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Copyright, 1990-1, by the Logical Language Group, Inc. 2904 Beau Lane, Fairfax VA 22031-1303 USA Phone (703) 385-0273 lojbab@grebyn.com All rights reserved. Permission to copy granted subject to your verification that this is the latest version of this document, that your distribution be for the promotion of Lojban, that there is no charge for the product, and that this copyright notice is included intact in the copy. Number 13 - August 1990 Copyright 1990, The Logical Language Group, Inc. 2904 Beau Lane, Fairfax VA 22031 USA (703)385-0273 Permission granted to copy, without charge to recipient, when for purpose of promotion of Lojban. Lojban Grammar Baselined cmavo list Completed Details Inside, and More. Ju'i Lobypli (JL) is the quarterly journal of The Logical Language Group, Inc., known in these pages as la lojbangirz. la lojbangirz. is a non-profit organization formed for the purpose of completing and spreading the logical human language "Lojban", and informing the community about logical languages in general. la lojbangirz. is a non- profit organization under Section 501(c)(3) of the U.S. Internal Revenue Code. Your donations (not contributions to your voluntary balance) are tax-deductible on U.S. and most state income taxes. Donors are notified at the end of each year of their total deductible donations. We note for all potential donors that our bylaws require us to spend no more than 30% of our receipts on administrative expenses, and that you are welcome to make you gifts conditional upon our meeting this requirement. Press run for this issue of Ju'i Lobypli: 360. We now have over 680 people on our active mailing list. Note: References to 'Loglan' in this text, unless specifically noted, do not relate to the 'trademark' claimed by The Loglan Institute, Inc., or to products identified by that 'trademark'. Your Mailing Label Your mailing label reports your current mailing status, and your current voluntary balance including this issue. Please notify us if you wish to be in a different mailing code category. Balances reflect contributions received thru 15 August 1990. Mailing codes (and approximate annual balance needs) are defined as follows: Level B - Product Announcements Only Level R - This is a Review Copy for Publications Level 0 - le lojbo karni - $4 initially + $5/year balance requested Level 1 - Ju'i Lobypli - $20 initially + $20/year balance requested Level 2 - Level 1 materials and baselined products - $25 initially + $25/year balance requested Level 3 - Level 2 materials and lesson materials - $50 initially + $40/year balance requested OUR FINANCES HAVE REACHED A CRISIS; we will have to take action. Please read the news on Finances inside. If you have a negative balance over -$50, we must reduce your mailing level to level 0 unless you contact us with a very special reason. If you have a balance between $-25 and $-50, we are also likely to reduce you to level 0, but can be more flexible, especially if we hear from you. Those with lower negative balances will be reduced on a case-by-case basis. If you have a negative balance, write to us, and try to contribute something towards your balance; even if you only send $5 or $10. Those who contribute some money will not be cut back yet, but we need to hear from you by 20 October. Note that, due to size, the base price for this issue of JL is just short of $10.00. Contents of This Issue 2 This issue marks major milestones, but reports our serious financial situation. The issue was delayed almost a month because we didn't have enough money to pay for it. This issue includes the new grammar baseline and the cmavo list as separate enclosures to an over-50 page issue. However, if our finances do not improve significantly, future issues will be much shorter. The choice is up to all of you. Bob LeChevalier starts a regular 'column' written directly in Lojban, and without translation. As of this issue, all the materials needed to read Lojban text have been distributed - its time to set an example of using the language. We also include Lojban writings from Michael Helsem, who has written some 40 poems in Lojban, and from Athelstan and John Cowan. Our regular news section discusses results from LogFest 90, an update on the textbook plans, and our financial woes. We also include two items from the editor of the Esperanto League for North America newsletter, Don Harlow, a response to JL11's Esperanto article and an article by Don on artificial languages, reprinted from his newsletter with permission. We have some writings from Andy Hilgartner, outlining his several decades of General Semantics research that have recently been affected by his contact with Lojban. Finally, LogFest attendees chose to have the community vote on the logo and another issue. Please respond by 20 October. If you are level 3, or have used LogFlash, we are also asking you to report on where you are at in learning the language by then. There will be another weekend get-together at Bob and Nora's place that weekend and everyone is invited. Let us know you are coming. Table of Contents News LogFest Results - Lojban Grammar Baselined, gismu List Baseline Changes --3 cmavo Dictionary Progress --8 Finances --9 Language Definition Status Summary --11 Products Status (including Textbook Update) --13 International News - Athelstan's Travel Plans --15 News From the Institute --16 JL11 Esperanto Discussion - A Response from Don Harlow --16 Masters of Tongue Fu, by Don Harlow --24 Two Papers by Andy Hilgartner --29 Letters, Comments, and Responses --32 le lojbo se ciska --40 Enclosures - Baselined Machine Grammar, Abbreviated cmavo List, Ballot/Questionnaire Computer Net Information If you have access to Usenet/UUCP/Internet, you can send messages and text files (including things for JL publication) to Bob at: lojbab@snark.thyrsus.com Join the Lojban news-group. Send your mailing address to: lojban-list-request@snark.thyrsus.com Send traffic for the news-group to: lojban-list@snark.thyrsus.com Please keep us informed if your network mailing address changes. Compuserve subscribers can participate. Precede any of the above addresses with INTERNET: and use your normal Compuserve mail facility (its possible that you can send only to addresses in the '@' format). Usenet/Internet people can send to Compuserve addresses by changing the comma in the Compuserve address to a period: nnnnn.mmmm@compuserve.com Whether you wish to participate in the news-group or not, it is useful for us to know your Compuserve address. For example, any decision for la lojbangirz. to obtain a Compuserve account will be based on a need to serve a goodly number of you that want to exchange information. 3 We've been requested to more explicitly identify people Several people are working on condensed versions of the who are referred to by initials in JL, and will regularly grammar that are more understandable to everyday people. do so in this spot, immediately before the news section. These versions, written in a format called 'Extended BNF' Note that 'Athelstan' is that person's real name, used in are only two to three pages long. The primary weakness of his public life, and is not a pseudonym. E-BNF grammars is that they cannot be verified by YACC; we therefore want to ensure that the versions are thoroughly 'pc' - Dr. John Parks-Clifford, Professor of Logic and checked before publishing them. Philosophy at the University of Missouri - St. Louis and Anyone interested in working on the E-BNF effort should Vice-President of la lojbangirz.; he is usually addressed contact us. John Cowan and Carl Burke are leading the as 'pc' by the community. effort, and will respond to you. Include a Compuserve or 'Bob', 'lojbab' - Bob LeChevalier - President of la Usenet/Internet/ Bitnet address if you have one, and want lojbangirz., and editor of Ju'i Lobypli and le lojbo karni. to communicate via net. 'JCB', 'Jim Brown'- Dr. James Cooke Brown, inventor of the language, and founder of the Loglan project. gismu List Baseline Changes - The list of proposed new 'The Institute' - The Loglan Institute, Inc., JCB's gismu swelled just before LogFest from the list presented organization for spreading his version of Loglan, which we in the last JL issue, making for a lively, if long, session call 'Institute Loglan'. at LogFest devoted to going over the proposals. About 3/4 of the changes were adopted, with a couple of issues left up in the air for further comment from the community. News Almost all of the changes are additions to the list of gismu, the type of change having least impact on someone LogFest Results learning the language. There was one word change accepted, the change from "ckamu" to "mleca" discussed in the last Lojban Grammar Baselined - By consensus, the attendees at issue. LogFest approved a preliminary baseline of the Lojban gram- There are three changes to keywords for existing gismu, mar, subject to minor corrections and typos that were specifically the gismu for some of our basic Lojban expected to show up before publishing in this issue. (An language concepts ("gismu", "tanru", and "lujvo"); these awful lot of work was accomplished in the last two weeks word changes are not changes to the meaning of the gismu, before LogFest, and the copies printed for LogFest were but are instead corrections to eliminate misconceptions. rather hurriedly prepared.) The existing keywords are the words that Jim Brown used in A final baseline is expected in about 6-9 months, after his writings for the concepts, and have historically been the textbook is completed. However, given the extremely criticized as being 'the wrong word'. We've stuck with slow rate of change to the grammar up until now, few if any them for tradition, but reactions from the community when substantive changes are expected before the final baseline. the proposals were circulated on the computer network All major subsections of the grammar have now been examined indicated that the keywords were causing confusion and that at least twice, and Bob was able to give lectures on the it was time for a change. attitudinal, tense/modal, negation, MEX, and lerfu systems The problem is, of course, that these concepts are not at LogFest with minimal preparation, demonstrating that commonly used in English, and no English word accurately these new developments are teachable. reflects their meaning. LogFest came up with the phrase The grammar has of course been verified through usage, "root word" to serve for gismu, but was unable to agree on with translations and original materials in a variety of new phrases for "tanru" and "lujvo". Some of the proposals styles and on a variety of subjects, as well as in are described below. For purposes of discussion at conversation. The design has proven solid and robust. LogFest, we limited keyword proposals to 15 characters or The grammar still requires formal usage testing (as less, the existing LogFlash limit. Since we are increasing opposed to disambiguity testing with the computer tool that limit to 20 characters to support the cmavo keywords, 'YACC'), and no one has stepped forward to update the some of you may be able to devise clearer phrases than we parser to the new grammar. In lieu of this, we will be did at LogFest; for example, some of Bob's preferences for updating the random sentence generator to the new grammar, "tanru", "modification pair", "modified concept", or and examining its outputs manually. We also will be using "modified relation", are now permitted. We need your the older parser to examine Michael Helsem's poetry and any suggestions within the next month or two. other Lojban text that is submitted during the preliminary For the new words that have been approved, and for the baseline period, and will ensure that discrepancies are open issues that have obvious new word implications, we accounted for by known changes to the grammar. have already started the word-making process. For the A copy of the approved grammar is included with this first time, we are able to use a native speaker for the issue. The grammar is a 'machine' grammar, and designed primary research in a non-English source language. Vijay primarily for computer use. However, people can understand Vaidyanathan of Albany NY, a native Tamil speaker who is and use it, too, with explanation. We've provided such an fluent in Hindi (and whose wife is a native Hindi speaker) explanation as front matter for the grammar copy, and would is providing the original Hindi research. Mimi Herrmann, a appreciate comments, especially from non-computer people, DC-area language aficionado, is researching the Arabic as to its understandability and usefulness. words. We turned