> > > description in the *European Union*! Even more so for global
> patent uses.
> >
> >For global, yes. But the EU is very eurocentric and there is no tradition
> >whatever of cultural neutrality; rather, europeanicity is celebrated at
> >every opportunity.
>
> But the EU has to deal with patents written in non-European languages,
> which is where this thing started.  Hartmut Pilch mentioned the
> difficulty of translating Japanese patents into European languages, none of
> which was particularly compatible with some of the problems in Japanese
> language use.  Lojban is MUCH better than any European language in
> representing ARBITRARY language features unambiguously.

IIRC, this cultural neutrality point arose with regard to the etymologies of
the vocabulary. I don't think the europeanicity of IAL etymologies has any
bearing on how easy it is to translate out of Japanese.

>  > > If you pared Lojban down to the smallest adequate portion you'd still
> > > > be left with unnecessary stuff (e.g. zo'u, terminators) and
> > > what remained
> > >
> > > Your particular examples of zo'u and terminators seem again,
> perhaps not
> > > strictly *necessary* but so useful to merit inclusion.
> >
> >Again, I don't see why, but I guess that would be more appropriate for
> >discussion on some generic loglang list.
>
> There isn't any such thing, and I think expanding this could be
> informative (outside the context of multihundred line posts on an unrelated
> thread %^)

Well, we've re-had the discussion many times about whether to split the list.
All I can do is point out to you how many more people stay subscribed to this
list now that I no longer post very much.

> > > > Second, if it is possible to do better than Lojban, with the same
> > > > set of goals, this is largely because it is possible to learn
> > > > from Lojban's 'mistakes', i.e. it is by standing on Lojban's
> > > > shoulders that Lojban can be bettered.
> > >
> > > Please, do so! :-)
> >
> >I'm not clear why you keep responding in this way. If you had a genuine
> >idea to explore the way in which we think Lojban might be bettered,
>
> I think such a topic is germane to Lojban List (so long as we don't
> actually try to change it).  Knowing limitations and flaws is a useful
> thing, especially since Lojban will see no end to criticism whether it
> catches on or not.

It's not so much 'limitations and flaws' -- it's more a question of, say,
how we would do things differently if we could start over, knowing what
we now know. Take Lojban phonology, for example: I don't think it has
'limitations', and there's nothing that a majority of us might consider
a flaw, but nonetheless if we were starting from scratch we'd probably do
it differently.

> > > > Also, in a certain sense, it has been proved that it is easy to do
> > > > better than Lojban, because over the years people have often proposed
> > > > valid improvements that were not adopted (on the grounds that
> > > > completion was a more important goal than improvement).
> > >
> > > A cost/benefit tradeoff - did the change improve things enough to
> > > destabilize the design? I wasn't there, but I'll bet it didn't.
> >
> >Whether it did or didn't, that wasn't an issue. However much it did improve
> >things, it would only be permitted to destabilize the design if the
> >design were shown to be failing to meet the language's explicit goals
> >(e.g. if a hitherto unnoticed syntactic ambiguity were discovered). The
> >rationale for this was as I stated before.
>
> In practice, if you look at the set of changes that were incorporated
> during the grammar baseline, you will see that we did add things
> that were not "broken".

My memory's leaky, but I don't recall much if anything being added since
1992 or so that was not to fix something quasibroken. {ce'u}, for example,
which might have been one of the last cmavo to be added, is not so much
a useful augment as a plug to fill a gap that ought to have been filled
already.

--And.

--------------------------- ONElist Sponsor ----------------------------

    GRAB THE GATOR! FREE SOFTWARE DOES ALL THE TYPING FOR YOU!
Tired of filling out forms and remembering passwords? Gator fills in
forms and passwords with just one click! Comes with $50 in free coupons!
  <a href=" http://clickme.onelist.com/ad/gator4 ">Click Here</a>

------------------------------------------------------------------------
To unsubscribe, send mail to lojban-unsubscrib-@onelist.com
#2154
8:48 AM Mon 3 Jan
 Subject:  Re: Some  peripheral notes on Legalese Lojban
 From:  c.d.wrigh-

From: c.d.wrigh-@solipsys.compulink.co.uk

lojbab wrote:

> ... Protothinker ... Is this a commerical or an academic
> research project, and would you have a reference or a
> contact, in case someone wanted to pursue the challenge?


Go to  http://www.google.com  and type  ProtoThinker
into the search window and you'll get to the home page.
There's a compact version for free, and a more complete
version for educational use.  I think you have to pay
for the full version.  I'm not sure about source code.


--
\\//  ze'uku ko jmive gi'e snada

--------------------------- ONElist Sponsor ----------------------------

Get great offers on top-notch products that match your interests!
Sign up for eLerts at:
<a href=" http://clickme.onelist.com/ad/elerts1 ">Click Here</a>

------------------------------------------------------------------------
To unsubscribe, send mail to lojban-unsubscrib-@onelist.com
#2155
9:28 AM Mon 3 Jan
 Subject:  Re: On  international applications of Lojban
 From:  John Cowan

From: John Cowan jcowa-@reutershealth.com

And Rosta wrote:

> I doubt that it was the simplicity per se that was the problem. The
> cumbersomeness probably would be a problem.

Yes.  The world being a complex place, simplicity somewhere must be
compensated for by complexity somewhere else.

> The little evidence available to me would indicate that lawyers are in fact
> shockingly ignorant of lexical semantics even though they practise a
> variety of it themselves.

Which is compensated for by everyone else's shocking ignorance of law.

> A good legal language should have an apparatus
> for defining words and for indicating how well-defined words are.

Lawyers are, from this viewpoint, semantic practitioners.  Legal *theorists*,
OTOH, have generally realized the hopelessness of arriving at definitions
of words using words.  Here are two fine lay commentaries on the subject:


Lytton Strachey's "Cardinal Manning", from _Eminent Victorians_:

Newman pointed out [...] that it was generally supposed that the [Thirty-Nine]
Articles [of the Anglican Church] condemned the doctrine of Purgatory; but they
did not; they merely condemned the Romish doctrine of Purgatory; and Romish,
clearly, was not the same thing as Roman. Hence it followed that believers
in the Roman doctrine of Purgatory might subscribe the Articles with a good
conscience. Similarly, the Articles condemned "the sacrifices of masses," but
they did not condemn "the sacrifice of the Mass," Thus the Mass might be
lawfully celebrated in English Churches [...].

The members of the English Church had ingenuously imagined up to that
moment that it was possible to contain in a frame of words the subtle
essence of their complicated doctrinal system, involving the mysteries
of the Eternal and the Infinite on the one hand, and the elaborate
adjustments of temporal government on the other. They did not understand
that verbal definitions in such a case will only perform their functions
so long as there is no dispute about the matters which they are intended to
define: that is to say, so long as there is no need for them.

For generations this had been the case with the Thirty-nine Articles.
Their drift was clear enough; and nobody bothered over their exact meaning.
But directly some one found it important to give them a new and
untraditional interpretation, it appeared that they were a mass of
ambiguity, and might be twisted into meaning very nearly anything that
anybody liked. Steady-going churchmen were appalled and outraged when
they saw Newman [...] performing this operation. But, after
all, he was only taking the Church of England at its word. And indeed,
since Newman showed the way, the operation has become so exceedingly
common that the most steady-going churchman hardly raises an eyebrow
at it now.

Dorothy Sayers, _Unnatural Death_:

Mr. Towbridge: "Many words have no legal meaning. Others have a legal
meaning very unlike their ordinary meaning. For example,
the word 'daffy-down-dilly.' It is a criminal libel to call
a lawyer a daffy-down-dilly. Ha! Yes, I advise you never
to do such a thing. No, I certainly advise you _never_
to do it."

[As a further example, Mr. Towbridge cites the word "absolutely", which
if used in context A, means nothing; whereas in context B, it has
a very definite legal meaning:

A)	Lawyer: So you want to leave a bequest of #50 to So-and-So?
	Client: Oh yes, absolutely. [= "Yes"]

B)	(in will) "I leave a bequest of #50 to So-and-so, absolutely."

The result of B is that if So-and-so is dead or cannot accept the
bequest, the money goes to the State, whereas if "absolutely" is omitted,
it becomes part of the estate general.]

--

Schlingt dreifach einen Kreis vom dies! || John Cowan jcowa-@reutershealth.com
Schliesst euer Aug vor heiliger Schau,  || http://www.reutershealth.com
Denn er genoss vom Honig-Tau,           || http://www.ccil.org/~cowan
Und trank die Milch vom Paradies.            -- Coleridge (tr. Politzer)

--------------------------- ONElist Sponsor ----------------------------

Get great offers on top-notch products that match your interests!
Sign up for eLerts at:
<a href=" http://clickme.onelist.com/ad/elerts1 ">Click Here</a>

------------------------------------------------------------------------
To unsubscribe, send mail to lojban-unsubscrib-@onelist.com
#2156
8:45 PM Mon 3 Jan
 Subject:  Re: On  international applications of Lojban
 From:  Bob LeChevalier (lojbab)

From: "Bob LeChevalier (lojbab)" lojba-@lojban.org

At 04:45 PM 01/03/2000 +0000, And Rosta wrote:
>Lojbab:
>This was for me an interesting and instructive reply.

Glad to oblige.

Ah, well then: we agree that a Lojban-subset would be a fairly good solution.
>For me, a Lojban-subset is not Lojban, so my point that Lojban is not the
>ideal choice holds good. For you, what counts is that this would still
>be a major use and application of Lojban, and would contribute to Lojban-
>proper reaching critical mass.

Good summary of my position.

> > As for the gismu forms, as I said: you are reproposing "Anglan"
> > and the advantages people see in the idea just don't pan out in actual
> > trial.
>
>I really find it hard to believe that Anglan wouldn't save loads of effort
>in learning vocab.

It might for English speakers (but then it is often said that English
speakers have more trouble using Basic English than non English speakers -
i.e. having something that is near-English may cause too much crossover for
English natives)  But politically it has no advantages over simply learning
English - both are anathema to the French (and perhaps others).  For non
English speakers it is not clear that Anglan words would be easier than
learning the standard English words, unless maybe you were stripping away
polysemy.

But, if you try to strip away the polysemy, then resemblance to English
words will counteract your efforts.  It is much easier to remember that
Lojban has rinka, mukti, and the other causal words dividing up the
semantic space of English "cause", than it would be to have words that are
suggestive of other English concepts that distract or which resemble
"cause" itself.

> > If you change the morphology, of course, you lose the
> > self-segregating aspects and thus spoken/written interchangeability.
>
>True. For an ideal loglang, I prefer self-segregating morphology. For any
>kind of IAL that actually has to get widely learnt, I think a more
>transparently a posteriori lexicon would be preferable.

Take a substantial Lojban text and substitute English keywords for the
predicates.  use a singular nouns and third person verbs - no cheating by
reintroducing agreement.  You'll probably find that the text isn't readable
- it may suggest the general topic of discussion, but the meat will be
opaque.  Even using your knowledge of the Lojban words will not help that
much because of crossover.

> > I said human beings.  And maybe I should have included "read" a patent
> > too.  Human beings wrote Principia, but very few human beings can read it
> > with any understanding.
>
>I confess I have no intention of ever trying to read the Principia, so I
>don't know how readable it is, or even in what language or notations it
>is written in, but I am doubtful that the difficulty lay with the
>notation rather than the content.

I've been told that it is pages upon pages of notation.  That alone is
enough to make me unwilling to try.

 > >By fudgeability, I mean the possibility of being ambiguous when you
> > >can't be bothered to disambiguate, or when disambiguation is more
> > >trouble than it's worth.
> >
> > Well then fudgeability is IMPORTANT for legal translation, because there
> > are places where lawyers WANT to leave meaning a little ambiguous.
> > Ambiguity can allow two sides in disagreement to come to terms,
> > leaving the ambiguous areas to be worked out later if necessary.
> > You need to be arbitrarily precise in some areas, but Lojban's allowing of
> > ambiguity when precision is too much trouble (or agreement is impossible)
> > is an advantage.
>
>Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think that with the exception of a few
>special cases, every Lojban sentence can unambiguously be translated
>into a pure predicate logic counterpart. I don't think Lojban has any
>mechanisms for fudging logical meaning.

Lojban has all that wonderful sumti-raising, the as-yet unresolved indirect
question logic, masses, and tanru, all of which are ways to fudge logical
meaning.  Of course it is CLEAR that you are fudging, but it is still fudging.

> > I think though that you have to learn to reason with predicate
> > calculus in order to accurately write in it.  You also need to be able
> to do
> > so with Lojban.  In looking at the indirect question discussion that you
> > recently conducted, I can imagine identifying and discussing the logical
> > problems with everyone's formulations entirely in Lojban.  I cannot
> > imagine doing so entirely confining ourselves to predicate notation.  Maybe
> > some logicians can, but not me.
>
>I suppose that if you insist so strongly I should believe you. Still, I
>could write in something that would be both a version of predicate notation
>and proper Lojban. Would you predict that you would be unable to understand
>that? Maybe yes, but in that case it would be the case that only certain
>subsets of Lojban are comprehensible to you.

Well I have a mental block against notational symbols, that I seem to get
around to some extent with words (except for the lambda calculus stuff,
which I am permanently just off the edge of grokking it even using Lojban
and English words.

> > Well here is where the history comes in.  JCB did try to do these things.
> > His original Loglan, the 1956 version, "rattled around in people's
> > heads" (Cowan quoted this more accurately than I did), (I've never seen a
> > copy of the 1956 'book', of which only a couple hundred mimeo copies were
> > made), and people couldn't learn or use it effectively.  So he started
> > adding flesh to the language, developed his peculiar learnability schemes
> > (the word making algorithm is something he actually claims to have tested
> > on groups of students, unlike most other aspects of the language, though
> > again we have no idea what typo of controls he used).
>
>I've done JCB a partial injustice, then. All the same, this first phase
>strikes me as the one that, had it been done thoroughly, would have been
>the most instructive. For example, was the problem really one of excessive
>simplicity, or was it the cumbersomeness of too few abbreviatory devices,
>or was it the fudgeabilitylessness making too many demands on the speaker's
>cerebrative powers?

He never defined what "rattle around" meant, but I have understood it as a
combination of excessive simplicity, lack of detailed definitions, and it
being too hard to say even fairly simple languagy things using predicate
notation.  think about the headaches we have even with the substantiality
of Lojban, in dealing with "only", "just" and "even"

>I suspect that even though Lojban is defined so that every sentence has
>an unambiguous logical meaning, its accommodations of more familiarly
>natlang-like forms will allow speakers to communicate in Lojban effectively
>without actually mastering its logicality. That is, its logicality is
>something that will be circumvented. Hence I predict that speakers' ability
>to communicate with each other in Lojban will prove nothing interesting.

If it does however lead to higher levels of "logical thinking", say on a
standardized test of same, as compared with a control group that spent the
same amount of time in a predicate logic course, this would suggest that
something worked (we once tried to use such a standardized test, but did
not have critical mass to even get the test conducted).

Very interesting indeed. This should all be part of a proper documentation
>of the Loglan project.

Well, it is now, since the list archive is part of said documentation.  But
I have always wished that JCB would tell the story himself, rather than
having to rely on my reconstructions mostly built up while he was hostile.

 > They might come to be.  But at first the patent application will be as an
> > interlanguage for translating patents that were originally written in other
> > languages.
>
>This seems relevant only if a translation into Lojban has to preserve
>ambiguities in the original. That could be difficult.

I think that it does.  The patent translator is not supposed to be adding
or changing content,and resolving ambiguity is contrary.  If a given text
is truly ambiguous and not representable in a single Lojban form, (I
believe that) responsible legal translation would include the multiple
forms and state the ambiguity metalinguistically

> > You mentioned using English-like gismu earlier, but that just reduces to
> > the problem of translating into legal English.
>
>The advantage of English-like gismu, in cases where the learners are
>anglophones,

which is what percent of the EU?

 > English has ambiguous grossly polysemous words. Legal English has
> > conventions to deal with English grammatical ambiguities.  Legal Japanese
> > has different and incompatible conventions in both words and grammar.  To
> > write something intelligible to both requires choosing something that
> > tackles both sorts of ambiguity.  In addition, for the European world,
> > English-like means un-sellable to the French.
>
>My point is nothing more than the one I made earlier -- that for most
>IAL purposes, more transparently a posteriori vocab would be better than
>what Lojban offers, all things considered.

Only if you can get agreement that the words will mean what the English or
other words mean in the native language courtroom.  Which in turn will take
specialized learning.

> > Lojban's set selection operators and massifiers are much more flexible than
> > logical objects.
>
>I don't mean to challenge your assertion, but can you spell out more fully
>what you mean?
>
> > (pc established long ago that logical connectives are ineffective for
> > truth-tables of 4 or more elements and aren't that great even for 3).
>
>Does Lojban have logical connectives for truth-tables of more than 2
>elements?

No.  My solution was the set selectors, which now also serve as converters
between masses, sets, and individuals.  Whereas you cannot represent all 4
element truth table values using simple logical connectives without
repeating elements, you can cover all by saying things like "1 from the the
set {a,b} and 1 from the set {c,d}".

> > And then there is tense.  I've looked at pc's book on tense
> > logic.  I will never understand it.
>
>I don't see why tense can't be handled straightforwardly by the existing
>apparatus of predicates and quantifiers.

I'll leave that to pc to answer.  Out of my league.

> > >I don't understand. Since we agree that a subset of Lojban is a close
> > >approximation of predicate logic notation, surely if a child picks
> > >up Lojban, they have picked up predicate logic notation.
> >
> > No.  They have picked up a linguistic manipulation of predicate logic
> > notation.  I doubt that his daughter could read the notation (if she can
> > read at all).  We may be getting into an issue over the primacy of speech
> > vs. writing here.
>
>There is a subset of Lojban that is an approximation of a speakable form
>of a version of predicate logic notation. There are official rules of
>Lojban that can translate any Lojban sentence into such a subset. If you
>master Lojban, then you master those rules, and hence you master the
>subset, and hence you master a form of predicate logic notation.

I am not sure that I buy the "if, then" of the last sentence as necessary
to "mastering Lojban".

> > I realize and appreciate that.  At one time, you were our pet
> > iconoclast.  Now you write Lojban.
>
>Not for an awfully long time, I'm afraid. Not enough time (and possibly
>not enough enthusiasm). I've started to forget stuff, in fact.

So have I, many times.  It comes back real quick when you try.  A good sign.

> > Flexibility in being able to say things at an arbitrary (but variable)
> > level of specificity depending on the relative importance of
> > precision vs. ambiguity.  For example, a patent on exercise equipment (say
> > a treadmill) may need to distinguish precisely distinguish between "run"
> > and "walk", but a patent on a procedure that involves a person travelling
> > on foot does not need to.
>
>For this kind of flexibility you just need appropriately defined predicates.
>But this is not what I meant. Again, your example is one of being able to
>say different things. An example of what I mean is the freedom of word
>order in Lojban, and its wellknown one-bird-with-many-stonesiness.

Hmm that last phrase is exactly the sort of thing I think is not workable
with an Anglan.  People will see "stonesiness" and choke.

>IIRC, this cultural neutrality point arose with regard to the etymologies of
>the vocabulary.

That is not the only aspect of cultural neutrality that was basic to the
Loglan project.

> > >Again, I don't see why, but I guess that would be more appropriate for
> > >discussion on some generic loglang list.
> >
> > There isn't any such thing, and I think expanding this could be
> > informative (outside the context of multihundred line posts on an unrelated
> > thread %^)
>
>Well, we've re-had the discussion many times about whether to split the list.
>All I can do is point out to you how many more people stay subscribed to this
>list now that I no longer post very much.

%^)

lojbab
----
lojbab                     ***NOTE NEW ADDRESS***           lojba-@lojban.org
Bob LeChevalier, President, The Logical Language Group, Inc.
2904 Beau Lane, Fairfax VA 22031-1303 USA               703-385-0273
Artificial language Loglan/Lojban:
   see Lojban WWW Server: href=" http://xiron.pc.helsinki.fi/lojban/ "
   Order _The Complete Lojban Language_ - see our Web pages or ask me.

--------------------------- ONElist Sponsor ----------------------------

    GRAB THE GATOR! FREE SOFTWARE DOES ALL THE TYPING FOR YOU!
Tired of filling out forms and remembering passwords? Gator fills in
forms and passwords with just one click! Comes with $50 in free coupons!
  <a href=" http://clickme.onelist.com/ad/gator4 ">Click Here</a>

------------------------------------------------------------------------
To unsubscribe, send mail to lojban-unsubscrib-@onelist.com
#2157
4:18 AM Tue 4 Jan
 Subject:  Re: On  international applications of Lojban
 From:  And Rosta

From: "And Rosta" a.rost-@pmail.net

> From: John Cowan jcowa-@reutershealth.com
>
> And Rosta wrote:
>
> > I doubt that it was the simplicity per se that was the problem. The
> > cumbersomeness probably would be a problem.
>
> Yes.  The world being a complex place, simplicity somewhere must be
> compensated for by complexity somewhere else.

It is the complexity of thought that counts more, I think, partly because
we could see more, or less, complexity in the world than we in fact do,
and partly because much of the complexity inheres in thought rather than
the world.

And one must also bear in mind that not all complexity is compensatory.
Some is entirely inutile.

> > The little evidence available to me would indicate that lawyers are in fact
> > shockingly ignorant of lexical semantics even though they practise a
> > variety of it themselves.
>
> Which is compensated for by everyone else's shocking ignorance of law.

I suppose my aghastness at lawyers and the law is parallelled by intelligent
nonlinguists' aghastness at formal and in particular Chomskyan linguistics.
In each case, the outsider thinks "how can intelligent insiders be so *daft*!",
and in each case the insiders and outsiders are probably each half-right.

> > A good legal language should have an apparatus
> > for defining words and for indicating how well-defined words are.
>
> Lawyers are, from this viewpoint, semantic practitioners.  Legal *theorists*,
> OTOH, have generally realized the hopelessness of arriving at definitions
> of words using words.

My even more limited exposure to legal theorists (i.e. being interviewed on
TV, where the medium contrives to conceal the intelligence of everyone) has
created a much less negative impression on me. As far as I can tell, though,
these legal theorists don't actually have any effect on the law.

Re the hopelessness of arriving at definitions of words using words. There
are two different problems. The problem of something describing itself,
and the problem of arriving at definitions of words. The former problem is
more philosophical than practical; evading it (e.g. by using pictures)
does not help with the second problem. And lots of good and bad work in
lexical semantics has shown that the former problem does not make the
latter intractable. (The value of the bad work is in the way that by
comparison it shows the good to be better.) Even if no definition is ever
complete, an incomplete definition is better than none. For example,
if 'sexual relations' entail 'penetration culminating in ejaculation', then
at least the issue of whether or not X had sexual relations reduces to
how many millimetres and millilitres (a) count as penetration and ejaculation
and (b) occurred. In other words, the virtue of a definition of concept C is
that it tells you which questions to ask in order to answer the question "Is X
a C?".

As for Newman's arguments, as described by Strachey, they sound pretty
ropey to me. For reasoning to be jesuitical does not necessarily make
it correct, and for jesuiticality to be possible does not make its
incorrectness impossible.

--And.

--------------------------- ONElist Sponsor ----------------------------

    GRAB THE GATOR! FREE SOFTWARE DOES ALL THE TYPING FOR YOU!
Tired of filling out forms and remembering passwords? Gator fills in
forms and passwords with just one click! Comes with $50 in free coupons!
  <a href=" http://clickme.onelist.com/ad/gator4 ">Click Here</a>

------------------------------------------------------------------------
To unsubscribe, send mail to lojban-unsubscrib-@onelist.com
#2158
4:18 AM Tue 4 Jan
 Subject:  Re: Some peripheral  notes on Legalese Lojban
 From:  And Rosta

> From: pycy-@aol.com
>
> Actually not on the legalese part at all, but on some remarks that were made
> in the discussion.
> 1) Just Predicate Calculus.  As & showed in his own examples, this is just
> not enough.  Even patents (maybe especially) need a) second order predicates
> (take predicates or propositions as arguments) and probably second order
> quantifiers (though there are technical tricks around both of these which
> only occasionally screw up an inference) and b) intensional contexts
> (hypothetical situations, for a minimal example).

What are the technical tricks?

> 2) This realization -- late 50's and early 60's -- led JCB to move from his
> original program to a richer language (though one without -- thank
> God -- all
> the typographical stuff of L1960).  This was still within his SW project,
> since he came to see that he had to have alnaguage the speaker could fully
> inhabit, not merely use for a few hours in an artificial project situation,
> to give the hypothesis a real test.
>   Many of the features that were added grew out of his own and others'
> efforts to inhabit the language for real life situations.  Even the small
> number of rather limited efforts in that direction (a few dozen stretches of
> an hour or so in Loglan only, some attempts to teach various infants in
> Loglan) pointed to still further needs.  Even more came from attempts to
> translate both literature and ordinary texts -- though many of the
> innovations first sought for these proved to be unnecessary, resulting from
> inadequate creativity in using available resources (and from incredibly odd
> choices in what to try to translate for starters).

I was definitely wrong then, but the original goals must have got very
thoroughly lost sight of. I'd have thought that during the design phase
the question should always have been asked "Can this be dispensed with?",
and if the answer was Yes, then only very good reasons ought to have
saved it from being dispensed with.

--And.


--------------------------- ONElist Sponsor ----------------------------

Get great offers on top-notch products that match your interests!
Sign up for eLerts at:
<a href=" http://clickme.onelist.com/ad/elerts1 ">Click Here</a>

------------------------------------------------------------------------

--
To unsubscribe, send mail to lojban-unsubscrib-@onelist.com
#2159
8:52 AM Tue 4 Jan
 Subject:  Re: On  international applications of Lojban
 From:  pycy-
From: pycy-@aol.com

Very nice examples of ambiguity or vagueness (it really is sometimes hard to
tell, despite what we logicians say), especially the Newman case.  As an
Anglican communicant, I go to a church that regularly violates the "clear
sense" of at least three of the 38 articles (we here drop the one about the
Sovereign being head) but whose priest would be in some danger of violating
her oath to uphold said articles did she not perform the "proscribed" acts.
We also fiddle with most of the rest on an annual (local) and triennial
(national) and decennial (Lambeth) basis.
pc

--------------------------- ONElist Sponsor ----------------------------

Get great offers on top-notch products that match your interests!
Sign up for eLerts at:
<a href=" http://clickme.onelist.com/ad/elerts1 ">Click Here</a>

------------------------------------------------------------------------
To unsubscribe, send mail to lojban-unsubscrib-@onelist.com
#2160
8:53 AM Tue 4 Jan
 Subject:  Re: On  international applications of Lojban
 From:  pycy-
From: pycy-@aol.com

Two points, one pro Lojbab, one less so.
1) Tense could be handled using quantifiers and a few relational predicates,
but not simply:  somewhere in my book (Lord, I hate it when other people say
that) there is a purely quantifier version of a couple of tenses; then tend
to take up a bout a line in symbolic form for even the easy ones like simple
past, throw in an sapect and it goes on forever.
2) Anglan is hopeless for all the reasns given.  However, for the particular
purpose at hand, Leglan is not hopeless.  The legal vocabularly at least
throughout the EU (and some even in Japan) is so highly latinate that it
would be possible to find a readily readable vocab to cover the field.  Even
the problem of "reading in" the local meanings would not be too great, since
the law underlying the vocabulary is also pretty generally similar and Latin.
 I still think it is a bad idea to muck about with the basic product here,
though.
pc

--------------------------- ONElist Sponsor ----------------------------

Get great offers on top-notch products that match your interests!
Sign up for eLerts at:
<a href=" http://clickme.onelist.com/ad/elerts1 ">Click Here</a>

------------------------------------------------------------------------
To unsubscribe, send mail to lojban-unsubscrib-@onelist.com
#2161
8:57 AM Tue 4 Jan
 Subject:  Re: Some peripheral notes on  Legalese Lojban
 From:  pycy-
From: pycy-@aol.com

Protothinker is produced by Wadsworth Publishing (div. of  International
Thomson) so meant mainly as for school use.  It is the work of John Barker of
Southern Illinois U at Edwardsville  Philosophy Department, who used to live
just down the street from me (and so now is 5 miles away). I have talked to
him about a project using his gizmo as a part of a machine English to Lojban
translator and he was at least open to the thought, but we did not pursue it.
 That was maybe five years ago, with a earlier version of PT.  There is also
a PT website that serves as a clearinghouse for information about projects
using PT: www.ptproject.ilstu.edu/pt/index.htm.  They might supply some
willing hands.  I think the translation part is adequate for the logic, the
rest may need the usual massages.
pc

--------------------------- ONElist Sponsor ----------------------------

Get great offers on top-notch products that match your interests!
Sign up for eLerts at:
<a href=" http://clickme.onelist.com/ad/elerts1 ">Click Here</a>

------------------------------------------------------------------------
To unsubscribe, send mail to lojban-unsubscrib-@onelist.com
#2162
6:36 PM Tue 4 Jan
 Subject:  Re: "what i  have for dinner"
 From:  la kinin
From: "la kinin" mtpeppe-@prodigy.net

People used to use {jei} for "whether", until it was realized that if
le jei da klama is TRUE, then you are claiming that ro da zo'u mi kucli
TRUE -- which is not what you want to claim at all. li'osa'a

It is!? Let's break it down:

le
one-or-more-specific-things-each-of-which-I-describe-as

jei
being-a-truth-value-of

da klama
X goes

I hate to cite references, but the exact same construct (in the same
context) is used in example 11.7.6 of the Reference Grammar (ta'o, does this
book have a Lojban name?)

Says,
la xarnu kinin

--------------------------- ONElist Sponsor ----------------------------

Get great offers on top-notch products that match your interests!
Sign up for eLerts at:
<a href=" http://clickme.onelist.com/ad/elerts1 ">Click Here</a>

------------------------------------------------------------------------
To unsubscribe, send mail to lojban-unsubscrib-@onelist.com
#2163
7:03 PM Tue 4 Jan
 Subject:  sucyseltaspytau
 From:  la kinin

From: "la kinin" mtpeppe-@prodigy.net

di'e sucti seltsapi tanru tebe'i rodo
.i tu'e fonmo pelnimre bo torni
.i rijblanu ke kunra blaci
.i makfa munje bo papri tu'u
.i. ui zei pilno {enjoy?}
.i lei zmadu ba klama

co'omi'e la kinin.

--------------------------- ONElist Sponsor ----------------------------

    GRAB THE GATOR! FREE SOFTWARE DOES ALL THE TYPING FOR YOU!
Tired of filling out forms and remembering passwords? Gator fills in
forms and passwords with just one click! Comes with $50 in free coupons!
  <a href=" http://clickme.onelist.com/ad/gator4 ">Click Here</a>

------------------------------------------------------------------------
To unsubscribe, send mail to lojban-unsubscrib-@onelist.com
#2164
2:09 AM Wed 5 Jan
 Subject:  Re: On international applications  of Lojban
 From:  Robin Turner
pycy-@aol.com wrote:
>
> From: pycy-@aol.com
>
> Very nice examples of ambiguity or vagueness (it really is sometimes hard to
> tell, despite what we logicians say), especially the Newman case.  As an
> Anglican communicant, I go to a church that regularly violates the "clear
> sense" of at least three of the 38 articles (we here drop the one about the
> Sovereign being head) but whose priest would be in some danger of violating
> her oath to uphold said articles did she not perform the "proscribed" acts.
> We also fiddle with most of the rest on an annual (local) and triennial
> (national) and decennial (Lambeth) basis.
> pc

Well, as Laurence Stern put it, the great thing about the Church
of England is that it places no demnads on a man's politics, or,
for that matter, his religion.

co'o mi'e robin.

--------------------------- ONElist Sponsor ----------------------------

Get great offers on top-notch products that match your interests!
Sign up for eLerts at:
<a href=" http://clickme.onelist.com/ad/elerts1 ">Click Here</a>

------------------------------------------------------------------------

--
To unsubscribe, send mail to lojban-unsubscrib-@onelist.com
#2165
10:27 AM Wed 5 Jan
 Subject:  Re: "what i have for  dinner"
 From:  And Rosta

Kinin:
> People used to use {jei} for "whether", until it was realized that if
> le jei da klama is TRUE, then you are claiming that ro da zo'u mi kucli
> TRUE -- which is not what you want to claim at all. li'osa'a
>
> It is!? Let's break it down:
>
> le
> one-or-more-specific-things-each-of-which-I-describe-as
>
> jei
> being-a-truth-value-of
>
> da klama
> X goes

Correct.

> I hate to cite references, but the exact same construct (in the same
> context) is used in example 11.7.6 of the Reference Grammar

This has come up on the list before, IIRC. I have a vague recollection that
it was acknowledged as an error, though not necessarily an error of the kind
that LLG is obliged to list as such. John?

> (ta'o, does this book have a Lojban name?)

{la codeksuoldemar}? {le lojbo zei cukta}?

--And.


--------------------------- ONElist Sponsor ----------------------------

    GRAB THE GATOR! FREE SOFTWARE DOES ALL THE TYPING FOR YOU!
Tired of filling out forms and remembering passwords? Gator fills in
forms and passwords with just one click! Comes with $50 in free coupons!
  <a href=" http://clickme.onelist.com/ad/gator4 ">Click Here</a>

------------------------------------------------------------------------

--
To unsubscribe, send mail to lojban-unsubscrib-@onelist.com
#2166
1:47 PM Wed 5 Jan
 Subject:  Re: "what i have for  dinner"
 From:  trevor hill

>
> Kinin:
> > People used to use {jei} for "whether", until it was
> realized that if
> > le jei da klama is TRUE, then you are claiming that ro da
> zo'u mi kucli
> > TRUE -- which is not what you want to claim at all. li'osa'a


I believe that we are not defining terms specifically enough here, in regard
to references to values and the values themselves... I think i've brought
this point up before, in a more general context, but ....

I think that a predicate inside jei should in its entirety evaluate to "the
truth value of <predicate>", which is a predicate itself that need not be
"evaluated" so to speak.

If we automatically evaluate everything we say, in this sense, we will be
speaking nonsense.  The meaning is in the _unevaluated_ bridi and sumti...
not in the final truth value...........  for instance:

If i say in english "I am a dog", this is false, but it's not the same thing
as saying "false"....

I've never studied linguistics formally, but i'm sure some of you can work
out from here how to solve this problem.... :)

co'o
mi'e trevyr.

--------------------------- ONElist Sponsor ----------------------------

    GRAB THE GATOR! FREE SOFTWARE DOES ALL THE TYPING FOR YOU!
Tired of filling out forms and remembering passwords? Gator fills in
forms and passwords with just one click! Comes with $50 in free coupons!
  <a href=" http://clickme.onelist.com/ad/gator4 ">Click Here</a>

------------------------------------------------------------------------

--
To unsubscribe, send mail to lojban-unsubscrib-@onelist.com
#2167
2:12 PM Wed 5 Jan
 Subject:  sera'a le seltsapi tanru
 From:  michael helsem

zanru .i'o .i .e'u nitcu lenu lei lojbo cusku co'a finti
lopoi cnino ku'o pemcytadji
______________________________________________________
Get Your Private, Free Email at http://www.hotmail.com


--------------------------- ONElist Sponsor ----------------------------

    GRAB THE GATOR! FREE SOFTWARE DOES ALL THE TYPING FOR YOU!
Tired of filling out forms and remembering passwords? Gator fills in
forms and passwords with just one click! Comes with $50 in free coupons!
  <a href=" http://clickme.onelist.com/ad/gator4 ">Click Here</a>

------------------------------------------------------------------------

--
To unsubscribe, send mail to lojban-unsubscrib-@onelist.com
#2168
2:35 PM Wed 5 Jan
 Subject:  Re: "what i have for  dinner"
 From:  Bob LeChevalier (lojbab)

At 02:50 PM 01/05/2000 -0700, trevor hill wrote:
> > Kinin:
> > > People used to use {jei} for "whether", until it was
> > realized that if
> > > le jei da klama is TRUE, then you are claiming that ro da
> > zo'u mi kucli
> > > TRUE -- which is not what you want to claim at all. li'osa'a
>
>I believe that we are not defining terms specifically enough here, in regard
>to references to values and the values themselves... I think i've brought
>this point up before, in a more general context, but ....
>
>I think that a predicate inside jei should in its entirety evaluate to "the
>truth value of <predicate>",

No, that is the x1 of "jei predicate", which is what is accessed by "le jei".

>  which is a predicate itself that need not be "evaluated" so to speak.

Predicates do not need to be evaluated.  But their places may have
values.  the problem being posed here is for a case where there is a value
and it is known.  The problem in "kucli le jei broda" is one of sumti
raising. We are really kucli le du'u broda, being curious about the
specific desired fact.  I believe the reference grammar example uses
"jdice" which might or might not work with jei.

>If we automatically evaluate everything we say, in this sense, we will be
>speaking nonsense.  The meaning is in the _unevaluated_ bridi and sumti...
>not in the final truth value...........  for instance:
>
>If i say in english "I am a dog", this is false, but it's not the same thing
>as saying "false"....

But "the truth value of 'I am a dog'" equates to "false".

The main problem I see with these constructs is that of losing context.

If I say "I know the truth value of broda" and that truth value is "true",
then there is loss of information to say "I know 'true'"/

lojbab
----
lojbab                     ***NOTE NEW ADDRESS***           lojba-@lojban.org
Bob LeChevalier, President, The Logical Language Group, Inc.
2904 Beau Lane, Fairfax VA 22031-1303 USA               703-385-0273
Artificial language Loglan/Lojban:
   see Lojban WWW Server: href=" http://xiron.pc.helsinki.fi/lojban/ "
   Order _The Complete Lojban Language_ - see our Web pages or ask me.


--------------------------- ONElist Sponsor ----------------------------

    GRAB THE GATOR! FREE SOFTWARE DOES ALL THE TYPING FOR YOU!
Tired of filling out forms and remembering passwords? Gator fills in
forms and passwords with just one click! Comes with $50 in free coupons!
  <a href=" http://clickme.onelist.com/ad/gator4 ">Click Here</a>

------------------------------------------------------------------------

--
To unsubscribe, send mail to lojban-unsubscrib-@onelist.com
#2169
2:37 AM Thu 6 Jan
 Subject:  Re: "what i  have for dinner"
 From:  And Rosta
Lojbab:
> The main problem I see with these constructs is that of losing context.
>
> If I say "I know the truth value of broda" and that truth value is "true",
> then there is loss of information to say "I know 'true'"/

Hence this would be {mi djuno le du'u ma kau jei broda} (= le du'u xu kau
broda) rather than {mi djuno le jei broda}. All this is well-known to
loi Lojbo.

--And.

--------------------------- ONElist Sponsor ----------------------------

Get great offers on top-notch products that match your interests!
Sign up for eLerts at:
<a href=" http://clickme.onelist.com/ad/elerts1 ">Click Here</a>

------------------------------------------------------------------------

To unsubscribe, send mail to lojban-unsubscrib-@onelist.com
#2170
4:15 PM Thu 6 Jan
 Subject:  Re: "what i have for  dinner"
 From:  trevor hill

ahhhhhhhh.... :)  thank you, and.  This is what I wanted to know.........
so, while you may think this is well known, it's not documented clearly in
the reference grammar, or in the lessons, as far as I know, so ...  maybe
something should be done about this...

co'o
mi'e trevyr.

> -----Original Message-----
> From: And Rosta [mailto:a.rost-@pmail.net]
> Sent: Thursday, January 06, 2000 3:42 AM
> To: lojban
> Subject: RE: [lojban] "what i have for dinner"
>
>
> Lojbab:
> > The main problem I see with these constructs is that of
> losing context.
> >
> > If I say "I know the truth value of broda" and that truth
> value is "true",
> > then there is loss of information to say "I know 'true'"/
>
> Hence this would be {mi djuno le du'u ma kau jei broda} (= le
> du'u xu kau
> broda) rather than {mi djuno le jei broda}. All this is well-known to
> loi Lojbo.
>
> --And.
>
> --------------------------- ONElist Sponsor
> ----------------------------
>
> Get great offers on top-notch products that match your interests!
> Sign up for eLerts at:
> <a href=" http://clickme.onelist.com/ad/elerts1 ">Click Here</a>
>
> --------------------------------------------------------------
> ----------
>
> To unsubscribe, send mail to lojban-unsubscrib-@onelist.com
>

--------------------------- ONElist Sponsor ----------------------------

    GRAB THE GATOR! FREE SOFTWARE DOES ALL THE TYPING FOR YOU!
Tired of filling out forms and remembering passwords? Gator fills in
forms and passwords with just one click! Comes with $50 in free coupons!
  <a href=" http://clickme.onelist.com/ad/gator4 ">Click Here</a>

------------------------------------------------------------------------

To unsubscribe, send mail to lojban-unsubscrib-@onelist.com
#2171
2:00 AM Fri 7 Jan
 Subject:  Re: On international applications  of Lojban
 From:  pycy-

Hardly the last word -- too many years ago for one thing; for another, tense
logic took a different turn and the book fell (like Hume's works) still-born
from the press -- except for a (small) number of French linguists, who drop
me a line from time to time.
It was written in one of my Clifford phases (pre- Parks-, in this case; I am
now post-Parks-) so it is Clifford, John E.: Tense and Tense Logic (Janua
Linguarum, series minor 215) Mouton, The Hague, 1975 (ISBN 90 279 3453 3)

--------------------------- ONElist Sponsor ----------------------------

    GRAB THE GATOR! FREE SOFTWARE DOES ALL THE TYPING FOR YOU!
Tired of filling out forms and remembering passwords? Gator fills in
forms and passwords with just one click! Comes with $50 in free coupons!
  <a href=" http://clickme.onelist.com/ad/gator4 ">Click Here</a>

------------------------------------------------------------------------

To unsubscribe, send mail to lojban-unsubscrib-@onelist.com
#2172
2:00 AM Sat 8 Jan
 Subject:  Sterne on C of E
 From:  pycy-
From: pycy-@aol.com

Sterne was, of course, an Anglican priest and not at one of the church's
finest hours (or centuries) unless you count the literature.
pc

--------------------------- ONElist Sponsor ----------------------------

Get great offers on top-notch products that match your interests!
Sign up for eLerts at:
<a href=" http://clickme.onelist.com/ad/elerts1 ">Click Here</a>

------------------------------------------------------------------------

To unsubscribe, send mail to lojban-unsubscrib-@onelist.com
#2173
8:44 PM Mon 10 Jan
 Subject:  My daughter and  lojban [was RE: [lojban] On inter
 From:  Brook

From: Brook nellard-@concentric.net

On Fri, 31 Dec 1999, Bob LeChevalier (lojbab) wrote:
> From: "Bob LeChevalier (lojbab)" lojba-@lojban.org
>
> At 05:34 PM 12/30/99 -0500, Brook wrote:
> >(I'm not fluent, but my three-year-old daughter seems
> >to get the hang of lojban easily enough).
>
> Tell us more!  Please!  What are you doing to facilitate it, and what has
> she learned?  And can we talk you into keeping some type of logs if you
> think she will acquire anything like fluency?

Mostly it has been simple word games - "la zo'is mi vecnu", "la zo'is vecnu
mi", "mi la zo'is vecnu" and the like (her name is Zooey (pronounced*zowiy*,
just like the more usual spelling "Zoe")). And the concept of a cat being a
"mlatu" makes her laugh her head off (cats are her favorite animal).

But the concept of her name being different, of words being in different orders
and meaning the same thing, doesn't seem to bother her at all - she appears to
treat lojban the same way she treats French. She plays with the words, and just
"figures it out." (I've never seriously studied childhood language acquisition,
so I don't know much more about the process than a general linguistics
background provides) (and what I've seen first-hand in Zooey, but I gather from
the reactions of other parents that her language acquisition is somewhat better
than above average (and no, I'm not biased))

Problem is, I'm hardly fluent. And she can't read much yet. So concerted
efforts for me to speak it to her don't go very far. Now, if I hired John Cowan
as a baby-sitter from time to time, we might get somewhere :-)

> We are VERY interested in *all* attempts to teach Lojban to kids, including
> up through high school age.

I'll keep the list posted as interesting things happen, but I doubt she'd gain
fluency with no fluent speakers around. :-(

Brook
----------------
Klactovedestene!

--------------------------- ONElist Sponsor ----------------------------

    GRAB THE GATOR! FREE SOFTWARE DOES ALL THE TYPING FOR YOU!
Tired of filling out forms and remembering passwords? Gator fills in
forms and passwords with just one click! Comes with $50 in free coupons!
  <a href=" http://clickme.onelist.com/ad/gator4 ">Click Here</a>

------------------------------------------------------------------------

To unsubscribe, send mail to lojban-unsubscrib-@onelist.com
#2174
4:38 PM Wed 12 Jan
 Subject:  prosa gutci lipaso
 From:  michael helsem

From: "michael helsem" graywyver-@hotmail.com

blacycolbla vasru noda .i menxra la cfipyboi .i sucta .i
dansu la solri co xekri ja blabi .i mi facki je finti le se
vasru .i blacycolbla mulno .i munje jimte
______________________________________________________
Get Your Private, Free Email at http://www.hotmail.com


--------------------------- ONElist Sponsor ----------------------------

    GRAB THE GATOR! FREE SOFTWARE DOES ALL THE TYPING FOR YOU!
Tired of filling out forms and remembering passwords? Gator fills in
forms and passwords with just one click! Comes with $50 in free coupons!
  <a href=" http://clickme.onelist.com/ad/gator4 ">Click Here</a>

------------------------------------------------------------------------

To unsubscribe, send mail to lojban-unsubscrib-@onelist.com
#2175
2:49 PM Thu 13 Jan
 Subject:  Re: le lisri lu mi terpa li'u
 From:  recipro-

From: recipro-@freenet.edmonton.ab.ca

> Hello, Lojbanists.
>
> I have written and illustrated a children's story called "I'm Scared"
> as GIF images. I give it to you all. I will send it to one or more
> lojban web sites after a site maintainer tells me he wants it.

i'o .i mi ba se pluka le nu tcidu
Cool :). I look forward to reading it.

> And another side note: The title and story are in Lojban, but I put the
> copyright notice and the assignment of copyright to the LLG in English.
> Does anyone know whether a copyright statement in Lojban would carry
> any weight, particularly in the US?

i lei jbostecmi [Lojban-list members?] puza casnu le simsa (to sa'unai le
jei le flatelbilga bau la lojban cu cumki selpli toi) ije danfu fa le du'u
na go'a ku tu'i la kanadas a la uson

A similar subject (whether a licence in Lojban would work) was discussed
on this list some time ago, and the answer we eventually came to was no,
at least not in Canada or the US.

	co'omi'e xarmuj.


--------------------------- ONElist Sponsor ----------------------------

Get great offers on top-notch products that match your interests!
Sign up for eLerts at:
<a href=" http://clickme.onelist.com/ad/elerts1 ">Click Here</a>

------------------------------------------------------------------------

To unsubscribe, send mail to lojban-unsubscrib-@onelist.com
#2176
10:19 PM Thu 13 Jan
 Subject:  Re: le lisri lu  mi terpa li'u
 From:  Bob LeChevalier (lojbab)

From: "Bob LeChevalier (lojbab)" lojba-@lojban.org

At 03:53 PM 01/13/2000 -0700, recipro-@freenet.edmonton.ab.ca wrote:
>From: recipro-@freenet.edmonton.ab.ca
>
> > Hello, Lojbanists.
> >
> > I have written and illustrated a children's story called "I'm Scared"
> > as GIF images. I give it to you all. I will send it to one or more
> > lojban web sites after a site maintainer tells me he wants it.
>
>i'o .i mi ba se pluka le nu tcidu
>Cool :). I look forward to reading it.
>
> > And another side note: The title and story are in Lojban, but I put the
> > copyright notice and the assignment of copyright to the LLG in English.
> > Does anyone know whether a copyright statement in Lojban would carry
> > any weight, particularly in the US?
>
>i lei jbostecmi [Lojban-list members?] puza casnu le simsa (to sa'unai le
>jei le flatelbilga bau la lojban cu cumki selpli toi) ije danfu fa le du'u
>na go'a ku tu'i la kanadas a la uson
>
>A similar subject (whether a licence in Lojban would work) was discussed
>on this list some time ago, and the answer we eventually came to was no,
>at least not in Canada or the US.

My understanding is that under international copyright law (which US and
Canada are both treaty supporters of), materials are automatically
copyrighted whether there is a a copyright notice or not.  The inclusion of
the copyright notice in the US merely allows higher damage awards if the
copyright is violated.  However, a US copyright notice is not valid unless
the circle c is present in the notice ("(c)" or any other ASCII solution is
not a valid substitute) along with other required elements, which have to
follow the legal prescription.

Since the US has no official language, it is not clear that a copyright
notice has to be in English, unless the legal prescription for the notice
explicitly states this.  The Library of Congress site would have the actual
rules.

lojbab
----
lojbab                     ***NOTE NEW ADDRESS***           lojba-@lojban.org
Bob LeChevalier, President, The Logical Language Group, Inc.
2904 Beau Lane, Fairfax VA 22031-1303 USA               703-385-0273
Artificial language Loglan/Lojban:
   see Lojban WWW Server: href=" http://xiron.pc.helsinki.fi/lojban/ "
   Order _The Complete Lojban Language_ - see our Web pages or ask me.


--------------------------- ONElist Sponsor ----------------------------

    GRAB THE GATOR! FREE SOFTWARE DOES ALL THE TYPING FOR YOU!
Tired of filling out forms and remembering passwords? Gator fills in
forms and passwords with just one click! Comes with $50 in free coupons!
  <a href=" http://clickme.onelist.com/ad/gator4 ">Click Here</a>

------------------------------------------------------------------------

To unsubscribe, send mail to lojban-unsubscrib-@onelist.com
#2177
7:13 AM Fri 14 Jan
 Subject:  Re: le lisri lu mi  terpa li'u
 From:  John Cowan

From: John Cowan jcowa-@reutershealth.com

"Bob LeChevalier (lojbab)" wrote:

> However, a US copyright notice is not valid unless
> the circle c is present in the notice ("(c)" or any other ASCII solution is
> not a valid substitute)

But the word "Copyright" or "Copr." is a valid equivalent to the
COPYRIGHT SYMBOL.  "Copyright 2000 John Cowan.  All Rights Reserved."
is valid everywhere.

--

Schlingt dreifach einen Kreis vom dies! || John Cowan jcowa-@reutershealth.com
Schliesst euer Aug vor heiliger Schau,  || http://www.reutershealth.com
Denn er genoss vom Honig-Tau,           || http://www.ccil.org/~cowan
Und trank die Milch vom Paradies.            -- Coleridge (tr. Politzer)

--------------------------- ONElist Sponsor ----------------------------

Get great offers on top-notch products that match your interests!
Sign up for eLerts at:
<a href=" http://clickme.onelist.com/ad/elerts1 ">Click Here</a>

------------------------------------------------------------------------

To unsubscribe, send mail to lojban-unsubscrib-@onelist.com
#2178
11:11 AM Fri 14 Jan
 Subject:  xa'unro'a xipamu
 From:  michael helsem

From: "michael helsem" graywyver-@hotmail.com

voremoi mibypre nanca djedi .i taxfu lumci mu'e pofybi'o .i
mulno cilmo loldi .i ze'u nu jisygau ni'o balvi .i jibri stizu
.i ge co'u tu'a se jibri pamei ginai cusku lenu djica .i caku
mi'a claxu ci le pamu gunka ni'o balvi .i mi toldra canja le
stali jdini ku .o'anai ni'o balvi .i le xlali goi ko'a plipe
le jubme ku .uesai .i ko'a mi darxi je catke je dapma .i mi'a
ze'i damba .ijebabo carmi catke mi .i ze'e se cfipu .i ko'a
lebna papaci rupnu .ije nalzva ku .o'onaicai .i mi ge cortu
milxe ginai se xrani .i cinmo lenu ckeji ra'u je bebna ni'o
ka'u le pulji na ba sidju ku .ui
______________________________________________________
Get Your Private, Free Email at http://www.hotmail.com


--------------------------- ONElist Sponsor ----------------------------

    GRAB THE GATOR! FREE SOFTWARE DOES ALL THE TYPING FOR YOU!
Tired of filling out forms and remembering passwords? Gator fills in
forms and passwords with just one click! Comes with $50 in free coupons!
  <a href=" http://clickme.onelist.com/ad/gator4 ">Click Here</a>

------------------------------------------------------------------------

To unsubscribe, send mail to lojban-unsubscrib-@onelist.com
#2179
12:56 PM Fri 14 Jan
 Subject:  sera'a lepuzi xa'unro'a xipamu
 From:  michael helsem

From: "michael helsem" graywyver-@hotmail.com

zo .uinai .enai zo .ui drani kuzo'o.oi
______________________________________________________
Get Your Private, Free Email at http://www.hotmail.com


--------------------------- ONElist Sponsor ----------------------------

    GRAB THE GATOR! FREE SOFTWARE DOES ALL THE TYPING FOR YOU!
Tired of filling out forms and remembering passwords? Gator fills in
forms and passwords with just one click! Comes with $50 in free coupons!
  <a href=" http://clickme.onelist.com/ad/gator4 ">Click Here</a>

------------------------------------------------------------------------

To unsubscribe, send mail to lojban-unsubscrib-@onelist.com
#2180
3:05 PM Fri 14 Jan
 Subject:  TLI News
 From:  Bob  LeChevalier-Logical Langu

From: Bob LeChevalier-Logical Language Group lojba-@lojban.org

I just received Nora's copy of The Loglan Institute, Inc.'s newsletter Lognet.

In this issue, language inventor JCB announces that he has retired as both
CEO and as Chairman and Director of TLI.  He will retain his seat on the
Loglan Academy and the Trustees (which only meet once a year).

Alex Leith, who has been editor of Lognet, is the new CEO/Chairman.  It is
unclear how Alex is planning to establish his independence from JCB as a
leader, which is the only viable way that JCB can really be seen as
"retiring".  Since JCB remains the person to send correspondence to, he
seems to remain at the hub of the wheel despite his stated retirement.

Alex is also now editor of their more ambitious if almost never published
journal, The Loglanist (la logli), and they have named a new editor for the
newsletter, but he has not yet actually started.  But again, the
publication work is done by JCB and associates, so it isn't clear that
either publication can become independent of JCB.  (Alex has been writing a
"Loglan novel" which is now 35K words long, but apparently has so little
confidence in his language ability that JCB has to slowly "fine-tooth-comb"
through it, a process that apparently is much slower than writing.)

Randall Holmes,  TLI's logician, resigned from that position over a
disagreement with JCB and the other TLI technical people.  It seems that
JCB has always intended the word "set" in his writings to mean
approximately what we mean by "lei", and Randall is unwilling to accept the
lack of formal logical sets in a logical language.  I hope he chooses to
further investigate Lojban, since we support both with no trouble.  As part
of his writings on sets in this issue, JCB backs away from their "lo" (our
"loi") representing the Trobriand islander mass-individual, so that it can
serve the purpose of "lei".  He suggests an alternative for that
Trobrianders, which at a glance seems like our "la'e lo ra", but I did not
check my remembered match-ups of their cmavo to ours.

The new logician at TLI is Emerson Mitchell, who has also been a subscriber
to our materials from the beginning.  I have no idea where he stands on the
dispute between the two organizations, nor what his credentials are in
logic (Randall Holmes, like pc,  is a professor of logic).

Significantly to us old-timers, there is no mention of JCB's daughter Jenny
taking a significant role in the turnover.  She remains a member of his
Board of Trustees like JCB himself, but seems otherwise inactive.

In other news of interest to some Loglan old-timers, JCB finished his
long-planned book on the "Job Market", a non-fiction follow-up economic
treatise based on his old utopian novel _The Troika Incident_.  He however
has not been able to find a publisher who will abide by his terms, so he is
considering publishing it on the net.  There is mention that JCB plans to
start on another book, but no mention as to what it is; I hope that JCB
considers writing down his memoirs of the early history of the Loglan
Project which only he knows, for the sake of posterity.

The newsletter also states that the more restricted "Logli" list is now
open to all paid members of TLI.  Nora is a member for at least 6 more
years (if TLI lasts that long), but I won't hold my breath waiting for them
to allow us on the list.

One gets the impression from the newsletter that TLI's active core consists
mostly of older people and especially retired people.  They are having at
least as much trouble as we are in getting volunteers, and when they do get
volunteers, it is almost always retired people.  LLG is lucky in that most
of you are younger people (the average age of subscribers to Lojban List
who have indicated their age is under 30); you are the future of Lojban.

TLI also apparently has money problems.  Few members are renewing their
dues, and TLI sells their stuff too cheaply to survive financially without
dues.  We believe that they have far fewer paying members than they need to
survive - they have to pad their subscription list substantially in order
to get Lognet, nominally only a member's newsletter, to qualify for bulk
rate.  TLI also apparently has to pay someone in order to do their
finances.  I haven't been all that good at the bookkeeping and business
work for LLG, but am reasonably caught up of late and I don't cost us wage
money.

I will of course be sending feelers through the grapevine to find out
whether TLI under Alex is more willing to work towards rapprochement.  I
will be consulting with our Board as to their opinions on this, but I am of
course interested in the opinions of all of you, whether you are members or
not.  As I said a couple of weeks ago, our commitment to the Lojban
baseline is absolute; the language you are learning will be the one that
survives.  But what we can and should do with TLI remains to be seen.

Onward to the future, whatever it may bring
lojbab
----
lojbab                     ***NOTE NEW ADDRESS***           lojba-@lojban.org
Bob LeChevalier, President, The Logical Language Group, Inc.
2904 Beau Lane, Fairfax VA 22031-1303 USA               703-385-0273
Artificial language Loglan/Lojban:
   see Lojban WWW Server: href=" http://xiron.pc.helsinki.fi/lojban/ "
   Order _The Complete Lojban Language_ - see our Web pages or ask me.


--------------------------- ONElist Sponsor ----------------------------

Get great offers on top-notch products that match your interests!
Sign up for eLerts at:
<a href=" http://clickme.onelist.com/ad/elerts1 ">Click Here</a>

------------------------------------------------------------------------

To unsubscribe, send mail to lojban-unsubscrib-@onelist.com
#2181
6:25 AM Sat 15 Jan
 Subject:  Re: TLI News
 From:  And Rosta
From: "And Rosta" a.rost-@pmail.net

> From: Bob LeChevalier-Logical Language Group lojba-@lojban.org
>
> I will of course be sending feelers through the grapevine to find out
> whether TLI under Alex is more willing to work towards rapprochement.  I
> will be consulting with our Board as to their opinions on this, but I am of
> course interested in the opinions of all of you, whether you are members or
> not.  As I said a couple of weeks ago, our commitment to the Lojban
> baseline is absolute; the language you are learning will be the one that
> survives.  But what we can and should do with TLI remains to be seen.

I think concerted rapprochement would be a good thing; a sign of health
and goodwill & so on, just as schism is often a sign of malaise. As for the
baseline thing, you could unify the language by having the same 2 cmavo in
both languages meaning "this is loglan" and "this is lojban", and then see
what else could be done from there on.

--And.

--------------------------- ONElist Sponsor ----------------------------

Want to send money instantly to anyone, anywhere, anytime?
You can today at X.com - and we'll give you $20 to try it.  Sign
up today at X.com.  It's quick, free, & there's no obligation.
<a href=" http://clickme.onelist.com/ad/xcom ">Click Here</a>

------------------------------------------------------------------------

To unsubscribe, send mail to lojban-unsubscrib-@onelist.com
#2182
5:45 PM Sat 15 Jan
 Subject:  English index to lujvo list?
 From:  bestat-
From: bestat-@aol.com

Is there an English index to the lujvo list at
http://www.animal.helsinki.fi/lojban/jvoste.html ?
Steven Lytle

--------------------------- ONElist Sponsor ----------------------------

Want to send money instantly to anyone, anywhere, anytime?
You can today at X.com - and we'll give you $20 to try it.  Sign
up today at X.com.  It's quick, free, & there's no obligation.
<a href=" http://clickme.onelist.com/ad/xcom ">Click Here</a>

------------------------------------------------------------------------

To unsubscribe, send mail to lojban-unsubscrib-@onelist.com
#2183
7:32 PM Sat 15 Jan
 Subject:  Re: English index to lujvo list?
 From:  Bob LeChevalier (lojbab)

From: "Bob LeChevalier (lojbab)" lojba-@lojban.org

At 08:48 PM 01/15/2000 -0500, bestat-@aol.com wrote:
>Is there an English index to the lujvo list at
>http://www.animal.helsinki.fi/lojban/jvoste.html ?

No, and the list is woefully incomplete as a lujvo list these days, too.

Nora worked on place structures for a while, but never got anything typed
in, and had to drop the project due to Y2K overload at work.  Without place
structures, only 1 aspect/place of each word (typically x1) gets identified
in an index.

There are some lujvo included in the English-order draft dictionary file,
but not most of the jvoste.html list, I believe.

I will have something to post about a new lujvo list within a week or so,
and we will be seeking volunteers to among other things add in English
keywords that could be used for such an index.

lojbab
----
lojbab                     ***NOTE NEW ADDRESS***           lojba-@lojban.org
Bob LeChevalier, President, The Logical Language Group, Inc.
2904 Beau Lane, Fairfax VA 22031-1303 USA               703-385-0273
Artificial language Loglan/Lojban:
   see Lojban WWW Server: href=" http://xiron.pc.helsinki.fi/lojban/ "
   Order _The Complete Lojban Language_ - see our Web pages or ask me.


--------------------------- ONElist Sponsor ----------------------------

Get great offers on top-notch products that match your interests!
Sign up for eLerts at:
<a href=" http://clickme.onelist.com/ad/elerts1 ">Click Here</a>

------------------------------------------------------------------------

To unsubscribe, send mail to lojban-unsubscrib-@onelist.com
#2184
9:59 PM Sat 15 Jan
 Subject:  Re: TLI News
 From:  John Cowan

From: John Cowan cowa-@locke.ccil.org

And Rosta scripsit:

> [Y]ou could unify the language by having the same 2 cmavo in
> both languages meaning "this is loglan" and "this is lojban", and then see
> what else could be done from there on.

Unfortunately, the only free cmavo are ones that are inconsistent
with the phonotactics of the other language.  Darn.

--
John Cowan                                   cowa-@ccil.org
       I am a member of a civilization. --David Brin

--------------------------- ONElist Sponsor ----------------------------

Get great offers on top-notch products that match your interests!
Sign up for eLerts at:
<a href=" http://clickme.onelist.com/ad/elerts1 ">Click Here</a>

------------------------------------------------------------------------

To unsubscribe, send mail to lojban-unsubscrib-@onelist.com
#2185
5:19 AM Mon 17 Jan
 Subject:  Translation needed
 From:  Robin Turner
From: Robin Turner robi-@bilkent.edu.tr





Does anyone feel like translating the following? It's from the Hunger Site (at http://www.thehungersite.com . They currently have 55 translations, including Esperanto, so might appreciate a Lojban one, if only to bump up the numbers. It might also be a good reading for the beginners' course, since the sentence structure is quite simple (I'd do the translation myself, but as people on this list know, my Lojban is weird that it would take people longer to correct it than to translate from scratch!).




co'o mi'e robin.

====================================================================================





HUNGER FACTS






    1. About 24,000 people die every day from hunger or
hunger-related
    causes. This is down from 35,000 ten years ago, and 41,000
twenty years
    ago. Three- fourths of the deaths are children under the age
of five.






#2186
6:15 AM Tue 18 Jan
 Subject:  Re: TLI News
 From:  David Barton

From: David Barton dl-@wash.averstar.com

lojbab writes:

   I will of course be sending feelers through the grapevine to find
   out whether TLI under Alex is more willing to work towards
   rapprochement.  I will be consulting with our Board as to their
   opinions on this, but I am of course interested in the opinions of
   all of you, whether you are members or not.  As I said a couple of
   weeks ago, our commitment to the Lojban baseline is absolute; the
   language you are learning will be the one that survives.  But what
   we can and should do with TLI remains to be seen.

I think we can all share these sentiments.  The baseline is secure;
the hard work the people on this list are doing to learn the language
will *not* be wasted.  But anything we can do to bring in and
cooperate with the talented people in the TLI is all to the good.
There is a lot of history here, but if it can be overcome, and a
single effort brought forth to the world, then we are *all* better
off.

   Onward to the future, whatever it may bring

I agree wholeheartedly.

As lojbab has said, lojban *is* Loglan!  Onward!

					Dave Barton <*>
					dl-@averstar.com )0(
					http://www.averstar.com/~dlb

--------------------------- ONElist Sponsor ----------------------------

Get great offers on top-notch products that match your interests!
Sign up for eLerts at:
<a href=" http://clickme.onelist.com/ad/elerts1 ">Click Here</a>

------------------------------------------------------------------------

To unsubscribe, send mail to lojban-unsubscrib-@onelist.com
#2187
9:34 AM Tue 18 Jan
 Subject:  rapprochement?
 From:  bestat-
From: bestat-@aol.com

I favor keeping both TLI Loglan and Lojban as separate languages.
Each has its own peculiarities, and each is worth maintaining and developing.
Steven Lytle

--------------------------- ONElist Sponsor ----------------------------

Get great offers on top-notch products that match your interests!
Sign up for eLerts at:
<a href=" http://clickme.onelist.com/ad/elerts1 ">Click Here</a>

------------------------------------------------------------------------

To unsubscribe, send mail to lojban-unsubscrib-@onelist.com
#2188
11:57 AM Wed 19 Jan
 Subject:  lojban as a spoken programming  language?
 From:  Shae Erisson
From: Shae Erisson shap-@uab.edu

I've search through the onelist archives a bit, and I haven't found any
mention of this idea. Has anyone tried to do such a thing? It seems to
me that lojban would be an excellent candidate for a spoken programming
language.
--
Shae Matijs Erisson - sha-@lapland.fi
Programmeur-savant  - Python, Java, JPython

--------------------------- ONElist Sponsor ----------------------------

Get great offers on top-notch products that match your interests!
Sign up for eLerts at:
<a href=" http://clickme.onelist.com/ad/elerts1 ">Click Here</a>

------------------------------------------------------------------------

To unsubscribe, send mail to lojban-unsubscrib-@onelist.com
#2189
12:32 PM Wed 19 Jan
 Subject:  Re: translation needed
 From:  michael helsem

From: "michael helsem" graywyver-@hotmail.com

xagji fale du'emei ku.uusai zo'onai .a'inai
______________________________________________________
Get Your Private, Free Email at http://www.hotmail.com


--------------------------- ONElist Sponsor ----------------------------

    GRAB THE GATOR! FREE SOFTWARE DOES ALL THE TYPING FOR YOU!
Tired of filling out forms and remembering passwords? Gator fills in
forms and passwords with just one click! Comes with $50 in free coupons!
  <a href=" http://clickme.onelist.com/ad/gator4 ">Click Here</a>

------------------------------------------------------------------------

To unsubscribe, send mail to lojban-unsubscrib-@onelist.com
#2190
6:43 PM Wed 19 Jan
 Subject:  Re: Translation needed
 From:  recipro-

From: recipro-@freenet.edmonton.ab.ca

I'll take a shot at it... I don't know how to do the formatting in proper
Lojban, so I left it the way it is.
Someone who speaks better Lojban than I do please correct what I have thus
far so I don't continue my mistakes all the way through...

> HUNGER FACTS

le nunxagji fatci

>     1. About 24,000 people die every day from hunger or
> hunger-related
>     causes. This is down from 35,000 ten years ago, and 41,000
> twenty years
>     ago. Three- fourths of the deaths are children under the age
> of five.

1. i ji'i revora'e prenu cu morsi ri'a le nu xagji .a le xagjiki'i rinka
i ji'i cimura'e prenu go'i pu lo nanca li pano  .ije ji'i vopara'e prenu
go'i pu lo nanca li reno  .i pizemu lei morsi cu verba lo nanca li mume'i

>     2. Today 10% of children in developing countries die before
> the age of five.
>     This is down from 28% fifty years ago.

2. i caku pipano loi verba tu'i lo cabnalfarvi gugde cu morsi pu le nu
verba lo nanca li mume'i  .i pirebi lei vy. cu go'i pu lo nanca li muno

"lo cabnalfarvi gugde" (intended lit. not-currently-developed nation) was
the best I could come up with for "developing country". I tried to carry
over the intended politically correct meaning of the English phrase.

	co'omi'e xarmuj.


--------------------------- ONElist Sponsor ----------------------------

    GRAB THE GATOR! FREE SOFTWARE DOES ALL THE TYPING FOR YOU!
Tired of filling out forms and remembering passwords? Gator fills in
forms and passwords with just one click! Comes with $50 in free coupons!
  <a href=" http://clickme.onelist.com/ad/gator4 ">Click Here</a>

------------------------------------------------------------------------

To unsubscribe, send mail to lojban-unsubscrib-@onelist.com
#2191
11:00 PM Wed 19 Jan
 Subject:  Lojban teacher  needed
 From:  mikestrange-
From: mikestrange-@yahoo.com





Dear lojbanists,





I'm a thirty-year-old engineer from Murmansk, Russia. Learning languages is my main hobby in spite of the fact that I don't have much time for that. My English is not bad already, and now I'm learning Norwegian and Esperanto. I've also studied another version of Esperanto called Ido. I've downloaded some Lojban lessons, but it's not enough. I need an e-pal who could answer my questions about the language. Could you help me?





Sincerely,





Mikhail Fedorchenko - mixa,Il. fedortcenkos.













Get great offers on top-notch products that match your interests! Sign up for eLerts at: <a href=" http://clickme.onelist.com/ad/elerts1 ">Click Here</a>

#2192
3:00 PM Thu 20 Jan
 Subject:  Re: Translation needed
 From:  araize-

From: araize-@newmail.net

la xarmuj cusku di'e

> I'll take a shot at it... I don't know how to do the formatting in proper
> Lojban, so I left it the way it is.
> Someone who speaks better Lojban than I do please correct what I have thus
> far so I don't continue my mistakes all the way through...
>

The easiest way to do these translating assignments, I think, is to
have anyone who's interested do a paragraph, with everyone
making the corrections they notice. Even with something as short
as this, no one might ever get around to finishing it.

Anyway, here are my comments and my contribution.

First of all, the text often talks about something being down from
whatever so-many years ago. I think this is best expressed by
"jdika ra'i ko'a pepu le temci", e.g. "This is down from 35,000 ten
years ago, and 41,000 twenty years ago." would be something like
".i la'e di'u jdika ra'i cimuki'o da pepu pano nanca gi'e jdika ra'i
vopaki'o de pepu reno nanca"

> > HUNGER FACTS
>
> le nunxagji fatci
>
> >     1. About 24,000 people die every day from hunger or
> > hunger-related
> >     causes. This is down from 35,000 ten years ago, and 41,000
> > twenty years
> >     ago. Three- fourths of the deaths are children under the age
> > of five.
>
> 1. i ji'i revora'e prenu cu morsi ri'a le nu xagji .a le xagjiki'i rinka

I think you mean ki'o instead of ra'e. Also, to become dead,
rather than just be dead is mrobi'o. You mean xagjyki'i.

> i ji'i cimura'e prenu go'i pu lo nanca li pano

For "ten years", etc., you need to say "lo nanca be li pano",
but I think it's better to just say "pano nanca"

> .ije ji'i vopara'e prenu
> go'i pu lo nanca li reno  .i pizemu lei morsi cu verba lo nanca li mume'i
>
 I think that normally it's me'imu and not mume'i, but it might not
matter.

> >     2. Today 10% of children in developing countries die before
> > the age of five.
> >     This is down from 28% fifty years ago.
>
> 2. i caku pipano loi verba tu'i lo cabnalfarvi gugde cu morsi pu le nu
> verba lo nanca li mume'i  .i pirebi lei vy. cu go'i pu lo nanca li muno
>

Try "panoce'i" instead of "pipano". Also, I think that "pevi" would
work better than "tu'i" here.

The last sentence isn't grammatical. You need to say just "vy" and
not "lei vy". Or you could say something like ".i la'e di'u jdika ra'i
rebice'i verba pepu muno nanca"

> "lo cabnalfarvi gugde" (intended lit. not-currently-developed nation) was
> the best I could come up with for "developing country". I tried to carry
> over the intended politically correct meaning of the English phrase.
>

What's wrong with "favbi'o gugde"? In Lojban there's no swearing
and no politically correct. :-)

Here's my contribution:

    3. Famine and wars cause just 10% of hunger deaths, although
these tend
    to be the ones you hear about most often. The majority of
hunger deaths
    are caused by chronic malnutrition. Families simply cannot
get enough to
    eat. This in turn is caused by extreme poverty.

i cimai
i lei nu djacau kujoi lei nu jamna cu rinka so'u panoce'i lei xagji nu
mrobi'o .i ku'i ri cu piso'eroi se sanji .i so'e le xagji nu mrobi'o cu se
rinka le nu ru'i se xlacidja .ibo le lanzu na kakne le nu cpacu le
cidja banzu .i la'e di'u se rinka le nu pindi mutce

i co'o mi'e adam


Adam Raizen
araize-@newmail.net
-------------------
"Oom, Shmoom!"
--David Ben-Gurion

--------------------------- ONElist Sponsor ----------------------------

    GRAB THE GATOR! FREE SOFTWARE DOES ALL THE TYPING FOR YOU!
Tired of filling out forms and remembering passwords? Gator fills in
forms and passwords with just one click! Comes with $50 in free coupons!
  <a href=" http://clickme.onelist.com/ad/gator4 ">Click Here</a>

------------------------------------------------------------------------

To unsubscribe, send mail to lojban-unsubscrib-@onelist.com
#2193
6:36 PM Thu 20 Jan
 Subject:  xa'unro'a xipaxa
 From:  michael helsem

From: "michael helsem" graywyver-@hotmail.com

ui ba'o vecnu le skami le speni be mi .i caku mi'a kakne co
benji fo le zdani ku .i'e .iku'i na banzu fa le surla temci
ku .e'anai to'u
______________________________________________________
Get Your Private, Free Email at http://www.hotmail.com


--------------------------- ONElist Sponsor ----------------------------

Get great offers on top-notch products that match your interests!
Sign up for eLerts at:
<a href=" http://clickme.onelist.com/ad/elerts1 ">Click Here</a>

------------------------------------------------------------------------

To unsubscribe, send mail to lojban-unsubscrib-@onelist.com
#2194
6:37 PM Thu 20 Jan
 Subject:  Re: lojban as a spoken  programming language?
 From:  Brook
From: Brook nellard-@concentric.net

On Wed, 19 Jan 2000, Shae Erisson wrote:
> From: Shae Erisson shap-@uab.edu
>
> I've search through the onelist archives a bit, and I haven't found any
> mention of this idea. Has anyone tried to do such a thing? It seems to
> me that lojban would be an excellent candidate for a spoken programming
> language.

It should be there - a few months back we had a fair length discussion about
the concept.

The gist of it was that, sure lojban would be good, but you'd need a semantics
to attach to it. As of right now, there's nothing really close to that.

You'd think Prolog would be an obvious match, and people have done mappings
from a subset of Prolog to a subset of lojban, but many things basic (endemic?)
to Prolog, like the cut, don't really fit well.

Brook

----------------
Klactovedestene!

--------------------------- ONElist Sponsor ----------------------------

Get great offers on top-notch products that match your interests!
Sign up for eLerts at:
<a href=" http://clickme.onelist.com/ad/elerts1 ">Click Here</a>

------------------------------------------------------------------------

To unsubscribe, send mail to lojban-unsubscrib-@onelist.com
#2195
9:12 PM Thu 20 Jan
 Subject:  xa'unro'a xipaze
 From:  michael helsem

From: "michael helsem" graywyver-@hotmail.com

a'uru'e mi'a zgana lemu'e le ctino be le terdi le lunra ze'i
gacri .i za'a bunre joi grusi cukla .i masno .o'onairu'e .i
lenku .oi .i mi jbera le visymau kaldju .ije zgana le mumoi
plini .i ju'ocu'i mluni ri za'a ku .uaru'e .uo
______________________________________________________
Get Your Private, Free Email at http://www.hotmail.com


--------------------------- ONElist Sponsor ----------------------------

    GRAB THE GATOR! FREE SOFTWARE DOES ALL THE TYPING FOR YOU!
Tired of filling out forms and remembering passwords? Gator fills in
forms and passwords with just one click! Comes with $50 in free coupons!
  <a href=" http://clickme.onelist.com/ad/gator4 ">Click Here</a>

------------------------------------------------------------------------

To unsubscribe, send mail to lojban-unsubscrib-@onelist.com
#2196
7:40 AM Fri 21 Jan
 Subject:  Re: Lojban teacher  needed
 From:  michael helsem

From: "michael helsem" graywyver-@hotmail.com

de'u cmima le'i mukti be le ti xe benji (That's one of the
things this list is for.).i  ko benji ko'a goi ledo preti mi'a
ijebabo la'a pa le te benji nu'o spuda fi ko'e goi le danfu
be fo ko'a (Send us your questions & someone will--usually--
answer them.) .i ko'e ka'e da'i sidju le drata poi te benji
(Probably it will help others who are reading.) .i zo'o
ra'unai ko'e ka'e ju'o se pinka (Anyway, it'll be something to
talk about...) .i co'omi'e maikl.

______________________________________________________
Get Your Private, Free Email at http://www.hotmail.com


--------------------------- ONElist Sponsor ----------------------------

Get great offers on top-notch products that match your interests!
Sign up for eLerts at:
<a href=" http://clickme.onelist.com/ad/elerts1 ">Click Here</a>

------------------------------------------------------------------------

To unsubscribe, send mail to lojban-unsubscrib-@onelist.com
#2197
8:13 AM Fri 21 Jan
 Subject:  jbosnu
 From:  michael helsem

From: "michael helsem" graywyver-@hotmail.com

ju'ocu'i nitcu ko'agoi re lojbo xe benji (I'm not sure if two
Lojbanic lists are needed.) .iku'i mi ba di'i benji fi ko'a
(But i'll be sending to both.) .i .e'o ro lobyka'e co'adi'i
benji fi la jbosnu (Please join me there.) .i co'omi'e maikl.
______________________________________________________
Get Your Private, Free Email at http://www.hotmail.com


--------------------------- ONElist Sponsor ----------------------------

For the fastest and easiest way to backup your files and, access them
from anywhere. Try @backup Free for 30 days.  Click here for a chance
to win a digital camera.
<a href=" http://clickme.onelist.com/ad/Atbackup ">Click Here</a>

------------------------------------------------------------------------

To unsubscribe, send mail to lojban-unsubscrib-@onelist.com
#2198
12:02 PM Fri 21 Jan
 Subject:  Re: jbosnu
 From:  Invent Yourself

From: Invent Yourself xo-@sixgirls.org

On Fri, 21 Jan 2000, michael helsem wrote:

> From: "michael helsem" graywyver-@hotmail.com
>
> ju'ocu'i nitcu ko'agoi re lojbo xe benji (I'm not sure if two
> Lojbanic lists are needed.) .iku'i mi ba di'i benji fi ko'a
> (But i'll be sending to both.) .i .e'o ro lobyka'e co'adi'i
> benji fi la jbosnu (Please join me there.) .i co'omi'e maikl.


.i mi puba jarco le jbosnu mrivelsku goi ko'e le ralju mrivelsku goi ko'i
mo'u le nu mi'a snada cipra .i ko'e xabju zoi .ueb
http://onelist.com/community/jbosnu .ueb

(I was going to tell the main Lojban list about the "jbosnu" list, hosted
by onelist.com, once we had made sure it was working smoothly.)

.i mi'a finti ko'e le ka frica bei ko'i be le ka lojbo bilga

(We created it as a special purpose list with only Lojban traffic.)

.i so'o le jbopre pu djica le zmadu lojbo selsku le ka lojbo certu

(Some people felt they needed more Lojban content for their proficiency)

.i mi'a ru'i troci le nu ro djedi ciska

(We'll all try to write something each day.)



-----
"You cannot achieve speed by speedy practice. The only way to get fast
is to be deep, wide awake, and slow...pray for the patience of a
stonecutter. Pray to understand that speed is one of those things you
have to give up - like love - before it comes flying to you through
the back window."
('The Listening Book' by W.A. Mathieu)


--------------------------- ONElist Sponsor ----------------------------

Get great offers on top-notch products that match your interests!
Sign up for eLerts at:
<a href=" http://clickme.onelist.com/ad/elerts1 ">Click Here</a>

------------------------------------------------------------------------

To unsubscribe, send mail to lojban-unsubscrib-@onelist.com
#2199
2:57 PM Fri 21 Jan
 Subject:  Subjunctive?
 From:  the Edward Blevins

From: the Edward Blevins thedwar-@barsoom.net


How does one express the subjunctive mood in Lojban? Or does one
not do so? I've seen 'puba' used for 'was/were going to'.
If one says in English "I was going to go to the store." it implies
that the event did not actually occur (usually). However, it
is my understanding that in Lojban 'puba' would imply no such
thing.

Would the following capture the english meaning?:

co'anai ku mi puba klama le zarci

Another example, how would I say "If I had a million dollars, I'd
be rich." in Lojban?

I can say:

ganai mi ponse le megdo be le rupnu gi mi ricfu

which I would translate as:

If I have a million dollars then I am rich.

Which is subtlely different.

Do others think this is a useful distinction, or do I just
have english on the brain?

--
the Edward Blevins    thedwar-@barsoom.net   (512) 436-9576
/(0\         mi tavla fo la lojban .i xu do go'i?
\1)/ .i.e'u ko vitke fi zoi .url. http://www.lojban.org .url.
Today is Setting Orange, the 20th day of Chaos, 3166.

--------------------------- ONElist Sponsor ----------------------------

Get great offers on top-notch products that match your interests!
Sign up for eLerts at:
<a href=" http://clickme.onelist.com/ad/elerts1 ">Click Here</a>

------------------------------------------------------------------------

To unsubscribe, send mail to lojban-unsubscrib-@onelist.com
#2200
6:19 PM Fri 21 Jan
 Subject:  Re: Subjunctive?
 From:  Jorge Llambias

From: "Jorge Llambias" jjllambia-@hotmail.com


>How does one express the subjunctive mood in Lojban? Or does one
>not do so?

One way is to use the cmavo va'o, of selma'o BAI,
accompanied sometimes by the cmavo da'i of selma'o UI.

>I've seen 'puba' used for 'was/were going to'.
>If one says in English "I was going to go to the store." it implies
>that the event did not actually occur (usually). However, it
>is my understanding that in Lojban 'puba' would imply no such
>thing.

This isn't the subjunctive, but...

"puba" has been translated as "was/were going to", but
as you say it is not a good translation. I can't really
think of any examples where composite tenses like
puba, pupu, bapu, etc. would be useful.

What you want for your example is pupu'o:

    mi pupu'o klama le zarci
    I was about to go to the store.

There is no implication here that the going
eventually took place.

All tense+aspect combinations are very useful:

caca'o citka = is now eating
puca'o citka = was eating
baca'o citka = will be eating

capu'o citka = is about to eat, is going to eat
pupu'o citka = was about to eat, was going to eat
bapu'o citka = will be about to eat, "will be going to eat"

caba'o citka = has now eaten
puba'o citka = had eaten
baba'o citka = will have eaten

Before these aspectuals (ca'o, ba'o, pu'o) were introduced
to the language, these compound English tenses were translated
by chained Lojban tenses, but doing that now that we have
the aspectuals is not really a very good idea.

>Would the following capture the english meaning?:
>
>co'anai ku mi puba klama le zarci

I don't think co'anai is grammatical, although I think
it should be grammatical, but then I don't think it
should mean what you want here... :)

Back to the subjunctive:

>Another example, how would I say "If I had a million dollars, I'd
>be rich." in Lojban?
>
>I can say:
>
>ganai mi ponse le megdo be le rupnu gi mi ricfu
>
>which I would translate as:
>
>If I have a million dollars then I am rich.
>
>Which is subtlely different.

It is actually radically different, and it doesn't
really say what you want. I do not have a million dollars,
and therefore this two sentences are both true and
utterly uninformative:

ganai mi ponse lo megdo be lo'e rupnu gi mi ricfu
"If I have a million dollars then I am rich."

ganai mi ponse lo megdo be lo'e rupnu gi mi pindi
"If I have a million dollars then I am poor."

Both true. Both uninformative.

>Do others think this is a useful distinction, or do I just
>have english on the brain?

What we want to say is something more like:

va'oda'i le nu mi ponse lo megdo be lo'e rupnu kei mi ricfu
"Under the hypothetical conditions that I have (would have)
a million dollars, I am (would be) rich."

That's how I see it anyway.

co'o mi'e xorxes

______________________________________________________
Get Your Private, Free Email at http://www.hotmail.com


--------------------------- ONElist Sponsor ----------------------------

Get great offers on top-notch products that match your interests!
Sign up for eLerts at:
<a href=" http://clickme.onelist.com/ad/elerts1 ">Click Here</a>

------------------------------------------------------------------------

To unsubscribe, send mail to lojban-unsubscrib-@onelist.com
#2201
12:59 PM Sat 22 Jan
 Subject:  subjunctive
 From:  Steven Belknap

From: Steven Belknap sbelkna-@uic.edu

>  >How does one express the subjunctive mood in Lojban? Or does one
>not do so?
<snip>
>What you want for your example is pupu'o:
>
>     mi pupu'o klama le zarci
>     I was about to go to the store.
>
>There is no implication here that the going
eventually took place.
<snip>
>Back to the subjunctive:
>
>  >Another example, how would I say "If I had a million dollars, I'd
>  >be rich." in Lojban?

<snip>

>What we want to say is something more like:
>
>va'oda'i le nu mi ponse lo megdo be lo'e rupnu kei mi ricfu
>"Under the hypothetical conditions that I have (would have)
>a million dollars, I am (would be) rich."
>
>That's how I see it anyway.
>
>co'o mi'e xorxes


mi pupu'o klama le zarci gi'e na pu klama le zarci

co'o mi'e stivn

Steven Belknap, M.D.
Assistant Professor of Clinical Pharmacology and Medicine
University of Illinois College of Medicine at Peoria

--------------------------- ONElist Sponsor ----------------------------

Get great offers on top-notch products that match your interests!
Sign up for eLerts at:
<a href=" http://clickme.onelist.com/ad/elerts1 ">Click Here</a>

------------------------------------------------------------------------

To unsubscribe, send mail to lojban-unsubscrib-@onelist.com
#2202
7:56 PM Sat 22 Jan
 Subject:  Re: Subjunctive?
 From:  Invent Yourself

From: Invent Yourself xo-@sixgirls.org

On Fri, 21 Jan 2000, Jorge Llambias wrote:


> "puba" has been translated as "was/were going to", but
> as you say it is not a good translation. I can't really
> think of any examples where composite tenses like
> puba, pupu, bapu, etc. would be useful.
>

...

> caba'o citka = has now eaten
> puba'o citka = had eaten
> baba'o citka = will have eaten
>
> Before these aspectuals (ca'o, ba'o, pu'o) were introduced
> to the language, these compound English tenses were translated
> by chained Lojban tenses, but doing that now that we have
> the aspectuals is not really a very good idea.


An excellent scheme. But it is an innovation upon the Book, not a
clarification of it.



-----
"You cannot achieve speed by speedy practice. The only way to get fast
is to be deep, wide awake, and slow...pray for the patience of a
stonecutter. Pray to understand that speed is one of those things you
have to give up - like love - before it comes flying to you through
the back window."
('The Listening Book' by W.A. Mathieu)


--------------------------- ONElist Sponsor ----------------------------

    GRAB THE GATOR! FREE SOFTWARE DOES ALL THE TYPING FOR YOU!
Tired of filling out forms and remembering passwords? Gator fills in
forms and passwords with just one click! Comes with $50 in free coupons!
  <a href=" http://clickme.onelist.com/ad/gator4 ">Click Here</a>

------------------------------------------------------------------------

To unsubscribe, send mail to lojban-unsubscrib-@onelist.com
#2203
2:12 AM Sun 23 Jan
 Subject:  Re: Subjunctive?
 From:  pycy-

From: pycy-@aol.com

You're not just thinking English, except for thinking that the subjunctive is
other than a grammatical category.  The English (Latin, ...) subjunctives do
a number of things, which are sorted out in Lojban to a number of cmavo.  So,
decide what you want to say and pick the appropriate device for doing it.
Xorxes has, as usual, given a good starter list: for contrary-to-fact
"conditionals" and past contemplated but undone actions (not, notice, a
subjunctive even in English).

Lojban tenses (ca,pu, ba, and compounds) are best taken as strictly
truth-functional and linear, though there are arguments about the linear part
and that allows for some "subjunctives."  But better not to rely on that
reading.  So, puba *might* mean along some future path from some past time,
and thus probably contrary to fact along the real (for us now anyhow) future
to that past, but it is better to take it as being along the actual future to
that past and thus either before, at, or after the present in the real stream
of time.  The virtues of puba and bapu are just that they don't tell us how
the event is related to now, which is sometimes useful, when we don't know
exactly: "He will have arrived by morning" (and for all I know is arrived
already), etc.  Most of the other compounds mirror the needs of a language
which has obligatory tense, so needs compounds to move about in a narrative,
as Lojban does not -- or not nearly so often.
pc

--------------------------- ONElist Sponsor ----------------------------

    GRAB THE GATOR! FREE SOFTWARE DOES ALL THE TYPING FOR YOU!
Tired of filling out forms and remembering passwords? Gator fills in
forms and passwords with just one click! Comes with $50 in free coupons!
  <a href=" http://clickme.onelist.com/ad/gator4 ">Click Here</a>

------------------------------------------------------------------------

To unsubscribe, send mail to lojban-unsubscrib-@onelist.com
#2204
4:51 AM Sun 23 Jan
 Subject:  Re: Subjunctive?
 From:  Jorge Llambias

From: "Jorge Llambias" jjllambia-@hotmail.com


> > caba'o citka = has now eaten
> > puba'o citka = had eaten
> > baba'o citka = will have eaten
> >
> > Before these aspectuals (ca'o, ba'o, pu'o) were introduced
> > to the language, these compound English tenses were translated
> > by chained Lojban tenses, but doing that now that we have
> > the aspectuals is not really a very good idea.
>
>An excellent scheme. But it is an innovation upon the Book, not a
>clarification of it.

The first paragraph of the Book's chapter on tense explicity
says that it doesn't deal with the question of how best to
translate a given English tense. Here I am suggesting that
the tense+aspectual combination is a better translation
than the tense+tense combination. I agree that this is not
a clarification of anything in the Book, but it is not in
contradiction with it either, is it?

co'o mi'e xorxes


______________________________________________________
Get Your Private, Free Email at http://www.hotmail.com


--------------------------- ONElist Sponsor ----------------------------

Get great offers on top-notch products that match your interests!
Sign up for eLerts at:
<a href=" http://clickme.onelist.com/ad/elerts1 ">Click Here</a>

------------------------------------------------------------------------

To unsubscribe, send mail to lojban-unsubscrib-@onelist.com
#2205
9:36 AM Sun 23 Jan
 Subject:  Re: Subjunctive?
 From:  Jorge Llambias

From: "Jorge Llambias" jjllambia-@hotmail.com


la pycyn cusku di'e

>The virtues of puba and bapu are just that they don't tell us how the event
>is related to now, which is sometimes useful, when we don't know exactly:
>"He will have arrived by morning" (and for all I know is arrived already),
>etc.

I would say:

     ko'a baba'o tolcliva ca le cerni
     He will have arrived in the morning.

That says nothing of whether he has already arrived.
I don't think bapu would work at all here, because
of the connection with "ca le cerni". "ca le cerni"
would either have to be the start of the imaginary
journey, which would mean that the arrival could be
later than that, which we don't want. Or "ca le cerni"
would have to coincide with the end of the imaginary
journey, which puts the arrival exactly at the morning,
which again is not the meaning we want.

>Most of the other compounds mirror the needs of a language
>which has obligatory tense, so needs compounds to move about in a
>narrative,
>as Lojban does not -- or not nearly so often.

I don't know... Compounds with "ca" are just redundant.
"capu" means exactly the same as "puca" and as just "pu".
That leaves only "pupu" and "baba". I don't think
there's anything like "baba" in English. The only one
that could be like something in English is "pupu",
but in narratives, which is mostly where this could
come up, the convention is that the tense takes as
reference the time of the previous sentence instead
of the speaker's time, so a double pu is not needed
even there.

co'o mi'e xorxes

______________________________________________________
Get Your Private, Free Email at http://www.hotmail.com


--------------------------- ONElist Sponsor ----------------------------

    GRAB THE GATOR! FREE SOFTWARE DOES ALL THE TYPING FOR YOU!
Tired of filling out forms and remembering passwords? Gator fills in
forms and passwords with just one click! Comes with $50 in free coupons!
  <a href=" http://clickme.onelist.com/ad/gator4 ">Click Here</a>

------------------------------------------------------------------------

To unsubscribe, send mail to lojban-unsubscrib-@onelist.com
#2206
10:15 AM Sun 23 Jan
 Subject:  mi'o imperative
 From:  la kinin

From: "la kinin" mtpeppe-@prodigy.net

Does anyone know the Lojban for the first person plural inclusive (mi'o)
imperative, like the English Let's go to the store! or the Spanish Vamos
al mercado!?
ko .e mi klama le zarci is close, but not exact, as you can see from the
expansion: ko klama le zarci .ije mi klama le zarci.
I'm thinking something along the lines of ko joi mi (which would probably
come to be written kojoimi), but I'm not sure.
Any thoughts?

co'omi'e la kinin.



--------------------------- ONElist Sponsor ----------------------------

Get great offers on top-notch products that match your interests!
Sign up for eLerts at:
<a href=" http://clickme.onelist.com/ad/elerts1 ">Click Here</a>

------------------------------------------------------------------------

To unsubscribe, send mail to lojban-unsubscrib-@onelist.com
#2207
11:32 AM Sun 23 Jan
 Subject:  Re: mi'o imperative
 From:  Jorge Llambias

From: "Jorge Llambias" jjllambia-@hotmail.com


la kinin cusku di'e

>Does anyone know the Lojban for the first person plural inclusive (mi'o)
>imperative, like the English Let's go to the store! or the Spanish
>Vamos
>al mercado!?

     e'u mi'o klama le zarci

In general, the e-series of UI cmavo are useful for translating
imperatives, especially non-second person. They can be used
instead of ko as well of course.

co'o mi'e xorxes


______________________________________________________
Get Your Private, Free Email at http://www.hotmail.com


--------------------------- ONElist Sponsor ----------------------------

    GRAB THE GATOR! FREE SOFTWARE DOES ALL THE TYPING FOR YOU!
Tired of filling out forms and remembering passwords? Gator fills in
forms and passwords with just one click! Comes with $50 in free coupons!
  <a href=" http://clickme.onelist.com/ad/gator4 ">Click Here</a>

------------------------------------------------------------------------

To unsubscribe, send mail to lojban-unsubscrib-@onelist.com
#2208
12:15 PM Sun 23 Jan
 Subject:  Re: Re: Translation needed
 From:  Jorge Llambias

From: "Jorge Llambias" jjllambia-@hotmail.com


la adam cusku di'e
>
>la xarmuj cusku di'e
>
> > >     1. About 24,000 people die every day from hunger or
> > > hunger-related
> > >     causes. This is down from 35,000 ten years ago, and 41,000
> > > twenty years
> > >     ago. Three- fourths of the deaths are children under the age
> > > of five.
> >
> > 1. i ji'i revora'e prenu cu morsi ri'a le nu xagji .a le xagjiki'i rinka
>
>I think you mean ki'o instead of ra'e. Also, to become dead,
>rather than just be dead is mrobi'o. You mean xagjyki'i.

Also, the "every day" is missing. First try:

      ji'irevoki'o prenu cu mrobi'o ca ro djedi
      ri'a le nu xagji a le xagjyki'i rinka

But that says that the same 24000 people die every day!
We need to change the order of the terms:

      ca ro djedi ji'irevoki'o prenu cu mrobi'o
      ri'a le nu xagji a le xagjyki'i rinka

> > i ji'i cimura'e prenu go'i pu lo nanca li pano
>
>For "ten years", etc., you need to say "lo nanca be li pano",
>but I think it's better to just say "pano nanca"

I would say:

    i ji'icimuki'o prenu pu go'i za lo nanca be li pano

"za" is what I use for the size of the offset, ten years
is the size of the interval from now towards te past.
"pu lo nanca" does not really say how long before those
ten years, it could be a long time in the past of those
ten years. And you have to assume that you are talking
of the immediately adjacent past ten years as well, not,
for example, the ten years going from 1679 to 1688.

> > .ije ji'i vopara'e prenu
> > go'i pu lo nanca li reno  .i pizemu lei morsi cu verba lo nanca li
>mume'i
> >
>  I think that normally it's me'imu and not mume'i, but it might not
>matter.

Also there is a problem with the x2 of verba. I would not
put "lo nanca" there. I would probably say:

      i pizemu lei mrobi'o cu verba li me'imu


> > "lo cabnalfarvi gugde" (intended lit. not-currently-developed nation)
>was
> > the best I could come up with for "developing country". I tried to carry
> > over the intended politically correct meaning of the English phrase.
> >
>What's wrong with "favbi'o gugde"? In Lojban there's no swearing
>and no politically correct. :-)

But "farvi" does not mean "developed"! It means "developing",
so "farvi gugde" is best for the translation. Even though
the initial "not currently developing" is a more true description...

co'o mi'e xorxes

______________________________________________________
Get Your Private, Free Email at http://www.hotmail.com


--------------------------- ONElist Sponsor ----------------------------

    GRAB THE GATOR! FREE SOFTWARE DOES ALL THE TYPING FOR YOU!
Tired of filling out forms and remembering passwords? Gator fills in
forms and passwords with just one click! Comes with $50 in free coupons!
  <a href=" http://clickme.onelist.com/ad/gator4 ">Click Here</a>

------------------------------------------------------------------------

To unsubscribe, send mail to lojban-unsubscrib-@onelist.com
#2209
12:49 PM Sun 23 Jan
 Subject:  Re: Translation  needed
 From:  Jorge Llambias

From: "Jorge Llambias" jjllambia-@hotmail.com


>     4. Besides death, chronic malnutrition also causes impaired
>vision, listlessness, stunted growth, and greatly increased
>susceptibility to disease.
>     Severely malnourished people are unable to function at even a
>basic level.

i vomai
i le nu mrobi'o goi ko'a zo'u le nu ru'i se xladja cu rinka
ko'a e le nu selzu'i viska e le nu ta'irdu'e e le nu seldicra
banro e le nu mutce zenba fa le nu bilma kakne
i lei mutce se xladja prenu na kakne le nu tolpo'u lo sampu ji'a

Anyone has a better idea for "besides death"? I don't like
mine much. How about "function at even a basic level"?

co'o mi'e xorxes


______________________________________________________
Get Your Private, Free Email at http://www.hotmail.com


--------------------------- ONElist Sponsor ----------------------------

Get great offers on top-notch products that match your interests!
Sign up for eLerts at:
<a href=" http://clickme.onelist.com/ad/elerts1 ">Click Here</a>

------------------------------------------------------------------------

To unsubscribe, send mail to lojban-unsubscrib-@onelist.com
#2210
2:40 PM Sun 23 Jan
 Subject:  Re: Subjunctive?
 From:  And Rosta

From: "And Rosta" a.rost-@pmail.net

Jorge to The Edward Blevins
> >Another example, how would I say "If I had a million dollars, I'd
> >be rich." in Lojban?
> >
> >I can say:
> >
> >ganai mi ponse le megdo be le rupnu gi mi ricfu
> >
> >which I would translate as:
> >
> >If I have a million dollars then I am rich.
> >
> >Which is subtlely different.
>
> It is actually radically different, and it doesn't
> really say what you want. I do not have a million dollars,
> and therefore this two sentences are both true and
> utterly uninformative:
>
> ganai mi ponse lo megdo be lo'e rupnu gi mi ricfu
> "If I have a million dollars then I am rich."
>
> ganai mi ponse lo megdo be lo'e rupnu gi mi pindi
> "If I have a million dollars then I am poor."
>
> Both true. Both uninformative.
>
> >Do others think this is a useful distinction, or do I just
> >have english on the brain?
>
> What we want to say is something more like:
>
> va'oda'i le nu mi ponse lo megdo be lo'e rupnu kei mi ricfu
> "Under the hypothetical conditions that I have (would have)
> a million dollars, I am (would be) rich."
>
> That's how I see it anyway.

Jorge's method is probably the most convenient. But here is a more
logic-based method of doing conditionals (which, as you & Jorge
point out, is not at all the same as logical IF). [I say "more logic-
based" partly because the analysis below gets closer to the 'true'
meaning, and partly because "da'i" is, I think, somewhat too vaguely
understood.]

  For all possible worlds (that are relevantly similar to this one), w,
    in w if I have a million dollars then I am rich.

  =   For all possible worlds (that are relevantly similar to this one), w,
    in w either I am rich or I don't have a million dollars.

"If I had a million dollars then I might be able to retire" (as opposed
to "then I *would* be able to retire"):

  For *some* possible worlds (that are relevantly similar to this one), w,
    in w if I have a million dollars then I am able to retire.

  =   For some possible worlds (that are relevantly similar to this one), w,
    in w either I am able to retire or I don't have a million dollars.

To Lojbanize this, you'd need a predicate meaning "x1 is a world (relevantly
similar to this one) in which x2 is true/obtains)". {da} as x1 would
give you "if ... might". To get "if ... would" you'd have to have {ro da poi
world} or something equivalent. But a plain {ro da} as x1 would work if
you had another predicate defined as "either x1 is a world in which x2
obtains or x1 is not a world".

It would be nice if we could do this by forming a lujvo in selma'o NU,
where x2 (the state of affairs that obtains) is the contents of the NU
phrase, and where x1 is the x1 of the NU, but I am pretty certain that
NU is not extensible.


Changing topic: English has indicative/subjunctive contrasts such as:

   I insist that he go.  [= I order it to be the case that he goes]
   I insist that he goes. [= I vigorously assert it to be true that he goes]

In Lojban both subordinate clauses would be translated with (I guess)
{le du'u}, but you'd have to use different main brivla. The semantics
of the brivla specifies whether or not "broda X" is true only if X is
true.

--And.

--------------------------- ONElist Sponsor ----------------------------

    GRAB THE GATOR! FREE SOFTWARE DOES ALL THE TYPING FOR YOU!
Tired of filling out forms and remembering passwords? Gator fills in
forms and passwords with just one click! Comes with $50 in free coupons!
  <a href=" http://clickme.onelist.com/ad/gator4 ">Click Here</a>

------------------------------------------------------------------------

To unsubscribe, send mail to lojban-unsubscrib-@onelist.com
#2211
3:50 PM Sun 23 Jan
 Subject:  Re: Subjunctive?
 From:  Jorge Llambias

From: "Jorge Llambias" jjllambia-@hotmail.com


la and cusku di'e

>   For all possible worlds (that are relevantly similar to this one), w, in
>w if I have a million dollars then I am rich.
>
>   =   For all possible worlds (that are relevantly similar to this one),
>w, in w either I am rich or I don't have a million
>dollars.

But how do I determine which worlds are relevantly similar?
Obviously I have to admit some worlds where I have a million
dollars, but I also have to exclude all worlds where most
people have a million dollars. In other words, I have to
admit only those worlds where my having a million dollars
means I am rich. But then there is no content in the
expression, all the content is in the selection of relevant
worlds. Isn't it?

>"If I had a million dollars then I might be able to retire" (as opposed to
>"then I *would* be able to retire"):
>
>   For *some* possible worlds (that are relevantly similar to this one), w,
>in w if I have a million dollars then I am able to retire.
>
>   =   For some possible worlds (that are relevantly similar to this one),
>w, in w either I am able to retire or I don't have a million dollars.

But this one fails even worse. Since I don't have a million
dollars, "If I had a million dollars then I might buy Microsoft
from Bill" is true, according to your expansion, because
indeed in some worlds relevantly similar to this one
(in all of those in which I don't have a million dollars
in fact, including this one) "If I have a million dollars
then I am able to buy Microsoft" is true.

You have to restrict it to worlds where I do have a million
dollars. Then you are just saying: "In some worlds where
I have a million dollars, I am able retire."


>Changing topic: English has indicative/subjunctive contrasts such as:
>
>    I insist that he go.  [= I order it to be the case that he goes]
>    I insist that he goes. [= I vigorously assert it to be true that he
>goes]
>
>In Lojban both subordinate clauses would be translated with (I guess)
>{le du'u}, but you'd have to use different main brivla. The semantics
>of the brivla specifies whether or not "broda X" is true only if X is
>true.

If "I insist that he go" is something like "mi minde fi le du'u
ko'a klama" then the truth value of "ko'a klama" doesn't really
enter into it, does it?

co'o mi'e xorxes


______________________________________________________
Get Your Private, Free Email at http://www.hotmail.com


--------------------------- ONElist Sponsor ----------------------------

Get great offers on top-notch products that match your interests!
Sign up for eLerts at:
<a href=" http://clickme.onelist.com/ad/elerts1 ">Click Here</a>

------------------------------------------------------------------------

To unsubscribe, send mail to lojban-unsubscrib-@onelist.com
#2212
1:35 AM Mon 24 Jan
 Subject:  Re: mi'o imperative
 From:   Bob LeChevalier (lojbab)

From: "Bob LeChevalier (lojbab)" lojba-@lojban.org

At 01:18 PM 01/23/2000 -0500, la kinin wrote:
>Does anyone know the Lojban for the first person plural inclusive (mi'o)
>imperative, like the English Let's go to the store! or the Spanish Vamos
>al mercado!?
>ko .e mi klama le zarci is close, but not exact, as you can see from the
>expansion: ko klama le zarci .ije mi klama le zarci.
>I'm thinking something along the lines of ko joi mi (which would probably
>come to be written kojoimi), but I'm not sure.

In addition to Jorge's suggestion, there is also "doi mi'o ko klama"  You
can use "doi" to define the referent of do or ko just like you use mi'e to
define "mi".

lojbab
----
lojbab                     ***NOTE NEW ADDRESS***           lojba-@lojban.org
Bob LeChevalier, President, The Logical Language Group, Inc.
2904 Beau Lane, Fairfax VA 22031-1303 USA               703-385-0273
Artificial language Loglan/Lojban:
   see Lojban WWW Server: href=" http://xiron.pc.helsinki.fi/lojban/ "
   Order _The Complete Lojban Language_ - see our Web pages or ask me.


--------------------------- ONElist Sponsor ----------------------------

Want to send money instantly to anyone, anywhere, anytime?
You can today at X.com - and we'll give you $20 to try it.  Sign
up today at X.com.  It's quick, free, & there's no obligation.
<a href=" http://clickme.onelist.com/ad/xcom ">Click Here</a>

------------------------------------------------------------------------

To unsubscribe, send mail to lojban-unsubscrib-@onelist.com
#2213
5:41 AM Mon 24 Jan
 Subject:  Course update
 From:  Robin Turner

From: Robin Turner robi-@bilkent.edu.tr

Just in case anyone's curious ....

Lessons 4 - 6 have at last been revised in line with Nora's comments. No
major changes, except that in Lesson 5 I now incline to the convention
of taking Monday rather than Sunday as {la padjed.} (though I mention
both versions) and towards the end of Lesson 6 I have added {mo'i} and
{to'o}.

This means that Lessons 1 - 6 are now _nihil obstat_, I hope. Lessons 7
is probably OK now, Lesson 8 is beta (and therefore not linked to from
the contents page) and I've lost the draft of Lesson 9.

The lessons are also being translated into Swedish (not by me!) for a
new Lojban site which will be up soon at http://www.logik.nu

co'o mi'e robin.

http://www.bilkent.edu.tr/~robin/lojbancourse.html

http://neptune.spaceports.com/~words


--------------------------- ONElist Sponsor ----------------------------

    GRAB THE GATOR! FREE SOFTWARE DOES ALL THE TYPING FOR YOU!
Tired of filling out forms and remembering passwords? Gator fills in
forms and passwords with just one click! Comes with $50 in free coupons!
  <a href=" http://clickme.onelist.com/ad/gator4 ">Click Here</a>

------------------------------------------------------------------------

To unsubscribe, send mail to lojban-unsubscrib-@onelist.com
#2214
2:13 AM Tue 25 Jan
 Subject:  Re: Subjunctives
 From:  pycy-
From: pycy-@aol.com

I can't check with the Book right now, but my memory of how the tense and
aspects were intended to work is as follows.
1) tense and aspect are separated (and from mood and the like as well, all of
which are jumbled together in English and, historically at least, in most
familiar languages)
2) tense is based on axis and vector reference, though not restricted to the
four axes implicit in most natural systems (though never fully realized in
any).
3) The same cmavo are used for retro vector and past axis, for simultaneous
vector and present axis, and for pro vector and future axis.  The differences
are positional and/or determined by context.  Thus, pu might be either past
vector to the current axis or establishing a new axis prior to the current
one.  Where the difference is too important to be left to context to decide,
capu would indicate the vector (brief glance back without chaning the focus
of the narrative) and puca the new axis (or maybe it is the other way 'round
-- I ermember this got argued and I forget which one, this seems most natural
to me at the moment).
4)  Only axes are points, so that punctile clauses, like ca..., must apply to
axes, making  bapu ca... unambiguous "event before the future event indicated
by ca..."
Of course, with a clearly future event, maybe even capu would work.
5) Aspects carry temporal implications but are not completely temporal.
Thus, the perfective of an event does entail that the event occurred in the
past (though even this can be doubted, since some maintain that the
inchoative does not entail that the event takes place in the future) but the
converse does not quite follow, for not all past events still throw their
aspectual shadows into the present (effects from causes, continued existence
of participants, ... -- the list varies in some unclear ways) as the
perfective seems to indicate.
6) So, in Lojban, past axis, retro vector and perfective aspect are all
slightly different and in different ways.   But in English they tend to fall
together, certainly away from present tense, and thus sorting out which one
is meant by a given Englsh sentence is not subject to clear rules, except
that one must think what one means to say, both in the given sentence and in
those around it.

The perfective seems to involve relevance conditions, which are one of the
hairiest problems in possible world games (of which tense is one in the logic
business).  For the contrary to fact cases being discussed, the best course
is to say every world exactly like this one except for the condition named in
the protasis (if....) and whatever is required by that change.  So, clearly,
changing the world by having me possess a million just requires that I also
be shifted into the class of rich folk (I think -- a million just ain't what
it was anymore) and maybe nothing or very little else.  Or does it: can I
have a million and still be a retired professor from a really cheap
university?  Don't have to have had some source for that million and if so
what?  So maybe the worlds can vary on the ways I got the million.  But if
they vary too much, I come to doubt that this is still me they are talking
about.  And, if I start to vary too much, does this not affect others around
me (wives and childen, etc., at least and students and colleagues and....).
Where does it end?  Cut it off too soon and the world so little changed is
greatly changed (a retired professor gets a mill out of the blue); let it run
too far and it no longer seems to apply to me (or to be about this sort of
world at all).
Probably all that the original really means is that anyone with a million is
rich, perhaps with the added wish that I were one such.  (And, of course, if
I were as rich as Rothschild, I'd be richer than Rothschild.)
Talk of possible worlds really brings up a point about my favorite (and
everybody else's least favorite) change, restricted quantification.  As
Xorxes points out, "for every possible world w, if I have a million in w,
then I am rich in w" could be true just because there is no possible world in
which I have a million -- hardly an improvement on the material reading in
this world.  On the other hand "in every possible world in which I have a
million, w, I am rich in w" looks only at the worlds in which I have a
muillion -- and says that there are some.  Clearly the latter is much closer
to what is wanted, though even it may not be quite right (Lojban has the
means to do this, but does not use it for this purpose).
pc

--------------------------- ONElist Sponsor ----------------------------

Accurate impartial advice on everything from laptops to table saws.
<a href=" http://clickme.onelist.com/ad/Productopia ">Click Here</a>

------------------------------------------------------------------------

To unsubscribe, send mail to lojban-unsubscrib-@onelist.com
#2215
2:14 AM Wed 26 Jan
 Subject:  Fwd: [lojban] Subjunctive?
 From:  pycy-

From: pycy-@aol.com

In a message dated 1/23/00 6:45:53 AM CST,
c.d.wrigh-@solipsys.compulink.co.uk writes:
<<
 From: pycy-@aol.com

 > The English (Latin, ...) subjunctives do a number of
 > things, which are sorted out in Lojban to a number of
 > cmavo.  So, decide what you want to say and pick the
 > appropriate device for doing it.


 I feel that I have a good grasp of the majority of the
 grammar, but my vocabulary is only expanding slowly.
 As a result, I can't find a way of saying:

     If I had a million pounds/dollars/kroner
         then I'd be rich.

 I guess what I want to say is:

     Regardless of the truth value of A,
         (A => B)  is a valid assertion.

 Where:   A = ( I have a million million pounds )
 and  :   B = ( mi ricfu )


 Yes?

 --
 \\//  ze'uku ko jmive gi'e snada>>




--------------------------- ONElist Sponsor ----------------------------

Was the salesman clueless?  Productopia has the answers.
<a href=" http://clickme.onelist.com/ad/productopiacpc2 ">Click Here</a>

------------------------------------------------------------------------

To unsubscribe, send mail to lojban-unsubscrib-@onelist.com


#2216
5:54 AM Wed 26 Jan
 Subject:  Re: Fwd: [lojban] Subjunctive?
 From:  SwiftRain

From: SwiftRain swiftrai-@geocities.com

pycy-@aol.com wrote:
>
>      If I had a million pounds/dollars/kroner
>          then I'd be rich.

why is this a complicated issue, doi jbopre?

is there something wrong with lu
"ganai mi ponse lo megdo rupnu gi mi ricfu"
li'u?

co'o mi'e bret.

--------------------------- ONElist Sponsor ----------------------------

Accurate impartial advice on everything from laptops to table saws.
<a href=" http://clickme.onelist.com/ad/Productopia ">Click Here</a>

------------------------------------------------------------------------

To unsubscribe, send mail to lojban-unsubscrib-@onelist.com
#2217
9:39 AM Wed 26 Jan
 Subject:  Re: Fwd: [lojban] Subjunctive?
 From:  Robin Turner

From: Robin Turner robi-@bilkent.edu.tr

SwiftRain wrote:
>
> From: SwiftRain swiftrai-@geocities.com
>
> pycy-@aol.com wrote:
> >
> >      If I had a million pounds/dollars/kroner
> >          then I'd be rich.
>
> why is this a complicated issue, doi jbopre?
>
> is there something wrong with lu
> "ganai mi ponse lo megdo rupnu gi mi ricfu"
> li'u?

While the discussion of counterfactuals has been interesting, I
agree with this. {ganai ... gi} is a logical IF, not an English
"if", and whether I really have a million squeebies, or the
potential to aquire them, is not relevant.

zo'o mi ponse lo megdo rupnu .i ku'i mi na ricfu ni'i lenu
panononononono lo gugdrturki,e rupnu cu jbivamji re lo merko
rupnu

co'o mi'e robin.

(1,000,000 Turkish Lira is apporoximately equal to $2.00)

--------------------------- ONElist Sponsor ----------------------------

Was the salesman clueless?  Productopia has the answers.
<a href=" http://clickme.onelist.com/ad/productopiacpc2 ">Click Here</a>

------------------------------------------------------------------------

To unsubscribe, send mail to lojban-unsubscrib-@onelist.com
#2218
11:07 AM Wed 26 Jan
 Subject:  Re: Subjunctive?
 From:  c.d.wrigh-

From: c.d.wrigh-@solipsys.compulink.co.uk

> >      If I had a million pounds/dollars/kroner
> >          then I'd be rich.
>
> why is this a complicated issue, doi jbopre?
>
> is there something wrong with lu
> "ganai mi ponse lo megdo rupnu gi mi ricfu"
> li'u?

The point is that a logical if/then is always true if
the first part is false, and the whole issue about a
subjunctive is that the first part is always false.
The logical if/then simply does not carry the same
implications that the English does, and the question
is - how can the following be translated accurately:

    If I were to be given a million pounds
        then I'd be rich.

Whatever the lojban version is, it must carry the same
implication concerning the implausibility of the first
part of the statement.


cdw.
--
\\//  ze'uku ko jmive gi'e snada

--------------------------- ONElist Sponsor ----------------------------

Free shipping through 1/31/2000 at Visualize.com
where you'll find limited edition prints & photographs
for your home, office, collection or gift-giving needs.
<a href=" http://clickme.onelist.com/ad/VisualizeJanuary ">Click Here</a>

------------------------------------------------------------------------

To unsubscribe, send mail to lojban-unsubscrib-@onelist.com
#2219
11:09 AM Wed 26 Jan
 Subject:  Re: Fwd: [lojban]  Subjunctive?
 From:  Jorge Llambias

From: "Jorge Llambias" jjllambia-@hotmail.com


la robin cusku di'e
>SwiftRain wrote:
> > pycy-@aol.com wrote:

[actually pycyn was forwarding somebody else's post]

> > >
> > >      If I had a million pounds/dollars/kroner
> > >          then I'd be rich.
> >
> > is there something wrong with lu
> > "ganai mi ponse lo megdo rupnu gi mi ricfu"
> > li'u?
>
>While the discussion of counterfactuals has been interesting, I
>agree with this. {ganai ... gi} is a logical IF, not an English
>"if", and whether I really have a million squeebies, or the
>potential to aquire them, is not relevant.

What do you agree with? If you agree that there is nothing
wrong with that translation, you are contradicting yourself.

You say {ganai ... gi} is a logical IF, not an English "if",
and yet you agree that {ganai ... gi} is a good translation
of English "if"?

It is not a good translation in this case.

(1) ganai mi ponse lo megdo rupnu gi mi ricfu
    "Either I don't have a million dollars, or I am rich."

That is true.

(2) ganai mi ponse lo megdo rupnu gi mi pindi
    "Either I don't have a million dollars, or I am poor."

That is also true. I don't have a million dollars, so
no matter what I put as the second term the sentence
will be true.

But the English sentence: "If I had a million dollars then
I'd be rich" says more than (1). It is not a sentence about
how things are just for me in this world, as Lojban (1) and
(2) are.

The English sentence means something like: Anyone in this world
can truthfully say "either I don't have a million dollars or
I am rich". You need to make the sentence apply to everyone
in this world, or alternatively, apply just to myself in
many possible worlds, but you cannot translate it as just
a statement about me in this world. If it is just about
me in this world without counterfactuals it has very little
content.

>zo'o mi ponse lo megdo rupnu .i ku'i mi na ricfu ni'i lenu
>panononononono lo gugdrturki,e rupnu cu jbivamji re lo merko
>rupnu

Remember the dogs biting the men? You are saying that each of
a million Turkish lira has the value of each of two US$.

Obviously that is not what you mean, you want to talk about
one single amount of a million lira and one single amount
of two dollars, not a million single amounts of 1 lira and
two single 1 dollar amounts taken separately.
{lo rupnu be li paki'oki'o} or at least {lei paki'oki'o rupnu}

This is a very common mistake, just as talking of {re nanca}
for "two years", when what is meant is not two separate time
periods of one year, but one single two-year period.

I don't know whether it is worth pointing it out every time.
The problem is that Lojban treats numbers as quantifiers
in the purest logical way, individual or distributive, but
in everyday use we normally want the collective sense.

co'o mi'e xorxes


______________________________________________________
Get Your Private, Free Email at http://www.hotmail.com


--------------------------- ONElist Sponsor ----------------------------

Free shipping through 1/31/2000 at Visualize.com
where you'll find limited edition prints & photographs
for your home, office, collection or gift-giving needs.
<a href=" http://clickme.onelist.com/ad/VisualizeJanuary ">Click Here</a>

------------------------------------------------------------------------

To unsubscribe, send mail to lojban-unsubscrib-@onelist.com
#2220
11:21 AM Wed 26 Jan
 Subject:  comments about  Re: Translation needed
 From:  araize-

From: araize-@newmail.net

la xorxes cusku di'e

>
> Also, the "every day" is missing. First try:
>
>       ji'irevoki'o prenu cu mrobi'o ca ro djedi
>       ri'a le nu xagji a le xagjyki'i rinka
>
> But that says that the same 24000 people die every day!
> We need to change the order of the terms:
>
>       ca ro djedi ji'irevoki'o prenu cu mrobi'o
>       ri'a le nu xagji a le xagjyki'i rinka
>

I didn't think that the position of seltcita sumti made any difference.
Does the book mention this? Maybe this is a more useful way to
do it. Is there a general rule for other sentences and other sumti
tcita?

>
> Also there is a problem with the x2 of verba. I would not
> put "lo nanca" there. I would probably say:
>
>       i pizemu lei mrobi'o cu verba li me'imu
>

How do we know that we're not talking about children under 5
months? It's just possible enough that would be the case.


Adam Raizen
araize-@newmail.net
-------------------
"Oom, Shmoom!"
--David Ben-Gurion

--------------------------- ONElist Sponsor ----------------------------

Get what you deserve with NextCard Visa. ZERO. Rates as low as 0
percent Intro or 9.9 percent Fixed APR, online balance transfers,
Rewards Points, no hidden fees, and much more! Get NextCard today and
get the credit you deserve. Apply now. Get your NextCard Visa at
<a href=" http://clickme.onelist.com/ad/NextcardCreative3 ">Click Here</a>

------------------------------------------------------------------------

To unsubscribe, send mail to lojban-unsubscrib-@onelist.com
#2221
11:39 AM Wed 26 Jan
 Subject:  Re: comments  about Re: Translation needed
 From:  Jorge Llambias

From: "Jorge Llambias" jjllambia-@hotmail.com

la adam cusku di'e

> >       ji'irevoki'o prenu cu mrobi'o ca ro djedi
> >       ri'a le nu xagji a le xagjyki'i rinka
> >
> > But that says that the same 24000 people die every day!
> > We need to change the order of the terms:
> >
> >       ca ro djedi ji'irevoki'o prenu cu mrobi'o
> >       ri'a le nu xagji a le xagjyki'i rinka
>
>I didn't think that the position of seltcita sumti made any difference.
>Does the book mention this?

Probably not explicitly, but tagged terms behave just as
regular terms, so the order of quantification should work
just as for regular terms.

> >       i pizemu lei mrobi'o cu verba li me'imu
>
>How do we know that we're not talking about children under 5
>months? It's just possible enough that would be the case.

My personal interpretation is that x2 of verba is in years.
I don't know of any logical way in Lojban of filling a slot
with dimensioned numbers, so I take all places that require
a number as dimensionless.

co'o mi'e xorxes





______________________________________________________
Get Your Private, Free Email at http://www.hotmail.com


--------------------------- ONElist Sponsor ----------------------------

Get what you deserve with NextCard Visa. ZERO. Rates as low as 0.0
percent Intro APR, online balance transfers, Rewards Points, no hidden
fees, and much more. Get NextCard today and get the credit you deserve.
Apply now! Get your NextCard Visa at
<a href=" http://clickme.onelist.com/ad/NextcardCreative6 ">Click Here</a>

------------------------------------------------------------------------

To unsubscribe, send mail to lojban-unsubscrib-@onelist.com
#2222
11:59 AM Wed 26 Jan
 Subject:  Way to go?
 From:  Joirin Couwe

From: Joirin Couwe bugathlo-@yahoo.com

I think my mail is probably FAQ, but haven't seen
that. I have mixed two different topics, sorry for
that. The first is request for guidance how to learn
and the second one is need for information about
status of electronic resources (and hopefully polite
complaints).

So could people recommend some (tested:) good ways to
learn lojban?

1) What is the material I should dig?

I did first bump into
http://www.animal.helsinki.fi/lojftp/draft-textbook/lesson02
.
I did print it and I have started to study.

Then I found
ftp://xiron.pc.helsinki.fi/pub/lojban/draft-textbook/lesson02
.
I made comparison and found no differences in content,
other was just wrapped into HTML and <XMP>, probably
just saved in Microsoft Explorer.

In the end I browsed
http://www.animal.helsinki.fi/lojban/refgr_f/refgr.html
what seems to be a little bit similar to
draft-textbook lessons, but not quite the same.

What should I read? Or should I by the book at once,
and concentrate on it?

2) What is the list I should use?

There is still few confusing details, like this
mailing list I'm using now compared what
http://www.animal.helsinki.fi/lojftp/roadmap.html
recommends: "To subscribe, send a message
containing 'subscribe lojban Firstname Lastname' to
listser-@cuvmb.cc.columbia.edu. " So what is this
lojba-@onelist.com for?

===

Actually, now I was surfing addresses for this mail I
did notice something interesting at
ftp://xiron.pc.helsinki.fi/pub/lojban/lojban-list/
directory. The FAQ!

Being dated 'Dec 7, 1995' I assume it contains quite a
few errors, just because time has passed.

3) Is there any plans to "update everything on the
net" :)?

How about updating, possibly rewriting, www.lojban.org
pages and the FAQ? I would like to see it being
written for the people starting up the language -
veterans know where to surf anyway :).

In any case, I would like to see clear separation of
outdated material and new, correct material. That
could be basic page with same structure as before -
page with links like:

* Reasonable new and usable stuff
* Archives
  * Reasonable usable little bit older stuff
  * Archived memories
    * email lists
    * word lists
    * web pages
    * other archives

Now it's very hard to know what's valid now and what I
should look when I want to know where have we came?

4) Are LogFests still held?

Ps. I have already many questions I have wondered, but
I'm saving those until I know I'm not questionating
things which are decades old :).


=====
- Bug Athlon, new insect processor
__________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
Talk to your friends online with Yahoo! Messenger.
http://im.yahoo.com

--------------------------- ONElist Sponsor ----------------------------

Get what you deserve with NextCard Visa. ZERO. Rates as low as 0
percent Intro or 9.9 percent Fixed APR, online balance transfers,
Rewards Points, no hidden fees, and much more! Get NextCard today and
get the credit you deserve. Apply now. Get your NextCard Visa at
<a href=" http://clickme.onelist.com/ad/NextcardCreative3 ">Click Here</a>

------------------------------------------------------------------------

To unsubscribe, send mail to lojban-unsubscrib-@onelist.com
#2223
12:34 PM Wed 26 Jan
 Subject:  Re: Re: Subjunctives
 From:  Jorge Llambias

From: "Jorge Llambias" jjllambia-@hotmail.com


la pycyn cusku di'e

>I can't check with the Book right now, but my memory of how the tense and
>aspects were intended to work is as follows.
>1) tense and aspect are separated (and from mood and the like as well, all
>of
>which are jumbled together in English and, historically at least, in most
>familiar languages)

Yes, tense: ca, pu, ba; aspect: ca'o, ba'o, pu'o, etc.

>2) tense is based on axis and vector reference, though not restricted to
>the
>four axes implicit in most natural systems (though never fully realized in
>any).

What is the fourth axis of natural systems, besides past,
present and future?

>3) The same cmavo are used for retro vector and past axis, for simultaneous
>vector and present axis, and for pro vector and future axis.  The
>differences
>are positional and/or determined by context.  Thus, pu might be either past
>vector to the current axis or establishing a new axis prior to the current
>one.

I think this is not the way pu is presented in the Book.
If I understand what you are saying (maybe I don't, because
I am not at all familiar with that terminology) then the
Book says that pu always establishes a new axis prior
to the current one. (Except in its function after ZEhAs,
but I don't think that's what you're talking about.)

>Where the difference is too important to be left to context to decide,
>capu would indicate the vector (brief glance back without chaning the focus
>of the narrative) and puca the new axis (or maybe it is the other way
>'round
>-- I ermember this got argued and I forget which one, this seems most
>natural
>to me at the moment).

This is definitely not in the Book. According to the Book, puca,
capu and pu by itself are all the same, and they all shift the
axis to the past.

>4)  Only axes are points, so that punctile clauses, like ca..., must apply
>to
>axes, making  bapu ca... unambiguous "event before the future event
>indicated
>by ca..."
>Of course, with a clearly future event, maybe even capu would work.

If I understand correctly, you are saying that in bapu
ba establishes the axis and pu is a vector, and then the
{ca le cerni} clause must indicate the axis. That does not
agree with the Book. According to the Book's rules,
{ca le cerni} could not indicate a point at the middle
of the "imaginary journey" represented by bapu.

>5) Aspects carry temporal implications but are not completely temporal.
>Thus, the perfective of an event does entail that the event occurred in the
>past (though even this can be doubted, since some maintain that the
>inchoative does not entail that the event takes place in the future) but
>the
>converse does not quite follow, for not all past events still throw their
>aspectual shadows into the present (effects from causes, continued
>existence
>of participants, ... -- the list varies in some unclear ways) as the
>perfective seems to indicate.

Right. Perfective and inchoative are not fully symmetrical,
so I don't see a problem with one entailing that the event
occurred and the other not entailing that it will occur.

>6) So, in Lojban, past axis, retro vector and perfective aspect are all
>slightly different and in different ways.   But in English they tend to
>fall
>together, certainly away from present tense, and thus sorting out which one
>is meant by a given Englsh sentence is not subject to clear rules, except
>that one must think what one means to say, both in the given sentence and
>in
>those around it.

I agree there are no strict rules. All I can say is that
I have not found examples where composite tenses (bapu, puba,
etc) would be useful.

[...]
>Talk of possible worlds really brings up a point about my favorite (and
>everybody else's least favorite) change, restricted quantification.  As
>Xorxes points out, "for every possible world w, if I have a million in w,
>then I am rich in w" could be true just because there is no possible world
>in
>which I have a million -- hardly an improvement on the material reading in
>this world.  On the other hand "in every possible world in which I have a
>million, w, I am rich in w" looks only at the worlds in which I have a
>muillion -- and says that there are some.  Clearly the latter is much
>closer
>to what is wanted, though even it may not be quite right (Lojban has the
>means to do this, but does not use it for this purpose).

And it is interesting that this solution: "in every possible
world in which I have a million, w, I am rich in w" does not
use the logical IF, and is remarkably similar to the {va'o}
solution:

    va'o le nu mi ponse lo rupnu megdo kei mi ricfu
    Under the conditions where I have a mill., I am rich.
    In every world where I have a mill., I am rich.

co'o mi'e xorxes






______________________________________________________
Get Your Private, Free Email at http://www.hotmail.com


--------------------------- ONElist Sponsor ----------------------------

GREAT PET STUFF FOR ONLY $1.00!  REALLY!
Visit's Petopia's $1.00 Dreams and pick from over 20 pet toys & treats
with values up to $20for only $1.00!  While supplies last!
<a href=" http://clickme.onelist.com/ad/Petopia112 ">Click Here</a>

------------------------------------------------------------------------

To unsubscribe, send mail to lojban-unsubscrib-@onelist.com
#2224
12:41 PM Wed 26 Jan
 Subject:  Re: Way to Go?
 From:  michael helsem

From: "michael helsem" graywyver-@hotmail.com

answer: "buy the book at once"! (they need the money).

suggest trying to follow jbosnu as an exercise; also, any
archived lojban-list that's not by me (my translations tend
to be confusingly non-literal)...

also, i have found wanting & attempting to express something in
lojban is more interesting than trying to simply memorize heaps
of textbook all at once.

co'omi'e maikl.
______________________________________________________
Get Your Private, Free Email at http://www.hotmail.com


--------------------------- ONElist Sponsor ----------------------------

$20 OFF PURCHASES FOR YOUR CAT AT PETOPIA.COM!
The Internet Pet Paradise has everything you need to keep your cat happy
& healthy!  Shop now to receive $20 off purchases of $30 or more!
<a href=" http://clickme.onelist.com/ad/Petopia103 ">Click Here</a>

------------------------------------------------------------------------

To unsubscribe, send mail to lojban-unsubscrib-@onelist.com
#2225
12:44 PM Wed 26 Jan
 Subject:  Re: Way to go?
 From:  Bob LeChevalier (lojbab)

From: "Bob LeChevalier (lojbab)" lojba-@lojban.org

At 12:03 PM 01/26/2000 -0800, Joirin Couwe wrote:
>I think my mail is probably FAQ, but haven't seen
>that. I have mixed two different topics, sorry for
>that. The first is request for guidance how to learn
>and the second one is need for information about
>status of electronic resources (and hopefully polite
>complaints).
>
>So could people recommend some (tested:) good ways to
>learn lojban?
>
>1) What is the material I should dig?
>
>I did first bump into
>http://www.animal.helsinki.fi/lojftp/draft-textbook/lesson02
>.
>I did print it and I have started to study.
>
>Then I found
>ftp://xiron.pc.helsinki.fi/pub/lojban/draft-textbook/lesson02

Those two are essentially the same site.  "xiron" has been superseded by
"animal" for reasons local to the Finland site manager, but most sites
still point to xiron.  The "lojftp" means that the particular file is a
mirror of the main archive at www.lojban.org

>I made comparison and found no differences in content,
>other was just wrapped into HTML and <XMP>, probably
>just saved in Microsoft Explorer.
>
>In the end I browsed
>http://www.animal.helsinki.fi/lojban/refgr_f/refgr.html
>what seems to be a little bit similar to
>draft-textbook lessons, but not quite the same.

The reference grammar is quite different from the draft textbook (and was
written by a different person).  However, chapter 2 of the reference
grammar is a rewritten version of older material.

>What should I read? Or should I by the book at once,
>and concentrate on it?

If you are seriously studying the language, then you will need the
reference grammar book at some point not too far off.  It is in effect our
"bible".  The draft textbook lessons, written some 10 years ago, were an
attempt to teach, but people found it less useful than I intended.  It is
at a lower level than the reference grammar, though, so some may find it
easier to understand for what it covers.

Many people now starting off are using Robin Turner's introductory article
and lessons - start at:

http://neptune.spaceports.com/~words/lojban.html

and after reading it, follow the links to the first 7 lessons of his course.

Chapter 2 of the reference grammar is the next more sophisticated language
introduction.  You may also find on the Lojban sites references to a
"Lojban minilesson" and a "diagrammed summary of the language".  These are
also worth looking at, and were combined into the reference grammar chapter.

The textbook is reasonably good as a follow-on to these introductions, but
does not cover the whole language, and being 10 years old has a small
number of obsolescence errors.

The reference grammar is comprehensive and good, but may be hard for a
newcomer to jump right into.  The book version is especially useful because
it has an extensive index.

>2) What is the list I should use?
>
>There is still few confusing details, like this
>mailing list I'm using now compared what
>http://www.animal.helsinki.fi/lojftp/roadmap.html
>recommends: "To subscribe, send a message
>containing 'subscribe lojban Firstname Lastname' to
>listser-@cuvmb.cc.columbia.edu. " So what is this
>lojba-@onelist.com for?

The columbia list is dead, but is still around on a lot of older Lojban web
sites as well as elsewhere on the net.  We moved Lojban List to "onelist"
because the columbia site was going to stop offering listserve capability,
but it is the same list with the same core of subscribers.  You can
technically still subscribe to the old list, but I send you a message
telling you to subscribe to the onelist as soon as I notice it, and no one
posts to that list anymore.

There is now also a second email list on onelist for posting only in
Lojban.  the keyword is "jbosnu" instead of "lojban"

>===
>
>Actually, now I was surfing addresses for this mail I
>did notice something interesting at
>ftp://xiron.pc.helsinki.fi/pub/lojban/lojban-list/
>directory. The FAQ!
>
>Being dated 'Dec 7, 1995' I assume it contains quite a
>few errors, just because time has passed.

Yes, it has errors, but not too many.

>3) Is there any plans to "update everything on the
>net" :)?

Yes.

>How about updating, possibly rewriting, www.lojban.org
>pages and the FAQ? I would like to see it being
>written for the people starting up the language -
>veterans know where to surf anyway :).
>
>In any case, I would like to see clear separation of
>outdated material and new, correct material. That
>could be basic page with same structure as before -
>page with links like:
>
>* Reasonable new and usable stuff
>* Archives
>   * Reasonable usable little bit older stuff
>   * Archived memories
>     * email lists
>     * word lists
>     * web pages
>     * other archives
>
>Now it's very hard to know what's valid now and what I
>should look when I want to know where have we came?

As a matter of fact, this is being done, though not quite along the lines
of what you say, though I will be moving obsolete stuff to a separate
directory.  Other than net addresses, not much is *totally* obsolete unless
it is more than 11 years old - the language has been stable that long, and
older stuff was replaced by newer versions long ago.

I will be uploading and announcing a major revision to the www.lojban.org
website within a day or two, as I am spending a lot of time checking and
resolving old links.  I'm working on the last file now, the roadmap you
mentioned, but it is the biggest.

>4) Are LogFests still held?

Yes.  Still at my house in Fairfax VA.  We have not set the date for this
year's meeting yet, but it will probably be in July or August.

>Ps. I have already many questions I have wondered, but
>I'm saving those until I know I'm not questionating
>things which are decades old :).

The stuff you are questioning is not decades old in the first place, and
since the language hasn't had many significant changes in 10 years or so
(most changes have been additions), answers to questions will largely be
the same now as they were then (maybe fewer "I don't knows").

lojbab

lojbab
----
lojbab                     ***NOTE NEW ADDRESS***           lojba-@lojban.org
Bob LeChevalier, President, The Logical Language Group, Inc.
2904 Beau Lane, Fairfax VA 22031-1303 USA               703-385-0273
Artificial language Loglan/Lojban:
   see Lojban WWW Server: href=" http://xiron.pc.helsinki.fi/lojban/ "
   Order _The Complete Lojban Language_ - see our Web pages or ask me.


--------------------------- ONElist Sponsor ----------------------------

$20 OFF PURCHASES FOR YOUR RABBIT AT PETOPIA.COM!
The Internet Pet Paradise has everything you need to keep your rabbit happy
& healthy!  Shop now to receive $20 off purchases of $30 or more!
<a href=" http://clickme.onelist.com/ad/Petopia114 ">Click Here</a>

------------------------------------------------------------------------

To unsubscribe, send mail to lojban-unsubscrib-@onelist.com
#2226
1:06 PM Wed 26 Jan
 Subject:  Re: Way to go?
 From:  Jorge Llambias

From: "Jorge Llambias" jjllambia-@hotmail.com


la lojbab cusku di'e

>  You may also find on the Lojban sites references to a
>"Lojban minilesson" and a "diagrammed summary of the language".  >These are
>also worth looking at, and were combined into the reference grammar
>chapter.

Definitely a good place to start. I remember that seeing
those diagrams that showed the basic structure of the
Lojban sentence:

     sumti selbri sumti sumti sumti ...

is what made me understand the whole grammar. Then you start
learning about the different adornments to the selbri and
to the sumti, more complex terms, etc, but once you understand
that one basic pattern everything makes sense.

co'o mi'e xorxes


______________________________________________________
Get Your Private, Free Email at http://www.hotmail.com


--------------------------- ONElist Sponsor ----------------------------

$20 OFF PURCHASES FOR YOUR PET AT PETOPIA.COM!
Treat your pet to $20 off all the food, toys & treats your pet desires when
you purchase $30 or more!   Hurry! Offer expires soon!
<a href=" http://clickme.onelist.com/ad/Petopia115 ">Click Here</a>

------------------------------------------------------------------------

To unsubscribe, send mail to lojban-unsubscrib-@onelist.com
#2227
2:24 PM Wed 26 Jan
 Subject:  Re: Fwd: [lojban] Subjunctive?
 From:  Invent Yourself

From: Invent Yourself xo-@sixgirls.org

On Wed, 26 Jan 2000, Jorge Llambias wrote:

> From: "Jorge Llambias" jjllambia-@hotmail.com
>
> (2) ganai mi ponse lo megdo rupnu gi mi pindi
>     "Either I don't have a million dollars, or I am poor."
>
> That is also true. I don't have a million dollars, so
> no matter what I put as the second term the sentence
> will be true.


It's not true in the general case; it does not fit TFTT, as a conditional
should, because in reality, millionaires are not called poor.

Specifically:

A:"I am a millionaire"  B:"I am poor"   A-->B  (is A-->B really)

         T                   T            T          F
         T                   F            F          T





-----
Practical men, who believe themselves to be quite exempt from any
intellectual influences, are usually the slaves of some defunct
economist. Madmen in authority, who hear voices in the air, are
distilling their frenzy from some academic scribbler of a few
years back."     --  John Maynard Keynes


--------------------------- ONElist Sponsor ----------------------------

GREAT PET STUFF FOR ONLY $1.00!  REALLY!
Visit's Petopia's $1.00 Dreams and pick from over 20 pet toys & treats
with values up to $20for only $1.00!  While supplies last!
<a href=" http://clickme.onelist.com/ad/Petopia112 ">Click Here</a>

------------------------------------------------------------------------

To unsubscribe, send mail to lojban-unsubscrib-@onelist.com
#2228
3:56 PM Wed 26 Jan
 Subject:  unsubscribe
 From:  Marshall Joseph Armintor

From: Marshall Joseph Armintor moj-@owlnet.rice.edu


    unsubscribe


___________________________________________________________________
Marshall Armintor/moj-@rice.edu/Grad.English Dept. Rice University/
Fondren IT Guy x5833 <<"Rock music is mostly about moving big black
boxes from one side of town to the other in the back of your car."
 - John Thompson, of Pere Ubu>>
___________________________________________________________________


--------------------------- ONElist Sponsor ----------------------------

Free shipping through 1/31/2000 at Visualize.com
where you'll find limited edition prints & photographs
for your home, office, collection or gift-giving needs.
<a href=" http://clickme.onelist.com/ad/VisualizeJanuary ">Click Here</a>

------------------------------------------------------------------------

To unsubscribe, send mail to lojban-unsubscrib-@onelist.com
#2229
4:49 PM Wed 26 Jan
 Subject:  Re: Fwd: [lojban]  Subjunctive?
 From:  Jorge Llambias

From: "Jorge Llambias" jjllambia-@hotmail.com


la xod cusku di'e

> > (2) ganai mi ponse lo megdo rupnu gi mi pindi
> >     "Either I don't have a million dollars, or I am poor."
> >
> > That is also true. I don't have a million dollars, so
> > no matter what I put as the second term the sentence
> > will be true.
>
>It's not true in the general case; it does not fit TFTT, as a conditional
>should, because in reality, millionaires are not called poor.

What are you calling the "general case"? There is nothing
general about that sentence, it is about one definite
person and a definite amount of money.

What you seem to be thinking about is something like
"for all x, either x does not have a million dollars
or x is poor". I agree that sentence is false. But
sentence (2) above is true, there is no "general case"
of that sentence unless you start talking about
quantifying over possible worlds or things like that.

>Specifically:
>
>A:"I am a millionaire"  B:"I am poor"   A-->B  (is A-->B really)
>
>          T                   T            T          F
>          T                   F            F          T

A is false, so A->B is true. That's that.

If you are considering cases where A is true, then you are
either talking of a different "I", not me, and therefore
not the same sentence, or you are talking of a different
world, not this real one, where I do have a million dollars.
In either case you need to do something more than the bare
true statement: ganai mi ponse lo megdo rupnu gi mi pindi

co'o mi'e xorxes


______________________________________________________
Get Your Private, Free Email at http://www.hotmail.com


--------------------------- ONElist Sponsor ----------------------------

Looking for the lowest refinance rate for your mortgage?
GetSmart.com can help. We'll help you find the loan you
need - quick, easy, and FREE click
<a href=" http://clickme.onelist.com/ad/GetSmartRefinance ">Click Here</a>

------------------------------------------------------------------------

To unsubscribe, send mail to lojban-unsubscrib-@onelist.com
#2230
9:24 PM Wed 26 Jan
 Subject:  Subjunctive!
 From:  Invent Yourself

From: Invent Yourself xo-@sixgirls.org

Issue 1:
I think the problem is the glossing of TFTT as "if, then". If this does
not really correlate to the English meaning, why is it taught that way?

Issue 2:
If the proper way to express the millionaire concept is by va'o, what
actual use does ganai, gi have?


-----
Practical men, who believe themselves to be quite exempt from any
intellectual influences, are usually the slaves of some defunct
economist. Madmen in authority, who hear voices in the air, are
distilling their frenzy from some academic scribbler of a few
years back."     --  John Maynard Keynes


--------------------------- ONElist Sponsor ----------------------------

Looking for the lowest refinance rate for your mortgage?
GetSmart.com can help. We'll help you find the loan you
need - quick, easy, and FREE click
<a href=" http://clickme.onelist.com/ad/GetSmartRefinance ">Click Here</a>

------------------------------------------------------------------------

To unsubscribe, send mail to lojban-unsubscrib-@onelist.com
#2231
10:04 PM Wed 26 Jan
 Subject:  Lojban List archives
 From:  Bob LeChevalier-Logical Langu

From: Bob LeChevalier-Logical Language Group lojba-@lojban.org

As I indicated in an earlier message, I am in the process of updating the
lojban.org web pages.  One outstanding item is the desire of having
downloadable archives of Lojban List for the time period since John Cowan
last added to the directory (4/98).  Findmail/egroups has all traffic since
5/98 archived, but they are in individual messages and HTML format.  We
would like to have the master archive up to date.  Does anyone have usable
archives with full headers, ideally grouped by month, that we can put on
our site?  If so, can we arrange to transfer them in the next couple of
days before I finish the web page update?

(My own personal archives are damaged - I accidentally saved a few months
worth deleting the headers, which of course makes the archive useless
except as a repository of some Lojban text).

lojbab
----
lojbab                     ***NOTE NEW ADDRESS***           lojba-@lojban.org
Bob LeChevalier, President, The Logical Language Group, Inc.
2904 Beau Lane, Fairfax VA 22031-1303 USA               703-385-0273
Artificial language Loglan/Lojban:
   see Lojban WWW Server: href=" http://xiron.pc.helsinki.fi/lojban/ "
   Order _The Complete Lojban Language_ - see our Web pages or ask me.


--------------------------- ONElist Sponsor ----------------------------

Looking for the lowest refinance rate for your mortgage?
GetSmart.com can help. We'll help you find the loan you
need - quick, easy, and FREE click
<a href=" http://clickme.onelist.com/ad/GetSmartRefinance ">Click Here</a>

------------------------------------------------------------------------

To unsubscribe, send mail to lojban-unsubscrib-@onelist.com
#2232
1:34 AM Thu 27 Jan
 Subject:  Re: Lojban List  archives
 From:  c.d.wrigh-

From: c.d.wrigh-@solipsys.compulink.co.uk


> One outstanding item is the desire of having
> downloadable archives of Lojban List for the
> time period since John Cowan last added to the
> directory (4/98) ...

> Does anyone have usable archives with full headers,
> ideally grouped by month, that we can put on our
> site?  If so, can we arrange to transfer them in
> the next couple of days before I finish the web
> page update?

I have archives dating back to August 21, 1998.
I think they're complete, but you'd have to check
a sample.  If you don't get a better offer then
email me and we'll work something out.


cdw
--
\\//  ze'uku ko jmive gi'e snada

--------------------------- ONElist Sponsor ----------------------------

Looking for the lowest refinance rate for your mortgage?
GetSmart.com can help. We'll help you find the loan you
need - quick, easy, and FREE click
<a href=" http://clickme.onelist.com/ad/GetSmartRefinance ">Click Here</a>

------------------------------------------------------------------------

To unsubscribe, send mail to lojban-unsubscrib-@onelist.com
#2233
10:36 AM Thu 27 Jan
 Subject:  Lojban news -  draft Web page - please comment
 From:  Bob LeChevalier-Logical Langu

From: Bob LeChevalier-Logical Language Group lojba-@lojban.org

I am posting for comment the non-HTML text of the new LLG web site news
page.  I am of course especially interested in additional projects,
volunteer efforts that you would like to see mentioned (I have so far
omitted projects that I have little involvement in, since I cannot say the
status; I will have a section for unofficial projects when I have material).

The pages have NOT yet been uploaded, and given the local weather
situation, may not get set up till after the weekend, though I am trying to
beat that.

lojbab

==============

What is new on this site - 26 January 2000
This site has been completed revamped as of 26 January 2000. There are
numerous minor differences in many information files, in order to enhance
consistency. Approximately 20 Megabytes of new material has been added.
Some highlights:
A new home page, with frame and non-frame versions.
The Lojban List FAQ is now the Lojban FAQ, and will be maintained with
current information.
This News page will be maintained, and include current project status (also
found in the FAQ).
There is a learning Lojban page (now currently a copy of the short FAQ
section on that subject) which is intended to guide newcomers and more
experienced learners as to what to do next. A volunteer is sought to
enhance this section.
Evgueni Sklyanin's Lojban-Links page is copied on this site, with local
links where stuff exists on the local Lojban site. A few links were added,
deleted, or edited from the original. Over time, the mirror may be
maintained, or this site's version may go in different directions.
Text - lojbab's text archive is now on-line. Much of this is old and
outdated. But it is all here. Some miscellaneous other texts have been added.
Dictionary - lojbab's current working archive for the dictionary is now
on-line. The dictionary files are updated. There is a book skeleton that is
archaic, but which embodies the last book outline. There are a few unedited
KWIC files that will eventually be added to the main dictionary file.
Finally, there are new word frequency lists for the various word categories
current to 5 December 1999.. The lujvo word frequency list also contains
the latest work done for the lujvo list place structures, as well as
thousands of new lujvo that we need volunteers to help define..
JL - all issues of JL, and the latest issue of LK are now available on-line
Etymologies - the current language population based weights are available
Software - Some software that had not been linked into the web pages, like
Nora's parser/glosser, have been added. LogFlash source is now available on
line.
History - A history section has been added with some key documents from
relatively ancient times (these may be somewhat obsolete). Minutes for old
LLG official meetings, and the Bylaws of LLG are also available here.
The finalized portions of Robin Turner's minicourse will be mirrored here.


Latest project update to the Lojban FAQ
18. What projects are being worked on? When will they be done?
The Reference Grammar is of course complete and published.
Dictionary - The draft Lojban dictionary is online, compiled primarily by
lojbab. It needs to have lujvo and cmavo added to it. Volunteers are
welcome at all levels of expertise for lujvo definition work; there are
thousands of words to be defined with more created all the time. Nora
LeChevalier serves as lead on the lujvo definition project. The set of
working files for additions to the dictionary, as of January 2000, may be
found here.
Introduction - John Cowan is leading the effort to produce a new set of
introductory materials that can be published as a cheap book, much less
expensively than our current printed introductory material.
Web site - Veijo Vilva maintains the Helsinki web site. lojbab maintains
the Lojban File Archive and associated web site. xod maintains the Lojban
Web ring, which has sites created by several other Lojbanists. Evgueni
Sklyanin maintains a set of links to Lojban Web pages created by several
others in the Lojban community; copies of this page of links will be kept
on the Lojban File Archive and the Helsinki site because of occasional
connectivity problems to the home site in Russia.
FAQ - lojbab now maintains this FAQ, but wants to delegate the job.
Textbook - a draft of the textbook is available online, but it is out of
date and incomplete. No one is working on it right now; it's considered
fairly low priority until the dictionary is done. The main limitation in
the existing draft is that a lot of beginner texts are needed which are
both interesting and without use of esoteric features of the language.
People tend to move beyond the beginner stage very rapidly once they start
trying to use the language non-trivially, and few therefore end up able to
confine themselves to the most basic features of the language.
JL and LK - these will resume publication as soon as the LLG address data
base is brought up to date, hopefully sometime during the year 2000.
Changes and additions were recorded on paper for around 6 years without
being entered onto the computer, and we are obliged to account to people
for their money balances. This process will start with the completion of
the Web page update.
Random Sentence Generator - this is being updated to be consistent with the
baselined grammar. The existing program on this site dates back to grammar
2.08, about 8 years old. The update is low priority.
LogFlash 2 - Nora LeChevalier is working on a version of LogFlash for
learning rafsi and lujvo-making. The prior version became unmaintainably
obsolete in 1989.
LogFlash Language Learning research - lojbab gathers data from all
Lojbanists willing to use LogFlash on a systematic basis for a few months.
This data will help prove or disprove the meaningfulness of the recognition
scores used to create Lojban gismu, and may lead to publishable general
research in the field of 2nd language learning. Contact lojbab if interested.
Lojban Adventure - Nick Nicholas translated the text portion of the classic
Colossal Cave text adventure game into Lojban several years ago. At the
time there were plans to update an old Adventure program to support the new
text, but the current state of adventure game design suggests that someone
use the game engine called Inform (which has a specific manual for writing
adventure games in translation). See the rec.arts.interactive-fiction FAQ,
http://www.davidglasser.net/raiffaq/ and the interactive fiction archive.
Eaton Interface - Helen Eaton's 1930s era list of the most frequently used
concepts in 4 European languages has long been a benchmark for completeness
of the Lojban lexicon. Volunteers are welcome to translate 1 or more pages
of words from this list to Lojban. The file eaton.zip contains word lists
by page and proposed TLI Loglan words for each concept (the tanru metaphors
for the proposed TLI words are often very poor, but could spark ideas).
Chrestomathy - This is a collection of translated and original writings
designed to show a wide sampling of a language. We will want to produce one
of these for Lojban after the core language description books are written.
We need translations of texts generally a bit longer than the typical
effort (1000-10000 words), and as wide a variety of texts and styles, from
as many different source languages as possible.
TLI Loglan Interface - If there is ever to be a reunification of the two
Loglan language communities, the first step will necessarily be a
translation interface mapping words and grammar from TLI Loglan to Lojban
(the other direction may also be desirable, but would be more difficult,
and we intend to coalesce the community around the Lojban baseline in any
event). The first step in this, a mapping of gismu and cmavo, has been
done, although there has been no accounting for place structures of the TLI
Loglan gismu, and the work may be slightly outdated. See oldlog.txt for the
work that has been done.

WHEN?
Projects are all being done by volunteers, and therefore will be done when
people finish them. We've promised dates in the past and invariably been
wrong. The priorities are for the dictionary and the introductory materials
book, with the latter more likely to come out earlier than the former.
Publication of books is severely hampered by finances (anyone with money is
welcome to donate!), and the lack of ability to publish in the short term
has tended to hurt motivation and productivity of those working on those
publications.
----
lojbab                     ***NOTE NEW ADDRESS***           lojba-@lojban.org
Bob LeChevalier, President, The Logical Language Group, Inc.
2904 Beau Lane, Fairfax VA 22031-1303 USA               703-385-0273
Artificial language Loglan/Lojban:
   see Lojban WWW Server: href=" http://xiron.pc.helsinki.fi/lojban/ "
   Order _The Complete Lojban Language_ - see our Web pages or ask me.


--------------------------- ONElist Sponsor ----------------------------

Looking for the lowest refinance rate for your mortgage?
GetSmart.com can help. We'll help you find the loan you
need - quick, easy, and FREE click
<a href=" http://clickme.onelist.com/ad/GetSmartRefinance ">Click Here</a>

------------------------------------------------------------------------

To unsubscribe, send mail to lojban-unsubscrib-@onelist.com
#2234
10:38 AM Thu 27 Jan
 Subject:  Draft update of Lojban FAQ
 From:  Bob LeChevalier-Logical Langu

From: Bob LeChevalier-Logical Language Group lojba-@lojban.org

Following is the non-HTML text of my revision to the Lojban-List FAQ, now
titled the Lojban FAQ.  Please send comments.

lojbab

===================

Lojban FAQ
updated January 19, 2000
Most bold faced words are defined under Question 4.
==============================
TECHNICAL
1a. Why do some texts use <h> instead of <'>?
1b. Could I take a text with <h>s and do a search & replace with <'> and
endup with "standard" Lojban?
1c. Why is one better than the other?
2. How do you borrow words from other languages?
3. Isn't it confusing that some rafsi are identical to cmavo?
4. What are those Lojban word that you are using even in English text?
What's all the other jargon and acronyms you use?
===============================
RESOURCES
5. What's the best way to start learning Lojban?
6. How can I look up gismu, lujvo, and cmavo when I am translating from lojban?
7. Sources of text to read?
8. What messages are appropriate for the Lojban List?
9. What are the abbreviations used on the list's subject lines?
10. Are there archives? WWW site? ftp site?
11. What's available in languages other than English?
12. What software's available?
===============================
GENERAL
13. Who is everybody? Who's in charge?
14. How many people are there in the Lojban community? How many can use
Lojban, and how well?
15. What is LogFest?
===============================
PROJECT STATUS
16. What parts of the language are well worked out, and which parts are in
flux?
17. What are the most current revisions of each part of the language
descriptions?
18. What projects are being worked on? When will they be done?
19. What can I do to help?
=============================
HISTORICAL
20. How was the default place structure order of sumti in a selbri
determined? (There does not appear to be any rhyme or reason for the order
of sumti in many gismu. )
21. How did the gismu get made: discussion, etymology examples
22. What's the difference between Loglan and Lojban? How is Loglan-82
related? (it's not!)
23. Why does it have a special meaning when the selbri comes first in a
sentence?
24. Why are there so many words for AND? Why not just let {.e} connect two
sumti, bridi, bridi-tails, or anything else?
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
TECHNICAL
1a. Why do some texts use <h> instead of <'>?
Aesthetic reasons. And Rosta in particular thinks mohi looks better in
print than mo'i and sometimes uses it the hopes that he can influence the
Lojban community to accept this other spelling convention. This is purely a
difference in spelling; they are pronounced the same, and should be
considered different ways of writing the same "letter". This alternate
spelling also is somewhat closer to the spelling of TLI Loglan. There is
another similar spelling convention, which has never been used, designed to
make Lojban look more familiar to potential converts from TLI. This
alternate convention may be found in the Lojban Reference Grammar

1b. Could I take a text with <h>s and do a search and replace with <'> and
end up with "standard" lojban?
Probably not, because people like And have used a number of non-standard
spelling conventions:
<'> is omitted altogether where the vowels couldn't possibly be stuck
together; for example, he'd write coe for co'e, since <oe> is not a legal
combination. He has used <.> as in English, to end a sentence, rather than
as a pause. He has capitalized the first word of the sentence.

1c. Why is one better than the other?
The standard usage is better because each letter corresponds to one sound
and each sound corresponds to one letter. And's usage is better because
<. >and <'> are ugly in the middle of words, and sentences ought to start
with a capital letter to better conform to Roman alphabet spelling conventions.

2. How do you borrow words from other languages?
There are four ways to borrow words. Only the most common method is covered
here; see the Lojban Reference Grammar for more detail. Borrowed words are
called fu'ivla, meaning approximately "copied words" (after all,
"borrowing" implies we're going to give them back someday!)
The use of tanru or lujvo is not always appropriate for very concrete or
specific terms (e. g. 'brie', or 'cobra'), or for jargon words specialized
to a narrow field (e. g. 'quark', 'integral', or 'iambic pentameter').
These words are in effect 'names' for concepts, and the names were invented
by speakers of another language. The vast majority of names for plants,
animals, foods, and scientific terminology cannot be easily expressed as
tanru. They thus must be 'borrowed' (actually 'taken') into Lojban from the
original language, forming words called fu'ivla.
The word must be Lojbanized into one of several permitted fu'ivla forms. A
rafsi is then attached to the beginning of the Lojbanized form, usually
using a vocalic consonant as 'glue' to ensure that the resulting word
doesn't fall apart. The rafsi categorizes or limits the meaning of the
fu'ivla; otherwise a word having several different jargon meanings in other
languages (such as 'integral'), would require a choice made as to which
meaning should be assigned to the fu'ivla.
fu'ivla, like other brivla, are not permitted to have more than one definition.
Summarizing the most common method to make fu'ivla:
Lojbanize the word to be 'borrowed' by the methods used for cmene.
Convert all y's to some other vowel or to a vocalic consonant.
Modify the ending to be a vowel, either by dropping a final consonant or by
adding an extra vowel.
Modify the beginning to be a consonant, either by adding a extra consonant
or dropping an initial vowel.
Choose a gismu (not a rafsi) that categorizes the fu'ivla into a "topic
area". Replace the final vowel of the gismu with a vocalic 'r'.
Prefix the modified gismu to produce the final fu'ivla.
Examples:
  spaghetti -> cidjrspageti or djarspageti
   maple tree -> tricrmeipli
   maple sugar -> saktrmeipli
   mathematical integral -> cmacrnintegra or cmacrntegra
   brie -> cirlrbri
   cobra -> sincrkobra
   quark -> saskrkuarka
   iambic -> pemcrniambo
A fu'ivla thus consists of three parts: the classifier - the glue - the
borrowed part
The quintessential example is djarspageti, meaning "spaghetti". dja is the
classifier: it's the short form rafsi for cidja, meaning "food". {r} is the
glue: it's necessary to keep the word from falling into two parts. spageti
is the Lojbanized version of "spaghetti". The classifier is glued on the
front for two reasons: it helps identify strange borrowings, and it
prevents borrowings that happen to coincide with things that are already
Lojban words. For example if you borrowed the word "spageti" directly, it
could lead to ambiguity in a phrase like
*ko bevri re spageti palta
which could mean "Bring two plates of spaghetti" or something like "Be a
carrying reptile and a plate made of this"
*ko bevri respa ge ti palta.
In a natural language there would be no doubt which of the two was meant,
but Lojban is constructed so that you shouldn't need to understand the
sentence to know where one word ends and the next begins.

3. Isn't it confusing that some rafsi are identical to cmavo?
No, it isn't. In theory you can tell completely from the neighboring
syllables whether something is a cmavo or a rafsi. This is how the computer
is able to parse Lojban without understanding its meaning. For example the
dei in bavlamdei ("tomorrow") is a rafsi for "day", not the cmavo dei, a
special pronoun meaning "this sentence". We know which is which because
Lojban words can't end in a consonant, so dei must be a part of bavlamdei;
bavlam can't be a whole word. (No, it can't be a name, either. Names end
with a consonant followed by a pause, written as a ".") In practice you can
also use your knowledge of the meanings of the words to help with this;
it's possible to think up a sentence like
la .bavlam. dei cusku,
"Bavlam says this sentence.", but it's not likely in practice if you don't
know anyone named "Bavlam"!

4. What are those lojban words that you are using even in English text?
What's all the other jargon and acronyms you use?
Here are APPROXIMATE definitions. Words in ALL CAPS on the Lojban list
often refer to Lojban parts of speech. When this convention is used, the
capitalization of {'} is {h}, so the capitalization of la'e would be {LAhE}
attitudinal - A Lojban interjection (Wow! Eeek!)
audiovisual isomorphism - Spoken and written Lojban should be the same
BAI - Lojban prepositions/adverbs
bridi - Lojban sentence - a "predicate"
brivla - any word that can state a relationship among several objects or
concepts, and thus be the core word in a Lojban bridi - a "predicate word"
cmavo - a "little word" showing structure rather than carrying meaning
cmene - Lojban names
evidential - special word indicating how the speaker got their information
fu'ivla - borrowed word
gadri - Lojban article or determiner - signals the start of a sumti
gismu - basic 5-letter lojban root word; more information
JCB - James Cooke Brown, the inventor of Loglan
JL - ju'i lobypli
ju'i lobypli - a Lojban newsletter/journal. Publication is currently
suspended, but we are hoping to resume publication in the near future.
le lojbo karni - a Lojban newsletter intended to keep our lowest level of
supporters informed as to what is going on (in hopes of inspiring greater
activity).
le'avla - the old word for fu'ivla
LK - le lojbo karni
lujvo - compound word
pe'i - in my opinion
place structure - the specified canonical order of sumti in a Lojban bridi,
so that you know who is doing what to whom.
rafsi - building block(s) of lujvo compound words
selbri - the part of a Lojban sentence that expresses the relationship
between the various objects (sumti)
selma'o - part of speech
slinku'i - a hypothetical borrowed word, which would not be legal because
it could be interpred as parts of other words in some contexts.
sumti - an object or idea which may be related to others, that relationship
being expressed in a Lojban bridi
tanru - a phrase formed of two or more Lojban brivla
TLI - The Loglan Institute

===============================
RESOURCES
5. What's the best way to start learning Lojban?
We recommend
Work through the Lojban mini-lesson and/or Robin Turner's mini-course
(better but incomplete; 7 lessons so far).
Work through the Diagrammed Summary. The mini-lesson and diagrammed summary
were merged and abridged into Chapter 2 of the Reference Grammar.
Read through the Reference Grammar -- reading for concepts, not detail.
Create a cheat sheet with lists of gismu and cmavo you're likely to need.
Read and write Lojban text using the Reference Grammar and your cheat
sheets for reference. Post your text to Lojban List for feedback.
If you get serious about it, use Logflash to bone up on your vocabulary.
If some concepts in any of the above resources seem unclear, the Draft
Textbook lessons may help. Or post your questions to Lojban List.
A source of further resources for learning Lojban is Evgueni Sklyanin's
Lojban Links page.

6. How can I look up gismu, lujvo, and cmavo when I am translating from Lojban?
Use one of these: - print yourself out the gismu, lujvo, and cmavo word
lists as well as the rafsi list - Keep the dictionary online and use a text
editor with searching capability to find stuff in it. In UNIX, make an
alias with the "grep" command.
7. Sources of text to read?
The Lojban file server has texts, some annotated and translated.
The Lojban List will have discussion in Lojban from time to time. Subscribe
at www.onelist.com, keyword lojban
Old issues of ju'i lobypli usually have several examples of commented text,
though early issues may have some obsolete words or usages.
Other Lojbanists publish Web pages, some with Lojban texts and some
entirely in Lojban. Here are some interesting sites.
Stuff on paper can be ordered from the Logical Language Group; however at
this time Lojbab is concentrating on other things and it's much better if
you can retrieve stuff off the net.

8. What messages are appropriate for the Lojban List?
Beginners are very encouraged to post. Anything's appropriate as long as
the title approximately reflects the content, and you're not selling
magazine subscriptions or mail-order brides (exception: it's OK if it's in
Lojban!) You can post on any subject in Lojban, or about Lojban in any
language. You can post in any language you think people will understand.
Postings in Lojban warm the cockles of Lojbab's heart.
9. What are the abbreviations used on the list's subject lines?
A few different people are using different conventions for this purpose,
usually only when list traffic is heavy. You may see:
TECH: technical discussion
TEXT: lojban text
JBO: or T: lojban text
GEN: or G: grammar discussion
PLI: or U: usage discussion
LOJ: or L: logic discussion
CLI: or B: beginner discussion
RET: or Q: question to the experienced (not restricted to beginners)
LIN: or W: whispers
CPE: or R: request for translation
SNU: or C: chat (bau la lojban. ju'o)
VRC: or D: general discussion (anything that won't fit)
TRO: or A: list administration and miscellanea

10. Are there archives? WWW site? ftp site?
Web site: http://www.lojban.org
European Web site: http://animal.helsinki.fi/lojban/lojban.html
11. What's available in languages other than English?
There are brochures in Spanish, French, Esperanto, and Russian. Jorge and
Jose have translated the gismu list into Spanish.
12. What software's available?
Lojban Parser - the definitive standard of Lojban grammar, verifies the
grammaticality of text
Lojban Parser/Glosser (includes the parser, roughly glosses text to English)
Logflash 1 - teaches gismu; Turbo-Pascal source (not well-documented) here
Logflash 3 - teaches cmavo
Prolog Semantic Analyzer
Random Sentence Generator - updated version in progress, the available
version has somewhat obsolete grammar definitions
Lujvo-maker program
===============================
GENERAL
13. Who is everybody? Who's in charge?
[Wanna be on this list? Write a paragraph in Lojban about yourself and I'll
include it.]
Scott Brickner - sj-@universe.digex.net
coi mi'e skat. .i mi se cnino la lojban. gi'e troci .o'nai lo penydjuxa'a
.i mi nanca li cire gi'e speni .i mi se jibri le sampla di'o la ibubymym.
sedi'o la ostyn. teksas. seka'i la merlyn. grup. .i mi ctuca mi fo la
lojban. lenu samci'etcidu .i.o'acu'i mi xamgu birjyzbasu .i mi ca
birjyzbasu lo ke kerfu bo grute bo vrusi ke'e ke galtu bo fusra birje .i mi
sutra je zmadu tcidu .ije le cumymu'efi'a ralju
James Cooke Brown - The inventor of Loglan - not associated with Lojban now
John Clifford aka pc - pycy-@aol.com - A logician, specializing in tense
logic, who's been involved with the project since the 1970s
John Cowan - cowa-@ccil.org - Reference Grammar author
Jose Ramon Gallo Vazquez - gallo%galileo.fi-@cs.us.es
coi mi'e. xoses. .i mi spano .i mi xabju la sevi,ias. ne le sangu'e .i mi
ca nanca lireci .i mi se ctuca fo lo samske di'o le diklo ckule ni'o mi
nelci le bangu .e le kulnu .e le lijda vu'o poi su'anai tcesau gi'a stuna
gi'a cizra .iji'a mi nelci le nu tcidu loi cukta gi'e ciska .i mi tcenei
tu'a la stanislav. lem. joi la tolki,en. joi la borxes. joi la robrt.
greivz. joi so'i lo drata .i mi nelci lo drata noi nuncusku nandu mi bau la
lojban. .i mi tcenei la lojban. ni'o be'ucu'i .i .a'o di'u na malspano vau
zo'o .i co'o mi'e. xoses.
lojbab aka Bob LeChevalier - lojba-@lojban.org - President of the Logical
Language Group.
Cyril Slobin - slobi-@ice.ru
mi'e kir. .i lu ki,RIL. ar,KAD,ie,vitc. ZLO,bin. li'u mulno cmene mi .i mi
jbena fi li pabi pi'e so pi'e pasoxaze .i mi rusko .i mi xabju la moskvas.
.i mi skami certu .i la xelen. speni mi .i la serges. bersa mi .i la dinax.
me le mi mlatu .i zo'o lo lojbo cmene cu cizra mi .i mi na ca kakne lenu
zmadu cusku .i ri'a bo la lojban. ca fange mi .i ku'i mi pacna lenu ri ba
slabu mi
Goran Topic - amada-@ibm.net
mi'e goran. .i mi caki nanca lirepapisu'o .i le kerfa . e le kanla vu'o
po'e mi manbu'e .i mi mitre lipazeji'imu gi'e ki'ogra lixaji'imu ni'o mi
ba'o . uu mlicre lo xumske gi'e ku'i certu lo samske gi'ebo tadni lo banske
.i mi pu tadni ca'o lo nanca remei lo cmacyske .iku'i mi steba gi'esemu'ibo
sisti ca lenu mi co'a jimpe ledu'u mi selzdi lenu cilre le vrici bangu noi
so'ecu'o tcefange gi'ebazibo co'a tadni lo banske ni'o mi pu jivna fi lenu
dansu loi spano joi xispo joi merko gi'e pu remoi loi za'e remei pe le mi
gugde .i ku'i le mi dansu kansa co'a kansa na'ebo mi .ije mi steba dukse
fi'o fanta lenu mi ctuca lo drata ni'oji'a mi tcenei lo xarfi'a gi'e cmima
lo diklo xarfi'agri .i mi nunxeldraco kelci .i mi kelci lo selcpa karda
po'u la djixad. .i mi kelci loi drata ji'a karda ni'osu'a mi te jinvi
ledu'u cizra .ije la'edi'u pluka mi ni'o pe'i dei banzu vau pei co'o mi'e.
goran.

14. How many people are there in the Lojban community? How many can use
Lojban, and how well?
There are about 1500 people on the hard-copy mailing list, most of whom
have a rather low-level interest: they get the hard-copy newsletter le
lojbo karni. Around 130 have paid subscriptions to ju'i lobypli, the more
technical journal. As of January 2000, around 275 people have purchased the
Lojban Reference Grammar, but there are large numbers on our mailing list
who have yet to be notified of its publication (a long story). Aso, as of
that date, there are about 180 people on Lojban List, with the number
rising slowly (about 30% of Lojban List subscribers are from outside the
US, and their ages appear to average under 30). Over 100 people have posted
text in Lojban; a couple dozen have demonstarted ability to converse in
Lojban in real time, and one person, Nick Nicholas, is considered to be
completely fluent in Lojban. (Nick developed his fluency solely through
self-study and translation work - he was able to converse at near-fluent
speed the very first time he spoke to anyone else in Lojban).

15. What is LogFest?
LogFest is the annual gathering of the Logical Language Group. We are
required by law to have an annual meeting, and have used that excuse to
hold a "convention", "party", "social event" for any and all in the
community who are willing to come. LogFest is held at lojbab's house in
Fairfax VA, a suburb of Washington DC, usually over a weekend in July or
August. We have typically had around 20 people come for part or all of the
weekend, and these are usually among the more committed Lojbanists (though
around half the attendees typically are at beginner skill levels). Usually
several people travel a substantial distance in order to attend, and those
people are often treated thereby as a guest of honor of sorts, being a
little more "equal" than the others in choosing what activities we focus
on. Chris Bogart came from Colorado one summer, and was very intent on
Lojban conversation, so we tried much more of this in that last LogFest
than at any previous gathering. Other than this focus, LogFest is largely
unstructured, in part because we don't know who or how many are coming
until a couple of days before things start As such, some have criticized
Logfest for being ill-planned, but it is what the community chooses to make
it. Because of the "officialness" of the gathering, and the fact that we
actually do have a "meeting" when people vote to set policy for the group,
some of the more major decisions affecting the Lojban community tend to get
made at or as a result of the meeting. It is at those meeting where the LLG
leadership feels most accountable to the whole community, because some
people come who are not actively part of the Lojban List net community, and
they usually have a different perspective on priorities than those who have
the chance to inundate themselves in Lojban daily on this list. (We also
note that some of our more substantial financial contributors are not
active on Lojban list, and we are somewhat beholden to them, especially on
issues that result in income or expenditure).
===============================
PROJECT STATUS
16. What parts of the language are well worked out, and which parts are in
flux?
As of 1997, the language design has been baselined for a minimum of 5 years
after the puboication of the three books: the reference grammar, the
dictionary, and the textbook. Since the latter two are not near
publication, this means that no changes to the language will even be
considered until at least 2006. This baseline is non-negotiable, even if we
enter into discussions with The Loglan Institute to reunite the Loglan
community after JCB's retirement.
The phonology, orthography, and morphology have been essentially stable
since 1988, except for a slight change in what counts as a legal fu'ivla.
The gismu list has been stable since 1988, except that about 25 gismu have
been added and 2 gismu changed. This includes the words themselves and the
English keywords; place structures for the gismu had minor changes up until
1994, but since then only clarifications of confusing wording have been
made to the official baseline gismu list, and they are now considered
baselined. The rafsi have been unchanged since 1993, when around 20% were
changed in a final tuning before baselining them. Much existing text was
not been updated after the rafsi change, so texts dated before 1993 may be
confusing. The grammar has been basically stable since 1993, was under
careful documented control after that date, and frozen with the publication
of the Reference Grammar in 1997. The cmavo list has been baselined since
1997, though new compounds may be defined through usage. The only area not
frozen is the addition of new words to the lexicon through borrowing
(fu'ivla) or compounding (lujvo). Those two productive areas are
open-ended; a primary limitation on the language definition is the
inability to record and define new coinings as fast as they are invented.
The basic semantics of the language are stable. There are still ongoing
disputes about "how to say it best in Lojban"; we expect these to continue
indefinitely. As a matter of policy, changes even to Lojban non-baselined
usages, if they would require people to re-learn things, are resisted
vigorously. Almost anything that practical people (i.e. beginners) would
actually use is well worked out, debugged and stable. Points of controversy
include highly technical philosophical issues such as whether empty sets
are or are not excluded as the candidate referent set of a sumti, or
whether current grammar is adequate to represent all possible forms of
indirect questions. The answers are very important (no joke), but people
have been speaking natural languages for years without knowing the answers,
so don't worry about Lojban. And you don't have to know what lambda
calculus is. The major point of controversy that is significant to
beginners is a feeling in some quarters that the policies used to design
the place (argument, sumti) structures of gismu (basic predicate words)
were not exactly optimal. Sometimes the semantics of the less-used places
are at issue. Officially, we'll go with what we have to preserve the
investment people have made in learning the language, and after the
baseline period is over, those who are actually speaking the language will
be allowed to discuss changes in Lojban. There are no plans to ever
seriously discuss changes to the language other than in Lojban.

17. What are the most current revisions of each part of the language
descriptions?
The versions found on the Lojban File Archive are definitive, except that
the printed version of the Reference Grammar takes precedence over the HTML
version. Working drafts of books in preparation are maintained on lojbab's
home computers, and may be slightly updated from the on-line versions.

18. What projects are being worked on? When will they be done?
The Reference Grammar is of course complete and published.
Dictionary - The draft Lojban dictionary is online, compiled primarily by
lojbab. It needs to have lujvo and cmavo added to it. Volunteers are
welcome at all levels of expertise for lujvo definition work; there are
thousands of words to be defined with more created all the time. Nora
LeChevalier serves as lead on the lujvo definition project. The set of
working files for additions to the dictionary, as of January 2000, may be
found here.
Introduction - John Cowan is leading the effort to produce a new set of
introductory materials that can be published as a cheap book, much less
expensive than our current printed introductory material.
Web site - Veijo Vilva maintains the Helsinki web site. lojbab maintains
the Lojban File Archive and associated web site. xod maintains the Lojban
Web ring, which has sites created by several other Lojbanists. Evgueni
Sklyanin maintains a set of links to Lojban Web pages created by several
others in the Lojban community; copies of this page of links will be kept
on the Lojban File Archive and the Helsinki site because of occasional
connectivity problems to the home site in Russia.
FAQ - lojbab now maintains this FAQ, but wants to delegate the job.
Textbook - a draft of the textbook is available online, but it is out of
date and incomplete. No one is working on it right now; it's considered
fairly low priority until the dictionary is done. The main limitation in
the existing draft is that a lot of beginner texts are needed which are
both interesting and without use of esoteric features of the language.
People tend to move beyond the beginner stage very rapidly once they start
trying to use the language non-trivially, and gew therefore end up able to
confine themselves to the most basic features of the language.
JL and LK - these will resume publication as soon as the LLG address data
base is brought up to date, hopefully sometime during the year 2000.
Changes and additions were recorded on paper for around 6 years without
being entered onto the computer, and we are obliged to account to people
for their money balances. This process will start with the completion of
the Web page update.
Random Sentence Generator - this is being updated to be consistent with the
baselined grammar. The existing program on this site dates back to grammar
2.08, about 8 years old. The update is low priority.
LogFlash 2 - Nora LeChevalier is working on a version of LogFlash for
learning rafsi and lujvo-making. The prior version became unmaintainably
obsolete in 1989.
LogFlash Language Learning research - lojbab gathers data from all
Lojbanists willing to use LogFlash on a systematic basis for a few months.
This data will help prove or disprove the meaningfulness of the recognition
scores used to create Lojban gismu, and may lead to publishable general
research in the field of 2nd language learning. Contact lojbab if interested.
Lojban Adventure - Nick Nicholas translated the text portion of the classic
Colossal Cave text adventure game into Lojban several years ago. At the
time there were plans to update an old Adventure program to support thie
new text, but the current state of adventure game design suggests that
someone use the game engine called Inform (which has a specific manual for
writing adventure games in translation). See the
rec.arts.interactive-fiction FAQ, http://www.davidglasser.net/raiffaq/ and
the interactive.
Eaton Interface - Helen Eaton's 1930s era list of the most frequently used
concepts in 4 European languages has long been a benchmark for completeness
of the Lojban lexicon. Volunteers are welcome to translate 1 or more pages
of words from this list to Lojban. The file eaton.zip contains word lists
by page and proposed TLI Loglan words for each concept (the tanru metaphors
for the proposed TLI words are often very poor, but could spark ideas).
Chrestomathy - This is a collection of translated and original writings
designed to show a wide sampling of a language. We will want to produce one
of these for Lojban after the core language description books are written.
We need translations of texts generally a bit longer than the typical
effort (1000-10000 words), and as wide a variety of texts and styles, from
as many different source languages as possible.
TLI Loglan Interface - If there is ever to be a reunification of the two
Loglan language communities, the first step will necessarily be a
translation interface mapping words and grammar from TLI Loglan to Lojban
(the other direction may also be desirable, but would be more difficult,
and we intend to coalesce the community around the Lojban baseline in any
event). The first step in this, a mapping of gismu and cmavo, has been
done, although there has been no accounting for place structures of the TLI
Loglan gismu, and the work may be slightly outdated. See oldlog.txt for the
work that has been done.
WHEN?
Projects are all being done by volunteers, and therefore will be done when
people finish them. We've promised dates in the past and invariably been
wrong. The priorities are for the dictionary and the introductory materials
book, with the latter more likely to come out earlier than the former.
Publication of books is severely hampered by finances (anyone with money is
welcome to donate!), and the lack of ability to publish in the short term
has tended to hurt motivation and productivity of those working on those
publications.
A News page will contain updates to this list of projects, updated every
1-2 months.
19. What can I do to help?
A few possibilities:
Write in Lojban on the list
Post beginner questions on Lojban List and don't be intimidated
Tell about yourself and your interests (in Lojban preferably, but English
is OK) on Lojban List
Write something in Lojban (Try to write something new - translation of
literature is not generally a good or easy beginner exercise).
Study Lojban vocabulary using LogFlash or flashcards
Come to LogFest in July/August in Fairfax VA (near Washington, DC), USA.
Try expressing yourself in Lojban
Invite others to join a live IRC chat in or about Lojban
Send money to LLG
Keep a diary in Lojban
=============================
HISTORICAL
20. How was the default place structure order of sumti in a selbri
determined? (There does not appear to be any rhyme or reason for the order
of sumti in many gismu. )
They went through a lot of revisions; it's something in between planning
and evolution. There is a considerable amount of system there, but it is
ill-documented.
The nice thing to know is that you don't have to memorize the place
structures. Just using the language, you will come to have a feel for which
places are present, and in what order.

21. How did the gismu get made: discussion, etymology examples?
The full set of etymologies is on the File Server . There isn't a lot of
explanation, but the etymogies in 6 languages and the scoring for each
language are given, in order Chinese/English/Hindi/Spanish/Russian/Arabic -
a 0 score means that the language made no contribution to the word, and
thus its etymological keyword did not matter. The languages were weighted.
While new gismu are not being made, lojbab updates the weighting based on
estimated numbers of first and second language speakers every couple of
years. The original and 1999 weights may be found here.

22. What's the difference between Loglan and Lojban? How is Loglan-82
related? (it's not!)
James Cooke Brown (JCB) came up with the idea of Loglan in the 1940s, and
starting inventing the language around 1955. It's been evolving ever since.
In 1982-4 or so there was a political disagreement and the Loglan community
fell apart. A couple of years later, Bob LeChevalier (lojbab), then working
with JCB, attempted to resurrect the community. This led to a falling out
based on JCB's proprietary intellectual property claims on the language.
The community split into two efforts, with JCB at the head of of the rump
effort, The Loglan Institute (TLI), and (lojbab) at the head of the other,
the Logical Language Group (LLG). The latter is Lojban, which LLG (backed
up by a court decision) considers a subcategory of Loglan. JCB has recently
retired as leader of TLI - he is 79 years old, and it is unclear if the
rump organization has leadership capable of sustaining the effort. A more
lengthy discussion of the issues can be found here, and in older issues of
ju'i lobypli
lojbab makes occasional efforts to spark discussion that would lead to
reunification of the efforts behind Lojban (no consideration will be given
to abandoning the Lojban baseline).
Loglan-82 is a completely unrelated computer language developed in Poland
by people unaware of the existence of the Loglan/Lojban project.

23. Why does it have a special meaning when the selbri comes first?
In Loglan it used to be a command, but now we use either ko or
attitudinals. In a poi broda phrase it's likely that you'll want x1 to be
ke'a and to explicitly state x2. If V-initial weren't special, and if
syntax within a poi clause were consistent with sentence-level syntax, then
you'd have toexplicitly use fe or zo'e or ke'a to get to the x2. For
example, now we say
le nanmu poi prami mi
and the x1 of prami is elided,and we can assume it's ke'a, which here
equals le nanmu. Without this special treatment of V-initial, we'd have to say
le nanmu poi prami ke'a mi
or
le nanmu poi ke'a prami mi
or
le nanmu poi ke'a mi prami.
So: it saves 2 syllables in what's arguably the most common way of using
poi. May or may not be worth it, depending on how you value word order
flexibility vs. brevity. In general it lets you easily get to x2 in
sentences without an x1.

24. Why are there so many words for AND? Why not just let {.e} connect two
sumti, bridi, bridi-tails, or anything else?
We use different connectives for different scopes. Doing so helps the
listener keep track of what exactly the speaker wants connected. This is
much more important in speech than in text, because in text you can reread
and ponder. If you have a multi-part nested sumti joined to another
multi-part nested sumti, having clear indicators of scope may make the
sentence understandable when otherwise it is not. It is therefore hoped
that spoken Lojban and written Lojban can be similar in level of
complexity. (You know, audiovisual isomorphism).
----
lojbab                     ***NOTE NEW ADDRESS***           lojba-@lojban.org
Bob LeChevalier, President, The Logical Language Group, Inc.
2904 Beau Lane, Fairfax VA 22031-1303 USA               703-385-0273
Artificial language Loglan/Lojban:
   see Lojban WWW Server: href=" http://xiron.pc.helsinki.fi/lojban/ "
   Order _The Complete Lojban Language_ - see our Web pages or ask me.


--------------------------- ONElist Sponsor ----------------------------

Looking for the lowest refinance rate for your mortgage?
GetSmart.com can help. We'll help you find the loan you
need - quick, easy, and FREE click
<a href=" http://clickme.onelist.com/ad/GetSmartRefinance ">Click Here</a>

------------------------------------------------------------------------

To unsubscribe, send mail to lojban-unsubscrib-@onelist.com
#2235
12:40 PM Thu 27 Jan
 Subject:  Re: Draft update of Lojban  FAQ
 From:  John Cowan

From: John Cowan jcowa-@reutershealth.com

Bob LeChevalier-Logical Language Group wrote:

> Probably not, because people like And have used a number of non-standard
> spelling conventions:

Change "And" to "And Rosta", or it looks like a typo.

> la .bavlam. dei cusku,

Should be "bavLAM."  No initial pause needed, but "bavlamdei" is
stressed "bavLAMdei", so this makes the point sharper.

> attitudinal - A Lojban interjection (Wow! Eeek!)

"corresponding to "Wow!" or "Eek!" in English".

> ju'i lobypli - a Lojban newsletter/journal. Publication is currently
> suspended, but we are hoping to resume publication in the near future.

"in future".

> le lojbo karni - a Lojban newsletter intended to keep our lowest level of
> supporters informed as to what is going on (in hopes of inspiring greater
> activity).

"Also currently suspended."


> Postings in Lojban warm the cockles of Lojbab's heart.

"but he often doesn't have time to read them."

--

Schlingt dreifach einen Kreis vom dies! || John Cowan jcowa-@reutershealth.com
Schliesst euer Aug vor heiliger Schau,  || http://www.reutershealth.com
Denn er genoss vom Honig-Tau,           || http://www.ccil.org/~cowan
Und trank die Milch vom Paradies.            -- Coleridge (tr. Politzer)

--------------------------- ONElist Sponsor ----------------------------

Looking for the lowest refinance rate for your mortgage?
GetSmart.com can help. We'll help you find the loan you
need - quick, easy, and FREE click
<a href=" http://clickme.onelist.com/ad/GetSmartRefinance ">Click Here</a>

------------------------------------------------------------------------

To unsubscribe, send mail to lojban-unsubscrib-@onelist.com
#2236
12:44 PM Thu 27 Jan
 Subject:  cpana le balre
 From:  michael helsem

From: "michael helsem" graywyver-@hotmail.com


blanu murse fa role
   bartu .ije carvi
.i .ii bisli co dargu
   nu'oku .i leca mokca
le se djuno be mi'a

la cfipyboi pu'i jimte
   .i .ei cuxna ku'i
le dimna pluta be fi ti
   fa lo jalra .aji'a
lo jgira belenu jijnu

("On the Edge": 'All outside glimmers bluely. And it rains.
(Fear!) Possible ice on the road. The present moment bounds
our knowledge, on Confuserball. But one must choose the fate-
path from here, be it a cockroach or even, one proud of his intuition.')

______________________________________________________
Get Your Private, Free Email at http://www.hotmail.com


--------------------------- ONElist Sponsor ----------------------------

Looking for the lowest refinance rate for your mortgage?
GetSmart.com can help. We'll help you find the loan you
need - quick, easy, and FREE click
<a href=" http://clickme.onelist.com/ad/GetSmartRefinance ">Click Here</a>

------------------------------------------------------------------------

To unsubscribe, send mail to lojban-unsubscrib-@onelist.com
