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Re: [engelang] Re: [jboske] LoCCan3 development ideas.


On Thu, Aug 2, 2012 at 1:10 PM, And Rosta <and.rosta@hidden.email> wrote:
I think you should start by setting out the project's aims. Here are some incompatible aims that have come up in previous discussion:

1. Create a loglang that is the best possible according to our current state of knowledge.

2. Create a loglang that satisfies the key requirement of unambiguously encoding explicit logical forms in a way that is no less concise than the corresponding natlang or Lojban sentences (which are not unambiguous and explicit).

3. Design a loglang by means of incremental revisions from Lojban, preserving some sort of backwards compatibility.

I have the impression that your aim is (3). Others, such as Stevo, favour (1). I favour (2), and because of that I think we don't yet know enough to create a successful loglang, tho that doesn't block work on some areas of the grammar, such as the phonology (-- not such an interesting or important matter for loglangs) or the 'predicaticon' (i.e. the lexicon but leaving the morphophonological aspect of lexical entries blank).

I'm still interested in discussing (1), tho. I don't see the point of (3), but I guess I'm still interested is discussing the rationale for it.

I think that the rationale for (3) would be to have a more-or-less complete language to contemplate as one tinkers.  If you start with from scratch, as with the several systems being shared on this thread, all you have is the barest of sketches, not anything like a real language.  If you start with a fork of Lojban, and then freely reform one part of the time, with the only constraint being that at the end of each reform-stage the language must be in a working and relatively self-consistent state, then you will have a complete language each stage of the way.  The ultimate product need not be constrained by any backward compatibility.

It's the same as if you wished to create your own operating system.  You almost certainly would want to begin with someone else's code base, e.g. Unix. You would probably not want to simply open up a text editor and then start typing away.