to Russian translator Gary Burgess for 4 aid in Russian, and Bob did the other three languages using favor, since Bengali is Indo-European and confined almost his shelf of dictionaries. When all of the contributors entirely to two countries. get finished, hopefully in a few weeks, Bob's new 386 computer should make short work of building the possible Language Native 2nd Net 1990 1987 words, and we'll be able to tell you the results next Score Wt. Wt. issue. Chinese 754M 339M 923M 35.5 33.5 Lojban gismu are made by searching for sound patterns Hindi 288M 478M 528M 20.5 16.5 that most match the words from the source languages. A English 299M 228M 413M 16 18 score, called a recognition score, is calculated based on Spanish 300M 38M 319M 12 12.5 weighted averages using the speaker population for each Russian 170M 118M 229M 9 12 source language. The weighting system for language popula- Arabic 181M 22M 192M 7 7.5 tions takes the number of native speakers and adds half of Bengali 176M 26M 189M - the number of second language speakers. Portuguese 156M 12M 161M - Bob researched how the last several years affected the language population weights. We had expected a significant We will experiment with both sets of weights in making growth in speakers of other languages, but was surprised to the 20 new gismu to be constructed; there is no policy on find that English has receded, and rather rapidly. While whether to update weights periodically, since we don't it is still the language of choice in international anticipate making many more gismu. business and in science, there are now considered to be Now, here is the summary of decisions made by the LogFest fewer speakers of the language worldwide than there were attendees: just a few years ago. If we use the new data in making the gismu, English drops to 3rd place well behind Hindi, and is being threatened by Spanish. The most striking cause of this change is in India. When India first became independent in 1948, English was often the language of choice as a lingua franca for communication between speakers of the several hundred different languages spoken in India (there were some 15 languages cited as 'official' at the time of independence). Now, however, only English and Hindi are considered 'official', and there is a decided bent towards Hindi. There are some 230 million native Hindi speakers (and perhaps another 60 million Urdu speakers - Urdu is considered by linguists to be the same language as Hindi, but is written in Arabic script). This is about the same number of native speakers as English has world-wide. In second language speakers, the real difference shows up. Hindi is the lingua franca of around 400 million speakers in India, and this number is rapidly increasing under the Indian literacy program. English is now spoken by only 21 million Indians, only 2% of the population. English is also receding in Africa, although not as dramatically. The Russian numbers have also changed, as greater recognition has been placed on the non-Russian nationalities in the Soviet Union. The numbers are confirmed in another source, a survey description of the world's languages edited by B. Comrie, an expert on language universals. The section on English estimates the number of speakers as 350 million, whereas quotes as high as a billion were easy to find when we started surveying languages in 1987 before the initial gismu-making effort. Following are the numbers of speakers in millions derived from the 1990 Britannica Book of the Year. The final column gives the weights normalized to 100. We've given numbers for the next two languages behind Arabic, which are rapidly gaining. However, we are unlikely to replace Arabic with Bengali until the numbers are solidly in its 5 The following proposals were approved with little 2. Add "tears"; controversy: 3. Add "ugly", the opposite of "beautiful"; 4. Add "diffuse", the opposite of "concentrated"; 1. Change "ckamu" to "mleca" for rafsi considerations; 5. Add "deficient", (after discussion, it was decided that 2. Add "daytime", change keyword for "day" ("full day"?, "deficient" is the opposite of "excess" with "sufficient" "24hr day"?); as middle ground. The opposite of "sufficient" then, 3. Add "virtue", as distinct from "good", to parallel with encompasses both excess or deficient; "evil"; 6. Add "alfalfa"; 4. Add "citrus"; 7. Add a common term for the Western Hemisphere continents. 5. Add "cabbage", to include broccoli, cauliflower, and perhaps lettuce; The following are still open issues: 6. Add "hemp", to include natural rope, burlap, marijuana, and hashish; 1. The definition of "arm" was not discussed; we forgot. 7. Add "protein"; The issue was based on our learning that different 8. Add "buckwheat"; cultures include/exclude the hand and the shoulder from 9. Add "cassava", to include taro and yam, and other the concept of "arm". Tentatively, we will define an starchy roots (not tubers); "arm" as a non-supporting limb, without specifically 10. Add "sorghum"; excluding or including the extremity. 11. Add "magenta" and "cyan" as the missing two subtractive 2. It was decided to change the keywords for "tanru" and primary colors; "lujvo". Unfortunately, there has been no consensus on 12. Change the keyword of "gismu" from "primitive" to "root what to change them to. The clear sense is to avoid word"; linguistic jargon and words that have multiple meanings 13. Add "North America", the continent, as distinct from in English such as "compound". There is some sentiment "merko", referring to the U.S.; for keywords that show a parallelism in definitions of 14. Add "South America", the continent, as distinct from the two concepts, though alternatively the parallelism "xispo", referring to Latin America; could be made clear in the extended definition. The 15. Add "Antarctica". proposed choices, in roughly chronological order are: The following proposals were added with considerable debate tanru lujvo and discussion: open compoundclosed compound relation phraseaffix compound 1. Add "glimmering" to cover the concepts of morning and relation phraserelation compound evening twilight, as well as the phenomena of word cluster cluster word "astronomical terminator" and "penumbra"; the poetic word cluster affix cluster usefulness and the astronomical extension of the concept word grouping affix grouping led to passage; grouped words affix word(s) a. "dawn"/"morning twilight" and "evening twilight" modified phrasemodified word were voted down. phrase relationaffix relation 2. Define "morning" and "evening" symmetrically; a. The specific symmetry required much debate; As noted earlier, some slightly longer keywords can be consensus was finally built around a culture-dependent considered, since we have to create a version of LogFlash definition, wherein morning is the time between sleep and supporting the 20-character keywords for cmavo data. Bob work, and evening is the time between work and sleep, is adding the following based on this new option: according to the cultural norm. In a tanru this could be modified to a personal norm. modification pairmodification word 3. In a discussion of "decrease" as an opposite of "increase", initial sentiment for adding it was weak; a. It was noticed that the existing place structure of increase was transitive; it was proposed that by changing the place structure to the intransitive "x1 increases in property x2 by amount x3", an opposite gismu for "de- crease" would be better justified. Without the change, the semantic difference from "adjust" and "add" was felt to be too small. b. The vote to add "decrease" in parallel to the new meaning of "increase" was then successful. The following changes were voted down: 1. Add "text"; 6 3. The familial relationships never quite seem to satisfy. Other options: It was agreed to add "sire" and "dam" to the definitions a. Change "panzi" to be its inverse, making "se panzi" into of "patfu" and "mamta". Later it was suggested that we "offspring"; retain some unsatisfactory holes and combinations, which b. Add a different gismu to be the inverse of "panzi", with are of uncertain importance. The fact that American a keyword something like "engender"; culture is shifting away from traditional family c. Add two gismu to specifically represent the genetic structures makes it unlikely that we (who are almost all relationships "sire" and "dam" as distinct from the Americans) can decide on a culturally neutral solution. social terms "mother" and "father"; The choices are then to be maximally inclusive of the Other options are possible. Note also that "rirni" is not possible relationships, or to pare the list in ways that quite the same as "mother/father", so we may need another ignore American sensibilities. The general preference genderless general term here. seems to be for the former. Thus, we can make the following matrix: For now, we are making up gismu for "engender" as one of the 20 words. The actual word that results may affect the Gender-neutral Male Female Gender-neutral decision. but genetic not-necessarily- genetic In addition to the above, there is also the question of the extended family, which we have long ignored. We can be panzi bersa tixnu se rirni very specific about "mother-mother", "father-sister", and offspring son daughter reared other extended family relationships, but we cannot be general. Most cultures either use very general terms or verba very specific ones (Hindi and Chinese distinguish between a child father's older brother and younger brother as different word-concepts); in American culture, of course, divorce and cifnu remarriage is causing extended family relationships to infant become so complex that specific terms will not suffice. For discussion purposes then, Bob is proposing (and bruna mensi tunba making): brother sister sibling a. "elder/ancestor" for family members of generations preceding the parents (including non-direct line, the se panzi patfu mamta rirni relationship is more social/ethnic than biological). ? father mother rearer Gender would be added via tanru, as would explicit sire dam biological lineage (or a place could be used for specifying lineage, with specific names used in alternation with se jbena properties of the lineage of relation). The conversion mother/father would give "descendant" as well as "grandkids" in the broadest sense. This was independently proposed by John Note that as currently defined, "patfu" and "mamta" are Cowan as "x1 is an ancestor of x2 of degree x3". defined biologically, whereas their counterparts (except b. "aunt/uncle/godparent" for non-lineal (socio-ethnic) "se jbena") need not be. family members of the parental generation. The conversion An obvious suggestion is to make "patfu" and "mamta" non- would give "niece/ nephew". biological. However, it can be argued that with animal c. "cousin" for non-immediate (socio-ethnic) family breeding and genetics, and in some less transitional members of the same generation. cultures, the biological parents have a uniquely important role enough to be considered 'primitive'. If so, the tanru The generalized family relationship is still expressed by "mamta se panzi" and "patfu se panzi" may be too long to be "lanzu", which can be modified via tanru. satisfactory. (We asked Vijay, our Hindi/Tamil expert, though, and at least for human parents, the biological Related Discussion - Days of the week were dis-cussed aspect is secondary to the social relationship - non- prior to the gismu baseline discussion, and it was decided biological parents are called by the same 'mother' and to add color- and continent-based names as alternatives to 'father' terms as biological parents. If this is the case, the number based names that have been standard (it was at the longer tanru for specifying biological parents may be this point that we realized that we were missing 3 of the 7 acceptable.) continents). In addition, the number based names will be set to run from 0 to 7, with Sunday serving as both 0 and 7, depending on speaker preference and cultural orientation. John Cowan expressed great skepticism that any alternate system would catch on. They seem too much like crackpot 'calendar reform' efforts, and also aren't well supported in numerical date representations. He also noted 7 that not all cultures have a 7-day week. The generic adopted, although with no change to the period before the concept of a week is the time between successive market "i" at the beginning of the sentence (see JL12 for both the days, which ranges from 4 to 9 days in agrarian non-Western original proposals and the counters). All typography cultures. He thus suggested that "jeftu" add a place to symbols are optional, and do not affect grammar or indicate the culture (it was later realized that a pronunciation - symbols of punctuation are used IN ADDITION 'standard' is already in the place structure). He is using to the Lojban punctuation words. We won't promise to use days of the week based on the International names of the them in most JL writings. We type Lojban text slowly classically known heavenly bodies, thus allowing him to enough now, without trying to master some new conventions. parallel Romance languages that did likewise. (English and However, we will accept and print Lojban text that uses the the Germanic languages loan-translated the Roman gods used optional conventions. in planet names to the corresponding gods' names from German mythology.) Annual Member's Meeting - On Sunday was the annual Athelstan notes that in Israel, the days are number-named meeting of Members of la lojbangirz., which ran over as from 1st-day to 6th-day, followed by the Sabbath; this is usual, ending rather hurriedly at 3pm after 5 hours of most similar to our adopted system. lively discussion. While everyone in the community is considered a member of Other LogFest Results - LogFest only had about 18 la lojbangirz., we must maintain a formal membership for attendees, but they were a truly exceptional crowd that election of Board members, changes to Bylaws, and as it demonstrated by their commitment to the language that turns out, whatever else the membership decides to act on. Loglan/Lojban is going to continue to grow and prosper. We added 4 new formal members, making a total of 12. More than half were from out of town; three graduates of One major item of business was adoption of the grammar the Blacksburg class came. Almost all were level 3 active baseline, and this was pro forma, almost a letdown after language students; thus we never really got to exercise our the intensity of the previous day's work. We also moved plans to support activities for newcomers at the same time LogFest back a week, effective in 1991. Next year it will as a main track. be on the weekend of June 23, 1991. Make your plans early. Unfortunately, a lot of key people we thought were going If June is a bad time of year for you, there may be to come didn't. For example, Dr. Yorke, scheduled to lead another chance. A second get-together will be held this a discussion of his proposal (printed in JL12), didn't make fall at Bob and Nora's house (so save your maps to it, but won an award for the best excuse ever for not LogFest), tentatively the weekend of October 20-21. coming to LogFest. He called Friday evening to tell us Because the next JL issue will come out too close to then that his house was surrounded by fire trucks. (The lengths to allow meaningful publicity, this is your only notice. people will go to avoid coming! Luckily, the fire was not This year's 'Log-Fair' will be an experiment that will be too serious.) repeated if there is interest. This year's meeting may We discussed Dr. Yorke's proposal anyway. There was also serve as a textbook review party, if Bob has gotten little support - the people working on Lojban are sufficient done to justify this. interested in a full language, not a hybrid form. la Electronic mail distribution of our materials was also lojbangirz. thus will not change its goals and plans to discussed in the meeting, and a committee was formed to match his ideas, although we are willing to support and devise a policy on what things will be released in this encourage anyone who wants to develop the idea further and form. We will use the Planned Languages File Server give it a proper test. Most participants, though, said (discussed in JL12), as well as similar forums such as the that a hybrid LogEnglish might as well use straight English Compuserve Foreign Languages Forum, as official words for the predicates. The loss of audiovisual repositories. All electronic media distributions will have isomorphism is not significant until someone comes up with some type of header giving its status as a draft or a speech recognizer. It was also suggested, and we will baseline, 'copyleft' (similar to Free Software Foundation consider, using such a hybrid form in teaching materials policies) or public domain status or full copyright if for beginners, so that they do not need to master the appropriate. In general, our books and major publications vocabulary to get a start on the unique grammar features of that we need to get income from to survive will be pro- Lojban. This will not be used for the initial textbook, tected - unless events transpire to eliminate need for that however. If someone wants to try this technique in income. All material that defines the language will be teaching a class, let us know. public domain, along with some other things like the Saturday was primarily devoted to technical presentations brochure that we want widely distributed. Most of our on the major areas of the grammar that had been reviewed stuff will be 'copyleft', allowing distribution without for the baseline. Athelstan gave his mini-lesson during charge as long as various notices attached are retained. one gap in this, and we had a short period of Lojban One fear of public domain status before the language has conversation during another gap (Bob was able to make do a solid community was that there is no way that electronic without his word lists. But especially gratifying was that media readers can be certain that they have gotten the several others participated, including some who had not 'real thing'; someone could modify the official documents, been part of a class.) attach any labels we put on to certify 'officialness', and We also discussed John Hodges' proposals on time and redistribute them. The 'correct' solution lies in typography. Bob's counter-proposals on these issues were trademark law, but we are reluctant to go in that direction 8 given our disputes with the Institute. Since we are com- explanatory in some cases; John is working on expanding mitted to a public domain language, we will probably just them. You can use the partial cmavo list from JL10 to make say that if you want to be absolutely certain you have the additional notes on many of the cmavo; the exercise will latest and greatest version of something, you will have to also help you to learn those cmavo that were on that list. order it from la lojbangirz. In many cases, you will need to look up the lexeme for The electronic media committee was also charged with each cmavo in the machine grammar in order to know how it developing an introductory lesson for distribution on is used; some 100 cmavo are each 'in a class by itself' - a electronic (and paper) media. This will be tied in with lexeme with only 1 member whose meaning is solely grammati- our policy on who gets materials without paying for them cal. (see Finances below). The lesson may have some similarity Most of the remaining cmavo are found in a very few to the Esperanto postal mail course. Athelstan has lexemes. Members of lexeme UI are the attitudinals, prepared a draft mini-lesson for this purpose, which is discursives, and observationals used to comment being tried by a few people. The mini-lesson will also metalinguistically on what you are saying. Lexeme BAI partially replace the current, rather unsatisfactory, contains the modals; these can be used somewhat like Overview that we send to new people. adverbs to modify the selbri, or can be used somewhat like A second committee was charged with developing a plan to prepositions to tag sumti that are not part of the place restore our fiscal integrity. The details will be structure, thus tying them into the bridi relationship discussed in the next section. being expressed in the sentence. Lexeme KOhA has the 'pro- Most surprising about these two committees is that the sumti', which act somewhat like English pronouns. Lexeme membership insisted that Bob not be actively involved. COI has vocatives, which are like attitudinals but are "These are NOT Bob jobs!" said Karen Stein. The membership addressed specifically to a listener. Lexeme BY is the seemed concerned that Bob has been spread too thin, and lerfu - the letters and symbols of the alphabet, and these committees could handle things without his active various auxiliary shifts and markers. Lexeme PA are the involvement. So all of the preceding is subject to change numbers and related symbols used to read off numerical by the committees; your Editor doesn't know much more than strings. you beyond what has been said. The formal membership will The English 'keywords' intended for use in LogFlash 3 hopefully have a report from each committee in August, in (which will teach the cmavo), all 20 characters or less, order to allow decisions before Athelstan leaves for Europe are included in the abbreviated cmavo list. Bob and Nora (he is on both committees). reviewed John's list, adding these keywords (needed for Bob comments: It is gratifying that the members feel LogFlash 3 - Bob has learned most of the cmavo now in enough commitment to volunteer significantly firmly to testing that program. See the products section below). We relieve me of what has become too much responsibility. want comments from the community on the keyword choices This is your language, not mine. Finally, a group of before releasing LogFlash 3. Do the keywords make sense to people is acting like they believe me, and acting like it you (assuming that the cmavo definitions do)? is THEIR language, and taking the responsibility needed to The shortened definitions in this list will be expanded make it succeed. into full text definitions for the dictionary, and John intends to devise examples for each grammatical usage of each cmavo. This effort is only a goal, and may not be cmavo Dictionary Progress practical for all words. John Cowan has assumed responsibility for producing a draft version of the cmavo portion of the dictionary, Finances taking over from earlier work done by Jeff Taylor. His first product for us is the abbreviated definition cmavo LogFest attendees recognized that our finances have list included in this issue. reached the point of crisis. The 18 attendees, in John has proven extremely productive in the last few exceptional gestures of support, donated over $1000 to la weeks, helping with the grammar baseline and the E-BNF lojbangirz., but this was merely enough to keep our bank effort, compiling the cmavo index included with this issue, balance positive, allowing this issue to be printed. and volunteering for major work responsibilities on the Even with these donations, our income for this year is dictionary, while contributing valuable suggestions on a running well behind the income for last year, in spite of variety of other topics. He also has started writing a the fact that our audience/customer base is some 50% 'daily' Lojban journal, believed to be a first in that larger. We've kept expenses down; they are also running category (although Jim Carter reported doing likewise with behind last year, but this is primarily due to firm con- an earlier version of the language in the early 1980's). trols on non-vital expenditures. Our new 501(c)(3) status John first learned about Lojban only a couple of months makes U.S. donations tax deductible, but donations are also ago, thus showing how quickly a motivated person can master well below last year even with the recent influx from enough of the language to take a leading role. LogFest. The cmavo index included with this issue is the first The problem is that, while most people who order stuff complete list with definitions since the draft list of pay for it, not all of you do. Our prices have been set at October 1988. The definitions are short, and not very a non-profit level, so each non-paid sale is a pure loss 9 that has to be made up from donations. Sales of our enclosed with this issue is an opportunity to respond software, the only products with a price that makes us some without writing a letter. profit, are down, and probably will continue to be until Of course, we would strongly prefer that you bring your the textbook is published. balance up to the desired support level listed on the front Less than 100 people had positive balances at a recent of each issue for your level ($40 for level 3, $25 for audit. Only a couple of dozen have the balance amounts level 2, $20 for level 1, and $5 for level 0); that way we corresponding to each level that we request on our don't have to keep asking for money each issue. We'll registration forms and in the mailing label summary in each accept whatever you can contribute. But the bottom line is JL issue. Most magazine publishers require you to pay for that those who want the language to succeed, and can afford subscriptions in advance - we cannot afford to have people it, should have balances over $20, or even $50, for our use paying for issues after their balance goes negative. as operating funds, and are contributing a little extra on Several of our largest contributors, who are footing the the side to help us with those who do not pay. bill, are starting to get angry about all this, and have If you feel that your balance charges have been unfair, demanded changes in policy. They want their money going to that we've charged you for something you haven't gotten, promote growth in the language, and not to finance let us know, and we will make the situation right. If you 'deadbeats'. (Harsh words, but that is a direct quote from question whether our material to you isn't worth what we one major contributor.) are charging you, let us know what you think it is worth, The most extreme position is that everyone should be able and we may be willing to negotiate - but be aware that we to afford to contribute something towards their balances - are spending what we charge you. the price of an order of french fries every couple of weeks Your negative voluntary balance is not a 'bill'. We have would fully pay for a level 1 subscription. Anyone not no legal way to collect it if you don't want to pay it. willing to contribute this amount simply isn't interested But if we can't get much higher percentages of people in supporting us. paying for the stuff we send them, we will be in serious The counter to this position recognizes that some people trouble. The question is whether you want us to succeed. don't have the money for french fries, or for Lojban. We If so, you'll contribute. don't want to exclude prisoners, students, and people from Even if most people bring their balances positive, this other countries where incomes are a fraction of those in won't be enough; our expenditures will be rising as we get the U.S. Lojban is not supposed to be a language for the ready to publish the textbook, and as our numbers continue 'monied' class, but for everyone. to grow. We actually need to convince many more of you to An intermediate position, which may win out in the long keep the specified positive balances to support your run, is that we are going to have to insist on payment from subscription level. Those positive balances are our most people, and make exceptions on a case-by-case basis, operating funds that allow us to keep day-to-day business only by special request, and often with strings attached going; we currently spend about $1000 a month. such as required volunteer work or the submission of We've also learned more about the realities of the book writings to show that the beneficiaries are actually using publishing business, and why book prices have gone up so what we're giving them. much in recent years; bookstores and distributors demand Regardless of the final decision, something must be done, and get 40-55% off list price, and even then don't pay for and now. Less than 20% of our people have positive 3 months or more and expect to return the covers of any balances, and we must get the rest of you to pay some books they don't sell (they discard the books - postage and amount towards our expenses on your behalf or we'll have to labor is too high to send the whole book back) for credit. cut you back, or cut you off. Based on this, we need enough income from sales within Some decisions have been made. If your balance is more the existing community to pay the entire pre-publication than $50 negative as of 20 October, you will be cut to print and marketing bill, or we'll be bankrupt. Either level 0. Only a special pleading will change this. that or get a lot of donations, which seems unlikely. Contributing some money, even a little, will probably put As a result of our financial situation and this future off a cutback, if we are convinced that you are likely to reality, all existing discounts are terminated as of 1 continue using the material and contributing some money. August 1990 pending any decisions from the finance If you can pay off your balance, or make a commitment to do committee and the membership. Overseas people (excluding so by a specific time, all the better. US/Canada/Mexico) will be charged a flat 20% surcharge to If your balance is more than $20 negative as of 20 handle the increased postage. The primary impact of this October, you being put on notice that we may have to drop will be that JL prices inside the US will no longer be you to level 0 as well. You should write to us, and try to discounted for bulk mail. send some money, even if it is only $5 or $10. Ideally, A 20% discount will be given on any order over $20 which you will bring your balance positive. is prepaid - i.e. you have enough in your balance, or If your balance is negative at all, and we haven't heard contribute enough to cover the price. (This discount will from you in over a year, we need to hear from you, or you cancel the surcharge for people outside North America.) also may be dropped in level. Even a short note to let us At textbook time, there will probably be a further carrot know you are still interested and reading the material we for those with positive balances. Everyone in the send you will help; if you send some money to bring your community will get an offer to buy the textbook in advance balance positive, all the better. The Ballot/Questionnaire of the official publication date at some discount from list 10 price. We expect that for prepaid orders from people with positive balances, we will be discounting the textbook Phonology - Lojban pronunciation has not changed since price as much as $10. This of course means that the price being baselined over 2 years ago. Few questions have been will be that much higher for everyone else. Those with raised about the design. There is no reason to expect negative balances will likely receive little or no dis- changes for the indefinite future, although we will be count. trying to make the Synopsis discussion more readable to the In addition to all of the above, the finance committee average person before incorporating it into the dictionary. will probably be recommending that we send a fund-raising letter to each of you, independent of JL, pointing out how Morphology - The Lojban morphology has also been baselined much we've accomplished on a mere shoestring and asking you for over 2 years without significant questions being to contribute so that we can continue to produce your raised. There is a remaining open issue on the exact rules language. We still need donations above and beyond paid for borrowing words from other languages. The required sales in order to finance our continued growth (and to pay form - the essence of the design - is firm, but whether off existing debts). there needs to be additional constraints on borrowing forms With our finances as they are, we are at a disadvantage remains a matter to be decided by the people who use the in seeking outside grants; donors look for financial language. stability and community support, and we just aren't getting There has been a proposal, supported most notably by enough. It also costs money to prepare grant proposals, Michael Helsem, that would allow either 'r' or 'n' as the and we don't have it. 'hyphen' after a CVV rafsi, unless the following consonant The finance committee will be considering how to value is the same letter. This is a simple change that would volunteer efforts on our behalf, and we may offer volunteer only increase options (currently, you use only 'r', unless work as a way to ameliorate a negative balance. The the following letter is an 'r', in which case you use 'n'), offerings will be slim; there isn't much volunteer work but we are reluctant to make the change. One reason is that we can place value on, and we can't afford to 'pay' that it seems too unimportant to justify a baseline change. much. Another is that it further increases the number of possible Volunteer activities include translating materials into forms for a lujvo, making it harder to produce the dic- foreign languages, giving talks and recruiting new people, tionary (and taking up more space). Finally, the change and writing significant amounts of Lojban text. In the would constrain le'avla (borrowing) space, something we short term, we're looking for volunteers in the DC area to should avoid unless we have a good reason. come over to Bob's house and type several hundred addresses into the computer - these are addresses of book dealers and Orthography - The Lojban alphabet and required writing reviewers that we will have to contact before the textbook conventions are unchanged since the baseline over 2 years is published. ago. In JL12, Bob proposed some additional optional Your response to all these measures will determine where conventions, which were adopted at LogFest. We've been we go from here. The 350 JL subscribers are Lojban's best given a proposal to use different letters to represent the supporters but also the biggest drain on our resources. If 'i' and 'u' glides in diphthongs, since these technically we can go from 100 people with positive balances (the cur- are different sounds than those in the non-diphthong rent number) to 250, we will probably survive. If we can vowels; we'll probably discuss this proposal prior to next get to 300 or more with balances over $10, the Lojban issue, but expect no changes. project may again be fiscally healthy. We welcome all suggestions for other ways to raise money, gismu - The gismu list was baselined just about two years to gain donations, and get more balance contributions. ago. Specifically baselined were the gismu themselves and the corresponding English keywords. (The rafsi and place structures are discussed below.) Exactly one gismu was Language Definition Status Summary changed at the recent LogFest; no other changes have been even proposed. There have been 4 changes to keywords, With all that hand-wringing about finances, it is worth including the three for "gismu", "tanru", and "lujvo" reviewing what your contributions have bought so far in mentioned above as just approved. All 4 changes were terms of products and services, and most important, in instigated by Lojban learners who expressed confusion about terms of the language itself. the meaning of the word based on the keyword, and suggested The design of the language is basically complete; we a clearer word; none of the gismu meanings, as expressed by await various write-ups before final baseline of the the keyword, have changed. Further changes are not design, because we need to have a clear written statement expected. of what the design is in order to protect that design The recent LogFest provided the first additions to the against change. gismu list since the baseline. There are looser controls The language is stable. Preliminary baseline changes against adding words, since these cause no relearning; have been minimal, and have almost entirely been additions we've been surprised to go two full years (until the to the language that have no impact on people who have recently approved changes) with no additions at all. The already started learning. Let us look at each design area couple of open issues mentioned above may lead to further to see where it stands: additions, and there is an ongoing re-review of the gismu 11 in thesaurus fashion that may reveal one or two possible put the selbri in the 2nd place; the x2 place of the place words, but we don't expect many. structure for "bridi", as printed in the gismu list, makes Two noted Lojbanists, Athelstan and Michael Helsem, have no sense - a bridi is a sentence/relationship and has no voiced the opinion that we should be much more willing to 'meaning' independent of context. The change, of course, add new gismu to the existing set. Tommy Whitlock, on the rendered "selbri" as the appropriate word for the concept, other hand, is adamantly opposed to adding new gismu, since since the word relates by definition to the x2 place of he thinks there are too many already. This balance of "bridi". ("kunbri", for those who were not aware or have opinions among the most senior Lojbanists, and the forgotten, is an artifact-word from before the gismu base- increasing number of active students, means that additions line, and should be replaced by "selbri" where ever you see will occur slowly if at all, and with extensive review from it.) several members of the community. Grammar - The Lojban grammar is defined by a computer- rafsi - The rafsi list has proven as stable as the gismu verified definition called the machine grammar. As list, even though it was not baselined. The reluctance to reported above, this grammar has now been baselined. Even change anything that has been released via LogFlash lists before the baseline, there had been only 3 or 4 changes in has been enough to defer change proposals indefinitely. the last year as we wrote the draft textbook lessons and There was one change early on, when we changed the rafsi of re-examined entire areas of the grammar. These changes "narge" to "-nag-", freeing "-nar-". were in the more esoteric portions of the grammar that were The recently adopted negation proposal split the negation seldom being used, and text written in Lojban since around cmavo "na" into three words, two of which needed rafsi. "- JL8 (including all of the draft lessons) is nearly as nar-" was assigned as the rafsi for "na", while "-nal-" was grammatical now as it was when written. assigned to "na'e". All of the other grammar changes led The new baseline is a 'soft' baseline, that will allow us to the addition of perhaps a half dozen rafsi assigned to to make minor corrections that show up in textbook writing. cmavo, and a couple of the rafsi being freed. (See the Few such changes are expected, but we may find that we can summary with the JL12 attitudinal proposal for a list.) allow some constructs that are currently forbidden, as well There are two change proposals to be considered prior to as rules that we thought were in the grammar that were the next LogFlash release, to make more 'hyphen-friendly' omitted typographically. These changes will not 'enter the rafsi for the abstractors "ka" and "ni" which are being language' officially until the textbook is published. used more commonly in lujvo that require hyphen 'y' than The strength of the grammar is that each of the special originally estimated. Again, no other changes are planned, areas like negation, tense, MEX, and attitudinal although we will be looking at the rafsi more thoroughly at indicators, has received thorough 'end-of-development' the time the dictionary is written, when the rafsi list analyses that make it unlikely that the language will prove will be formally baselined. inconsistent or incomplete in these areas. As recently as We don't want to freeze the rafsi list until we've last issue, we were uncertain that our MEX design would analyzed a lot of lujvo made by as many different stand up to analysis; the final design proved quite Lojbanists as possible, thus minimizing the likelihood that versatile, and we believe that we have met the goal of usage statistics (applied to 'fine-tuning' the selections) being able to readily express any mathematical expression are skewed towards words favored by one or two Lojbanists 'reading it off the notation'. who do not know all the gismu equally well. The weakness of the grammar is that we do not have a parser that reflects the final grammar; such a parser is Place structures - Place structures will also not be needed to test the grammar against a corpus of prepared baselined until the dictionary is written. A very slow sentences, ensuring that the grammar breaks sentences up review and rewrite of all of the place structures is in the way we think it does. We are thus forced to use the progress, and will be completed for the next release of random sentence generator as a 'backwards test tool', LogFlash and the textbook. The new versions of place looking at the sentences it generates from the baseline structures being examined will be expressed in greater grammar, and seeing that they match our intended grammar. detail than those included with the current gismu list, and Still, we don't anticipate that the grammar will change should be easier to understand. (The maximum definition much before its final baseline when the dictionary is size will be 96 characters instead of the current 40.) published. A change to the place structure is inherently a meaning change, and we try to avoid them. Almost all changes have cmavo - The cmavo list in this issue is the first complete been additions and deletions to the last trailing places one in two years, and reflects a lot of changes. There that few have learned or used. More commonly, the changes could be a more cmavo added prior to final baseline, but are clarifications to better let a reader know what type of probably very few (there isn't a lot of spare words sumti value is expected in a sumti place. available for adding); we expect almost no changes other Of all parts of the language design, the place structures than additions. The fact that the list has been published are the least stable and finalized, but Bob can testify will serve as a stabilizing factor. from his experience that only a few changes have ever The keywords for the cmavo are likely to change. Simply affected anything he's written. (Most significant of these put, they haven't been looked at by many people, and are is the place structure of "bridi", which was modified to inherently less valid than the gismu keywords. Since cmavo 12 have little semantic meaning, we have to use short phrases introduction and the single overview lesson, will tell you that don't say a lot to try to convey the memory hook that about Lojban, lightly introducing the basic concepts and an English keyword is supposed to provide. We'd like giving you the 'big picture' of the language. Some areas feedback on the keywords, while recognizing that most are treated very lightly - pronunciation is conveyed only readers don't know that many of the cmavo. by guides that tell you how to say each word and sentence. This is because pronunciation is a 'big subject' and a very All in all, we've accomplished a lot in just 3 years. boring one to start off with. We want you to be motivated With your support, imagine what the next 3 years will to speak the language, not bored. Some of the topics are: bring. the concepts of bridi, cmavo, selbri, tanru, sumti, place structures, conversion, ellipsis, elision, descriptions, abstractions, questions in Lojban. We include a brief Products Status summary of several other unique features that are too difficult to cover in the first lesson. First a reminder that the discount policy has been drastically changed, effective 1 August. A flat 20% Part II will be about ten lessons long, each much shorter surcharge outside of North America; a 20% discount for a than the draft lesson size. This part of the book will paid order (positive balance exceeding the price at the build depth on the basic concepts presented in the time of shipment) over $20. (The discount will cancel the introduction and explain many of the secondary structures overseas surcharge.) Virginia orders should add 4.5% sales that you need to say what you want in Lojban. The Part II tax. Note also that for software, there is no surcharge lessons continue to use a much smaller vocabulary than the for MS-DOS 3 1/2" diskettes, but you must specify in your draft lessons (perhaps 300 words), but expect you to look order if you want them. up some words that are not formally part of the vocabulary Remember that we cannot promise to fill your order unless to be learned. it is prepaid; our finances are too thin right now. A major change is that we will not expect you to learn most of the gismu vocabulary within the first 8 or 9 Textbook Status - Believe it or not, the textbook is lessons. While some people have demonstrated that it can finally started (again). Spaced around 3 issues of JL and be done, most students in the classes have not kept up with one issue of LK in 3 months, planning and conducting the expected pace. The current plan is to add an extra LogFest, researching MEX and tense grammar in time for the stage in LogFlash, before Gaining Control, that exposes you grammar baseline, and assisting John Cowan in assembling to a lot more words quickly, but does not expect you to the gismu list, along with some major work on our legal master them. There will be only 'New Word lessons', 'error battle, Bob finally sat down at the keyboard shortly after practices' and some brief reviews in this introductory mode midnight on July 4. - the object is to have you quickly able to recognize more The new version of the textbook is already unrecognizable words in Lojban text and to learn the scope of the vo- as compared to the first, even though only 20 odd pages are cabulary. Many who have learned part of the vocabulary written so far. The first lesson, which will serve as a have tried to write sentences, but have not been able to language overview, is divided into short sections only a find the right word because they didn't know it was there. page or two long, with many examples and exercises in each You should do better using this modified technique. section to help you see whether you understand. Using a The goal is that by the end of Part II, you will have much smaller vocabulary (perhaps only 25 gismu in lesson completed this initial review of the words, and will be 1), we will examine much more of the basic grammatical started in 'Gaining Control', which will hopefully go much features of the language. By page 20 you will be making smoother for you as you work through Part III. We are Lojban sentences, hopefully with little trouble; in the hoping to shrink the huge demoralizing bubble of error draft lessons you did not make sentences until late in words in the 'Failure Pile' that seems to afflict many lesson 2 - about 80 pages along. people. The textbook will be more interesting to read. We are trying to put more interesting examples in (difficult with very little vocabulary). Several pages have boxed and highlighted recaps of the key points of the text. Many of the most significant and unique features of the language will be touched on by the end of the first lesson. You will know that Lojban is a truly different language quite quickly. The text also ties back to English examples, helping you understand better how English works, based on a comparison with Lojban. Thus, even if you never find a practical use for Lojban, you will receive benefits in terms of expressing yourself better in English (and any other language you learn). Under the current outline, the text is divided into three parts. The first part, which will consist of an 13 Following are the topics to be covered in Part II, in that we pay for the printing bill without waiting for according to the current outline. This is of course distributors and vendors to pay us, and it rewards you for subject to change as the book is written: sticking with us up until now. But to receive the best discount you must have a positive voluntary balance. Lesson 2 - Pronunciation and Word Forms Some Classroom Another progress report will be given next issue, and Expressions perhaps we'll be able to guess at a date by then. Lesson 3 - Learning Vocabulary; Simple tanru Lesson 4 - Making Names Other Products - With the baseline of the grammar and the Lesson 5 - Numbers preparation of the cmavo list, we are moving forward on a Lesson 6 - tanru and lujvo; selbri Structure variety of teaching products. Lesson 7 - sumti and Place Structures; Relative Clauses Most directly dependent on the grammar and the cmavo list Lesson 8 - Tenses and Modals; se tcita sumti is the random sentence generator, which will also be used Lesson 9 - Logical Connectives and Negation to test the grammar. It takes only a few days to Lesson 10 - Discursives and Vocatives incorporate the new standards, and we will probably have an Lesson 11 - Keeping Lojban Unambiguous and Clear update available by 1 October. The update price will be $10; due to our financial situation, we can no longer By the time you start on Part III, you should know some provide updates any cheaper than this. The original price 300 gismu and 50 cmavo by actually having used them in will be $12. sentences. You will not be expected to produce longer text The lujvo-maker has now been completed, providing drills than single sentences. In Part II, grammatical features and demonstrations of both lujvo-making and decomposition. will be pretty much covered in isolation to help you rec- Updates are available for $10; the original price will be ognize the key point of each section; this is a bit like $12. The only future enhancement to the lujvo-maker that Jim Brown's technique in Loglan 1, but the earlier seems to make sense would be a feature that builds and introductory lesson will allow us to keep the concepts tied tests le'avla (borrowings) for proper structure. Because together much better than he was able to - you'll know the the lujvo-maker does not take a lot of space on a 360K destination while travelling a most interesting journey floppy disk, we will include computerized text copies of through the language. various word lists and the grammar on the disk. In Part III, we will start presenting longer texts and The only stalled product based on the grammar is the dialogues, which will have enough vocabulary available to Lojban parser; we have had no volunteers to complete the be meaningful and adult. Exercises will require you to work. There is a possibility, however, that Jeff Prothero more spontaneously produce original Lojban sentences, will soon have a new version of 'PLoP', his "Public Domain especially in a classroom or study group. Unlike the draft Loglan Parser" updated to the Lojban grammar. This would lessons, though, you should have the knowledge and be an 'unofficial' parser, using the YACC grammar, but not confidence you need to make up sentences by the time we ask the YACC algorithm. PLoP is of a type called a 'recursive you to do so. In classroom use, bits of Lojban descent' parser, which is more flexible than a YACC parser, conversation should start occurring. but can be much slower. It will work fine on individual After the first few lessons in Part III, the remaining sentences up to some length, taking at most a few seconds, lessons will be less oriented around specific concepts in but it is very slow on blocks of text. By comparison, the the language than Part II. Instead, we will explore the last version of Jeff Taylor's parser processes a full page vocabulary associated with some topic, present some of the of text in a couple of seconds, albeit based on an older more esoteric grammar points that are useful for talking grammar. about that subject, and then use the language to do just A new version of LogFlash for MS-DOS machines will be that. Some problems in translation and original prepared and hopefully released this fall, and it will be composition in Lojban will be covered. significantly enhanced. First of all, we are already Whereas Part II is called 'Learning Lojban', Part III is testing 'LogFlash 3', which teaches the cmavo (we can called 'Using Lojban'. You will be expected to write provide this test version now to people who are ready to and/or converse in the language throughout Part III, and learn the cmavo and don't want to wait for the full re- should be comfortable doing so by the end of the book, with lease, but please don't ask for it unless you are ready to vocabulary limits as your main constraint. use it). There is a lot of writing ahead, but the book is off to a Second of all, we are adding an initial review stage good start. Moreover, with the baselined grammar and the prior to 'Gaining Control' that will quickly expose you to compiled cmavo list, we are much more confident that what a lot of words in 'New Word Recognition mode', hopefully gets written will not have to be continually rewritten. allowing you to read language text earlier while enhancing We're not going to promise a publication date. As scores when you advance to the more difficult stages. mentioned above, we've learned a bit about the lengthy We are also adding several user-friendly features. First process of publishing a book if you want to make money at will be an installation program that will ensure that it (and we can't afford to lose money). floppy disk users have 'COMMAND.COM' available, and unpack What we can promise is that the book will be available to any packed data on disk automatically. LogFlash will ask the Lojban community (you) in advance of the official you for confirmation before overwriting an existing file. publication date at a substantial discount. This helps us It will allow you to tune the program by changing the 14 default of 6 repetitions in error practices and/or the revised lists would also be very expensive - the bi- number of review words from the 'Under Control' pile that directional gismu list might run up to 60 pages, and 100 are presented in each session. It will also allow you to pages if we add a thesaurus-sorted list. At those sizes, more easily switch between learning modes. We will also be it would be cheaper to produce the dictionary; we don't try to make large error practices more friendly, giving you have the money to maintain such large documents in a sense of progress by telling you how many times you have inventory. done a word successfully. An option we are considering We also want to publish a 'tiny gismu and cmavo list', will allow you to look at the entire list of words for a having only keywords on the English side, that would be lesson prior to taking the test. We may also allow you to small enough to carry in your pocket or purse. add or update your own memory hook data during the review Of course, the textbook and dictionary will be the portion of a lesson. (We welcome additional suggestions on centerpiece of our product line. We hopefully will be able how we can make the program more friendly, but we need your to follow up these two books with a 'Best of JL' and a responses quickly.) first book of Lojban writings during 1991 - but this is We want to increase the speed of the program by reducing again dependent on money. the amount that it has to read files from disk. We aren't sure how much work this will be, and are not making specific promises. International News Finally, we will also be adding instrumentation that will allow LogFlash to be used for scientific research into how We don't have a lot of news this time that is specific to different people learn words, most especially to see if the international Lojban community. We have now recognition scores used to make Lojban gismu have any successfully processed Master Card/ Visa orders from correlation with actual learning rates. Depending on overseas, as well as one larger Canadian-denominated check. finances, we may be offering a volunteer credit to anyone We ask that those of you sending checks from Canada clearly who (learns the words and) returns their instrumentation indicate whether the check amount is in Canadian or Ameri- files within a specified time after we send you your order can dollars; apparently some of your banks will issue U.S. (instrumentation data is only useful to us if you work at dollar checks, and we do not need to use the more expensive LogFlash consistently - the time limit will help motivate service to process them. We can't be sure, however, that you to keep at it). our banks here will process your check correctly if you are Finally, the new LogFlash version will support the non-specific as to the currency. updated gismu list. The gismu list as it is being revised Our major international event in the next few months is will allow 20-character keywords instead of 15, and the Athelstan's planned visit to Europe. On that, we have definition field will be 96 characters, instead of the worse than no news. Just as we were going to press with current 40 character limit. As a result, the definitions this issue, some problems came up that threaten whether the will be much clearer and you should have a better idea what trip will take place as planned. It is possible that the a Lojban word really means. We may be providing an trip may be delayed (causing Athelstan to miss Worldcon at editable hint field that you can use to add mnemonic aids, the end of August), and possibly even cancelled. and we may also allow you to change the keywords from their Assuming the trip does come off as planned, we have few official values to something more memorable (most useful to additional itinerary details - only two of you have written British users who have suffered American spellings for too to us letting us know you want Athelstan to visit. long). Athelstan does now have a point of contact in Europe. He Not included in this update are LogFlash versions that plans to visit Peter and Mary Lynn in Goettingen, West will teach place structures and grammar (although learning Germany around the first week of September. If you haven't the modal cmavo of lexeme BAI will teach you a lot of made contact with Athelstan by writing to us here, you can important place structures). Maybe next year. contact the Lynns: We are hoping to have Eric Raymond's UNIX version of LogFlash available by the end of the year. Unfortunately, Peter and Mary Lynn due to the lag in development time, both the UNIX version Schopenhauer Weg 13 and the Mac LojFlash version will be stuck with the current Goettingen D3400 FDR file formats for a while. Dave Cortesi plans to update his WEST GERMANY Hypercard flash program for the MAC to use the new file formats; if so, this program will also be available at ap- home telephone: (49)-551-706485 proximately the same time as the new version of PC LogFlash. Peter is also working on a German translation of the We are undecided about whether to produce and distribute brochure, which may or may not be ready by Athelstan's the revised gismu list separately, as well as John Cowan's visit. cmavo dictionary, or wait a few extra months and try to get it into a first edition dictionary format. The textbook Athelstan also plans to be in northern Italy around 21-23 effort will probably be the determining factor. Publishing September, visiting Lojbanist Silvia Romanelli (who also these revisions will be lower priority, since you can use reports having translated some of the draft textbook copies of the existing lists for most purposes. The lessons into Italian). 15 Esperanto's "16 rules" with a similar set of rules for Lojban. News From the Institute Athelstan is quite right in suggesting that "the rule set is incomplete." In fact, the "16 rules" are largely a The Loglan Institute published another Lognet around mid- heuristic device created to introduce Esperanto to persons July. Dr. Brown has apparently assumed editorship with Rex with a late 19th-century European education, by describing May's resignation reported last issue. Esperanto in very simple terms relating the language to There is little news in the issue. The issue was something more familiar to the student -- i.e., the Indo- dominated by half of a paper by Rex May challenging some of European languages. This can be seen by the reference in the basic design points of the language. The second half rule 2 to the "two cases of Esperanto" (Esperanto has as of the paper is supposed to be in the next Lognet issue, many cases as any other language), the reference in rule 6 and will present Rex's proposal for radical changes in the to the passive voice of verbs formed by compounding (there Loglan morphology. (Rex sent a copy of his paper to Bob are no compound verbs in Esperanto), by the reference to for comment independent of submitting it to Dr. Brown.) the "imperative mood" in the same rule (the -U ending Dr. Brown discusses and responds to each of Rex's major subsumes, but is hardly restricted to, the traditional IE points. Bob observes that Dr. Brown's discussion is an imperative), and particularly by rule 8; logically, excellent defense of the basic language design, providing a prepositions (which are basically case-forming morphemes) few previously unknown historical details about the should govern an unmodified noun form, and it is only language design process. Most important of these is the because of the contrast with the Indo-European languages, revelation that Dr. Brown did conduct some 'engineering where they usually do not, that this rule is necessary. tests' of the recognition scores algorithm used to make The so-called "Fundamento de Esperanto" is, in fact, gismu, something we had no evidence of when we responded to about 200 pages long, and includes the "16 rules" (repeated Sheldon Linker's questions on the subject several issues in five different languages), a complete dictionary of some ago. While we could wish that such tests were better four thousand roots -- an additional four thousand or so documented, it is reassuring to be able to say to critics have been added to the canon since that time, plus between that they were conducted. All in all, our plaudits to Dr. eight and sixteen thousand unofficial roots that need not Brown. be considered part of the language -- and a series of some Dr. Brown also reports on solutions to two outstanding 42 exercises designed by Zamenhof to demonstrate aspects of morphological issues in Institute Loglan; these problems syntax and the Esperanto word-formation system. The "16 were discovered by Nora and raised in Bob and Athelstan's rules" themselves are, as I say, a heuristic device, and a review of the 4th edition of Loglan 1 last year. convenient skeleton on which to hang the language's Nora is skeptical that the solution devised for names "flesh." Most of the material in these rules would, today, containing "la" will work universally, but with the be better presented in tabular form. Institute grammar a 'trade secret', it is impossible to A few points about Athelstan's presentation: analyze the current design. (Unlike Institute Loglan, 1) Athelstan does "not describe word or sentence Lojban forbids the various name markers from being embedded order...." This seems a bit ingenuous to me, since as far in names to prevent such problems.) as I can tell word and sentence order play a more The solution to the other problem, that of hyphenating significant role in Lojban than they do in Esperanto, and borrowings, is similar to our own solution for Lojban. so to describe a "set" of Esperanto rules and equate them There is brief mention that the Institute plans to revise to a single Lojban "rule" that is at a much higher level is The Loglanist under a new name, possibly by the end of the not quite cricket. An example is rule 3. The Esperanto year. There also is a report that one of the Institute's presentation of the morphology of the adjective is quite software packages had a bug that is now fixed, but there complete in four lines; the Lojban presentation says only were no details given. that "any selbri may modify any other selbri by position," but does not define how this is done (do selbri modify _____________________________________ other selbri preceding them? by following them? by sitting in the next line up?) This is like saying that Lojban code is more concise simply because the reader is presented only JL11 Esperanto Discussion with a subroutine call, while in the Esperanto code the A Response from Don Harlow reader is shown the entire content of the subroutine. The content is there in Lojban; Athelstan has merely found it [Don Harlow is editor of the Esperanto League of North convenient to overlook it.1 America newsletter. His position makes him a natural ____________________ spokesperson for the Esperanto community in responding to 1Your example on p. 25, "X1 is good for X2 by standard X3," our essays in JL11. However, see also Ralph Dumain and which I presume is written in Lojban -- from your past John Hodges in the 'Letters' section below for more references to Prolog -- as something like "Good X1 X2 X3" - comments on Lojban and Esperanto.] - would indicate that the position rules in Lojban are much more complex than those in English, and vary from property Thanks for the latest copy of Ju'i Lobypli. I was to property. With regard to my later comments on case, the particularly interested in Athelstan's comparison of descriptive rule for speakers of Indo-European languages 16 2) Granting Athelstan's contention that several of whether Loglan and Lojban treat the single sound written Esperanto's "single rules" contain other rules, he does in English as "ts" as two sounds (again as a stop himself the favor of counting some of those sub-rules more followed by a sibilant, rather than as a single harsh than once, if they are referred to in another "super-rule." sibilant) or as a single sound/letter ("c") as in For instance, he counts the rule that the direct object is Esperanto. (A similar use of two letters to designate an shown by affixing the -N ending at least three times (rule intermediate sound is the occasional use of "kh" in 2, rule 3, rule 5). The computer equivalent would be English to describe the Esperanto "h^", a sound rewriting the subroutine each time it was called -- at intermediate between "k" and "h".) which the compiler would, no doubt, burp. c) Esperanto's Rule 11, of course, refers to the 3) Given that Esperanto's "16 rules" are a heuristic Ekzercaro -- see particularly Exercise 42. Athelstan device, they are certainly more complete and successful refers to some sort of "variant compounding rules"; I than those presented by Athelstan for Lojban. Speaking would be interested in seeing these. The actual rules "quantitatively," they are accessible to a much wider range describing the word-formation system are neat but of people than the Lojban rules. The Esperanto rules refer complex; they were first formulated as late as 1910 by de largely to nouns, verbs, adjectives, past tenses, etc., Saussure, writing under the pen-name "Antido", and which are terms that are generally recognizable to expanded by Kalocsay in the 1920's in a well-known essay. graduates of the seventh grade, or equivalent (my ten year The latest set appear in the Plen Analiza Gramatiko de old daughter is familiar with them, from school). Esperanto (1985 edition), where they fill some 148 pages Athelstan's Lojban rules, on the other hand, use unglossed and differ little form Kalocsay's earlier rules. That terminology that might confound a college graduate -- these rules are of little use and less interest to the anaphora, non-veridical, place tags, etc. (I consider practicing Esperantist can be seen from the fact that myself moderately well educated, but I had to look up their earliest codification occurred some 23 years after "anaphora" in a dictionary -- and was not much wiser for the language began to be spoken; most people can figure the experience.) the system out after looking at a page or so of examples, 4) Speaking "qualitatively," Athelstan in many places and never bother to refer to the rules, to which they describes his Lojban rules using Lojban terms that will don't have access anyway.2 have no meaning to the casual reader -- a rather recursive Unfortunately, a couple of Athelstan's comments sort of action, if you ask me. "Lujvo are formed by simple suggest that he isn't really qualified to comment on junction of the gismu or rafsi??? The definition of each Esperanto in general, any more than I am on Lojban (which one of those terms should be counted as a separate rule is why I keep correcting you on Esperanto rather than (axiom, if you will). commenting on various points of Lojban grammar, syntax, 5) Some comments on individual rules: etc.). For instance, on p. 20 he refers to "Esperanto's a) The description of participles in Esperanto rule 6 dependency on case declensions." There are no is not properly part of this rule but belongs in the declensions in the traditional/IE sense in Esperanto. hidden (also for Esperanto!) working of word-building The -N ending, to which he is probably referring, defines (rule 11 see below); the description of the passive voice the target of an action (direct object) or, if no action properly belongs to the Ekzercaro. I do not, however, is committed, the destination of a movement3; it can be fault Athelstan for taking these items as he found them. applied to adverbs as easily as to nouns and their ac- b) "Every word is pronounced as it is spelt." Pardon companying adjectives. Again, the terms "nominative me for referring to Loglan rather than Lojban -- and if case" and "accusative case" in this sense are sops to this is not also true for Lojban, you need not pay Indo-European sensibilities; Esperanto has neither one in attention to this comment -- but this is not completely the narrow sense of a declension. In the broader sense, true for the language. Loglan treats the sound written of course, it does have nominative and accusative cases, in English as "CH" as a stop "t" followed by a fricative as do English, Chinese, or -- one presumes -- Lojban; it "sh", written "tc," rather than as, more correctly, a also has genitive, dative, instrumental, ellative, termi- single harsh fricative halfway between the stop and the ____________________ fricative. Brown was here apparently influenced by the 2Some of these rules have not yet been codified. For in- (not invariably phonetic) International Phonetic stance, Kalocsay and Waringhien, the authors of PAG, Alphabet, which in this case appears to have been heavily recognize that Esperantists regularly use adjective roots influenced by French. Esperanto more correctly treats as prefixes for noun roots -- novedzino, dikfingro are this single sound with a single letter. I am not sure common examples -- but do not admit that this usage is ___________________________________________________________ grammatically justified. Most Esperantists go on doing would be: "The property good relates a noun in the this anyway, and they definitely obey a particular rule of nominative case in the immediately subsequent position, a word-formation in doing so -- one that, so far as I know, noun in the dative case in the third position, and a noun has never been written down, and would be difficult to cod- in the "standardize" case in the fourth position." ify in a few simple sentences. Hopefully Lojban's rules are more consistent than some of 3Which, if we suppose the -N ending to mark the accusative those of English, in which, for instance, the accusative case in the traditional Indo-European sense, makes vers succeeds a positional dative but precedes a prepositional such as "to go" transitive in Esperanto -- something most one... IE languages would not allow. 17 native, sociative, etc. cases, as do English, Chinese, publication, the number of Esperanto speakers grew at a and -- I again presume -- Lojban. rate of more than 100% per month. (This high figure, of course, like your own, comes from starting with such a Regarding your own essay "On Comparing Lojban and small base; and it dropped considerably by the early Esperanto" let me make several short (I hope, as, I am sure 1890's) you do) comments: 4) You attribute some significance to the fact that you 1) Under "aesthetics" you mention a couple of sentences "NEVER [HEARD] A SINGLE CONVERSATION IN ESPERANTO" at the that "are longer than the colloquial English translation"; Esperanto table at Worldcon. I personally have met only and in an earlier issue you begged off translating a song one of the people who worked at that table (and he was from English into Lojban because the translation would be there for only an hour or so), and I know that he speaks longer than the original. This seems to me to be an ac- fluent Esperanto; I can't answer for the others. But when ceptance of the old saw that "any translation into any you've sat at a few more tables at conventions, and have other language will average about 25% longer than the carried on a few conversations in Lojban under such English original" -- and (a word to the wise) it seems to circumstances, you will learn an interesting fact: more be a very dangerous attitude to take.4 Every translation I people -- or at least Americans -- are repelled when they make into Esperanto from English comes out significantly hear a conversation they don't understand than are shorter then the original. More than that, so far as I attracted.5 When possible, I always use English under such know a competent translator can get the same results in circumstances. (This is not always possible; at the last just about any language going. I would hope, for the sake three conferences of the Foreign Language Association of of Lojban, that this "expansion effect" is a function of Northern California that I've attended as an exhibitor, my the translator rather than a function of the language. If co-exhibitor and I have spoken nothing but Esperanto -- not, it is a strike against Lojban. because he's a Rumanian, and not terribly comfortable in 2) You have again quoted the "like it is done in your English.) own language" comment, which was not made by Zamenhof, but Hope that you have found all this of some interest. in the basic Interlingua textbook of 1950!!! Esperanto is ______________________________________ extremely well-defined, partly through the 16 rules as described above, but mainly through the Ekzercaro, which Bob responds - That the 16 rules are intended only a also appeared in the Unua libro in 1887. No reference to heuristic device seems to be lost on many Esperantists, who outside languages was or is necessary. I thought we'd been often try compare the 16 rules to our set of YACC rules, over that ground before! As to the Europeanness of which number about 550; Athelstan's effort was an answer to Esperanto ... proof of the pudding. Esperanto's greatest those critics. See Ralph Dumain's discussion and my re- successes in the past few years have been outside of the sponse in the letters section below for more on this. Indo-European language area. (From May to October of this Don effectively supports our assertion that the 16 rules year, a nationwide Esperanto course is running on Chinese have as a subtext the entire grammar of European languages. television -- a more significant matter, I think, in a "The Esperanto rules refer largely to nouns, verbs, country with only one national TV network instead of four adjectives, past tenses, etc., which are terms that are or five, and no more than two or three channels in even the generally recognizable to graduates of the seventh grade, largest cities.) or equivalent". But these terms are only recognizable to 3) The comment that "Lojban took 35 years to reach a students of European languages. point of development where it was speakable" might perhaps The emphasis should be on 'student', by the way. While have been avoided. Esperanto took some 12-14 years to Don's 10-year old may find the terms familiar, we have reach the point (1887) at which Zamenhof considered it found college graduate English speakers who have long since optimal; but the Ur-Esperanto of 1878 was already forgotten the terminology of grammar classes. To many of speakable, at least according to the anecdotal information. our audience, 'noun' is as bad as 'anaphora' (maybe worse, That it took Lojban (I presume you mean Loglan) 35 years to since no one feels guilty that they don't know what reach the point at which it was speakable is not, I think, anaphora are. Anaphora are, by the way, the superset of a point in its favor as a means of communication. 'pronouns' - the things that stand for and refer to earlier The rapid growth of Esperanto in its first years after referents in the discussion; 'cataphora', the opposite public release was a spontaneous affair. You quote a term, cover variable words that refer to things in future figure of 8% a month growth in the number of Lojban discussion, but 'anaphora' also is used as the general term students. Based on Zamenhof's published address lists -- covering both sets of variable reference words. Based on and making a conservative assumption that only ten percent Don's comment, however, we will start using a Lojban lujvo of those who claimed to be able to speak Esperanto could "ba'ivla" - /bah,HEE,vlah/ for the general concept of 'ana- actually do so -- in the first half year after Esperanto's phora'; the source metaphor 'replacer-word' should help ____________________ people remember what the word means). 4When I was young I read -- in a number of places -- that no other language is nearly as good as English for ____________________ swearing. In fact, English is a rather pale language in 5I was carrying on a private conversation in Esperanto on a this regard; compare it with any Eastern European language, BART train a week ago, and was excoriated for this by the for instance. middle-aged lady sitting next to me. 18 Athelstan intentionally used specialized Lojban terms represent a European bias, albeit unintentional. The that were as opaque to a European language speaker as they intent is to include places in approximate order of would be to a speaker of a non-European language. This may frequency of use in discourse; our model for usage help point out what a Chinese or Swahili speaker suffers frequency is unfortunately the English language we hear reading the Esperanto rules. We don't seriously intend most often. The desire to bring in a broader perspective using the 11 Lojban rules as a heuristic device; as Don before finalizing the structures is one reason why we are says, they just aren't very understandable. Furthermore, avoiding baselining the place structures until the last they cover no more of the Lojban grammar than the Esperanto possible minute, and why place structures will be among the rules cover of its grammar. However, they do help point first things to be re-evaluated after the 5-year freeze. out some ways in which Lojban is similar to European In any event, the resemblance does not give Lojban the languages, including Esperanto. Indo-European cases of Esperanto. There are no case I remain unconvinced that Esperanto's grammar is unlike endings, no grammatical requirements such as that Indo-European languages. As an example, contrary to what adjectives must 'agree' with a particular case. We have Don implies, the number and specific cases in a language 'case tags' in Lojban, but these are optional and even are not universals, and are significant aids to classifying frowned upon for 'cases' in the place structure, and anyway them. That a language has 'nouns' and 'verbs' and 'adj- resembles a combination of 'prepositions' and 'adverbs' ectives' that work in ways familiar to us, that most more than case inflections on words. (They also resemble sentences have a 'nominative' agent case as the subject, what Don calls 'case-forming morphemes'; however, in Lojban usually appearing before the verb, and an 'accusative' they are separate words that do not 'govern the form' of object case that usually appears right after the verb. any other word.) These are anything but universal, though they are found in Lojban has no 'passive voice' either - a 'passive voice' most, if not all Indo-European languages. Many languages is an artifact of Indo-European grammar which is used less have no nominative or accusative cases, being organized in English and Germanic languages than in other European around cases called 'ergative' and 'passive'. Some languages. In Lojban, there are various methods of languages do not even have a clearly identifiable subject, rearranging the sumti places of a predicate. One might and Japanese has both 'subjects' and 'topics' that each label any arrangement that doesn't have an active agent in serve some of the purposes of the Indo-European 'subject'. the x1 position 'passive', but again, this isn't the same Now what Don says later about the "-N" ending could be as the European 'passive voice'. (See B. Comrie's books The used to argue that Esperanto's cases are different from the World's Major Languages and Language Typology and Indo-European ones, but by standard linguistic terminology, Linguistic Universals for excellent discussions of the that ending is a 'declension' that marks its word as being typological features of language.) in a case (grammatical role) which differs from the Lojban is distinctly different from any natural language grammatical role it would be in if the declension were not in several ways. The first step in learning Lojban, present. therefore, involves stepping out of the constraining ideas Lojban has NO grammatical cases. Linguists and of natural language to learn these new concepts. Once that artificial intelligence people can assign 'case labels' to is accomplished, then for European speakers, Lojban is the various sumti places in the structure, but these are probably comparable in learning difficulty to Esperanto; not grammatical cases. They are semantic cases that Lojban has a somewhat simpler grammar, but Esperanto's indicate the semantic relationship between the place and roots are more highly recognizable to Europeans (and the rest of the sentence. In Lojban there are as many po- English speakers). For Chinese speakers, Lojban may tential semantic cases as there are words in the language - actually be easier, since many features of Lojban's grammar an infinite number. The places defined in the place at least superficially resemble Chinese features. structure are merely those most essential to conveying a relationship. We list the places in the definitions of the "Athelstan ... describes his Lojban rules using Lojban words partly to remind people that Lojban bridi express terms ... The definition of each one of those terms should relationships, and to remind them of the essentials of the be counted as a separate rule (axiom, if you will)." - concept to be related. Should the definition of each of the Indo-European In one sense, Lojban doesn't even have a 'subject'. grammatical terms used in the Esperanto rules have also Technically, all of the sumti places are 'objects' that are been counted as 'axioms'? If so, I think Esperanto comes related by the selbri. However, in at least two ways, the out far the worse for the added criteria. The number of 1st (x1) place of any given bridi predicate, whichever of specialized Lojban words we need to discuss the grammar is the sumti it happens to be in a given arrangement, has a fewer than the number of words needed to discuss a European unique role among the places which might as well be language. labelled as 'subject', for consistency with the terminology of linguistics. We'll let linguists determine if the x1 "Athelstan does 'not describe word or sentence order....' sumti really is a 'subject' in the traditional sense, or This seems a bit ingenuous to me..." - There are two types whether another term better applies. of word order that can be talked about. The order of words Now it turns out that many of our relations resemble of particular grammatical type in a sentence is specified European languages in that the first place is often an by the entire set of rules of the grammar. There is no agent and the second place is an object. This may meaningful 'rule' or 'rules' that govern this kind of word 19 order. The order of the places for a given brivla, on the "Athelstan refers to some sort of 'variant compounding other hand, is not a grammatical issue in Lojban at all, rules'" - I believe Athelstan was referring to the unlike European languages and Esperanto (I understand that extensive set of additional rules, not conveyed in the set Chinese is also relatively free in word order). of 16, that take 148 pages to describe, as well as rules Thus, Athelstan did not discuss word order because it is such as the ones Don describes as not written down. not part of the Lojban grammar. The order of the places is part of the semantic meaning of each word, just as the "... he does himself the favor of counting some of those meanings of 'subject' and 'object' for each Esperanto verb sub-rules more than once, if they are referred to in are part of the meaning of that verb. From our another "super-rule." - Athelstan was merely trying to perspective, such semantic rules are at a lower level of show that the 'super-rule' grouping concealed the true rule the language than grammatical rules. Lojban has no higher count. The exact number of rules, I'd hoped we had level rule that can be said to govern the order of places. demonstrated, was quite irrelevant. Lojban's 550-odd There may be some patterns, but we haven't really tried to stated rules, by the way, are expanded by YACC into about find them. 800 unique computer-labelled 'states' which correspond to expanding and repeating each of the 'subroutines' Don "The Esperanto presentation of the morphology of the refers to as often as is necessary. adjective is quite complete in four lines; the Lojban A Lojban-based computer process does not choke on such presentation ... does not define how this is done (do expansion, since the expansion is a natural product of selbri modify other selbri preceding them? by following YACC. When we say Lojban is grammatically unambiguous, it them? by sitting in the next line up?)" - The Lojban is because in each of these 800 states, by looking at the 'morphology of the adjective' is complete in zero lines, next word only, a Lojban processor knows what state to go since we don't have adjectives. selbri modify other selbri to next. The grammar process consists simply of jumping in many ways, some of which are adjective-like. The from state to state until the end is reached. modification can be left-modifies-right or right-modifies- left, logical connection, or non-logical connection. In "Loglan treats the sound written in English as 'CH' as a all but the simplest left-to-right modification, there are stop 't' followed by a fricative 'sh', written 'tc,' rather cmavo that can be translated literally into English or than as, more correctly, a single harsh fricative halfway other languages, revealing the order, and we believe that between the stop and the fricative. Brown was here ap- all possible orders and groupings can be represented in parently influenced by the (not invariably phonetic) some way. Athelstan simply didn't find anything to say International Phonetic Alphabet, which in this case appears about Lojban that corresponded to what was being said in to have been heavily influenced by French. Esperanto more the Esperanto rule. What he said was complete and accurate correctly treats this single sound with a single letter..." - position in a Lojban sentence totally determines what - Correct by whose standard? (Correctness always has a modifies what. standard, as any Lojbanist knows from the place structure As for Don's facetious suggestions on how selbri might of "drani"). The IPA is the standard alphabet of modify each other by position, I reply in kind: do Es- linguistic phonology, and hence is the way that one must peranto adjectives get written on the line before? describe sounds when talking to a linguist. To claim that Interestingly, in other places, Don excuses his 16 rules the linguistic standard phonetic alphabet is wrong because for non-specificity: "the description of the passive voice it doesn't agree with Esperanto seems a bit backwards. properly belongs to the Ekzercaro" and talking about word- The combination of a stop and a fricative is called an formation rules "they fill some 148 pages". