[YG Conlang Archives] > [jboske group] > messages [Date Index] [Thread Index] >
Lojbab: > At 10:09 PM 6/2/03 +0100, And wrote: > >Lojbab: > > > >I'm a bit lost about who we're talking about here. If we're talking > > > >about the "I don't understand the logic, so I'm going to use Lojban > > > >as if it were my native English" school, then I agree. But if we're > > > >talking about the "Certain natural languages can express conceptually > > > >fundamental notions that Lojban cannot express in any practical way" > > > > > > I should not in passing that such a claim requires a rather strong version > > > of the SWH that anti-SWHers should not be lightly invoking > > > >No, it doesn't. The practicality of an expression partly involves how > >longwinded it is, > > I disagree, primarily because of by experience with Russian. By English > standards, parts of Russian seems terribly long-winded and non-Zipfean: > their word for "use" is "izpolzovat" (sp?), their word for "artistic" is 5 > syllables, they express dates in years the LOOOONg way: one thousand, nine > hundred, ninety seven. They still seem to use these quite a lot despite > their length. On the other hand, they encode a lot of tense/aspect > information in their perfective system, which English expresses only > cumbersomely with extra words. Still English isn't tenseless and uses > those words, longwinded though they may be What is the motivation for 'Zipf' if not practicality? I wonder whether "izpolzovat" is as frequent as "use". Perhaps it is only as frequent as "utilize". "Artistic" does not strike me as so frequent a word that a bit of extra length is conspicuously cumbersome. As for the cumbersomeness of English 'tense', I'm not sure what you mean. Probably periphrastic constructions. But these tend to be either infrequent or very phonologically reduced. Also, in saying that "the practicality of an expression partly involves how longwinded it is", I also have in mind that the speaker makes a calculation of an expression's cost in terms of effort to the speaker and hearer and benefit in terms of communicating information. For any bit of information (by which I mean to include small bits, such as whether a reference is singular or plural), there will be a degree of cumbersomeness beyond which the informativeness is not worth the effort. I would have thought this point was blindingly obvious, were it not that so many Lojbanists seem oblivious to it. You can see this point illustrated today on Lojban-list, by Pierre and Craig discussing ways to avoid zo'u, with Craig suggesting that the effort of using zo'u is not worth the benefit of saying what one means (in casual speech). > >so even though any language can express anything > >(I conjecture), they don't do it with equal facility > > I don't think that length is necessarily a measure of facility. The > English tense system, for an English speaker is no more cumbersome than the > briefer Russian tense system is for the Russian, and indeed English > speakers find learning the shorter Russian system quite burdensome > > >Furthermore, > >we regularly come up against stuff that is easy to say in English but > >that nobody can find a way to say in Lojban > > I think that this is partly lack of fluency. I think they can be said in > Lojban, but we haven't thought things through always. I hope Nick will give this one of his splendidly scornful tirades. If I may echo Jordan's rhetoric, this notion of "lack of fluency" is a load of shite. Sure we lack fluency. But there is nothing there to be fluent in. If they can be said in Lojban, the bits of Lojban they can be said in are the bits of Lojban that haven't been created yet. So when I say "nobody can find a way to say in Lojban", I mean "nobody can find a way to say in the bits of Lojban that have been created so far". As for not having thought things through, if jboske debates don't count as thinking things through, then nothing does. I am not acquainted with any group of people better able to think things through than the jboskepre. I am not talking about just within the Lojban community; I'm talking about all aspects of my life. > We are also sticklers for "doing it right" in Lojban, whereas English > speakers merely try for what works. Lojban could adopt sloppy "what > works" solutions to a lot of these issues, but thereby would defeat > its goals of logical expressiveness Quite so. We -- to differing degrees -- wish that Lojban exceed the spec for natural languages. > I contend for example that all of the nuance that people are trying for in > the gadri are NOT especially expressible in English Different grammarians have different views on the extent of polysemy in grammatical categories. Generally, the more formalist one is by persuasion, the more one favours monosemy, and on that view it is the case that not all the nuances are encoded in English. But we do conceptually distinguish the nuances when communicating in English. Since Lojban won't tolerate polysemy, then Lojban must either find different ways of encoding each nuance, or leave some nuances unencoded. (Personally I don't think it vital that every nuance be encoded. But I do think that the most important distinctions should be encoded, and that that is not what the current gadri system does.) > > > >Ideally all lojbanists would do that. OTOH, learning lojban as a > > > >means of learning logic seems like quite a good thing > > > > > > And indeed one proposed SWH test involved comparing the "logical thinking" > > > of Lojbanists not formally taught or studying logic with controls of lay > > > people, lay people taught formal logic in English, and Lojbanists taught > > > formal logic (before, during, or after learning the language) > >[...] > > > This isn't a particularly easy test to conduct, but no one ever claimed > > > that Lojban would make it easy to do so, merely plausible > > > >I don't really see why Lojban commends itself as a language of experiment > >Indeed, as you say in the snipped bit, the test would work better with > >native speakers, so a natural language would be a better choice than > >Lojban > > But no natural language is well-designed to produce a measureable > distinction in any axis that really matters. That is one reason why > researchers are stuck using color terms - they form measureable > distinctions between languages; on the other hand it is not clear how color > terms might be significant to thought I can't really comment on this without a precise specification of the version of whorfianism that the experiment is supposed to test. I may be wrong, but my impression is that colour terms were chosen because they were an easy way to prove a general point, not because they were the only way. > Meanwhile, if we were to, say, try to determine if one natural language > more than another enabled "logical thinking", we would quickly run afoul of > the political correctness that Jordan seems to be invoking. How do we tell > whether facility with logic (or whatever other trait is tested for) is due > to the language, as opposed to whether the "race" (ethnicity) that speaks > the language is genetically less able to handle logic. Unfortunately, > native speakers of most languages are ethnically distinct from those who > speak different languages > > We also have the problem of recognizing in a natural language that it does > or does not "enable logical thinking". The features of natural language > seem haphazard and not systematically designed to accomplish any particular > purpose As you yourself recognize, this is fraught with difficulties, as is using Lojban as the language of experiment. I conclude that there must be easier ways to test SW -- as evidenced by the ways that psychologists actually do try to test it. --And.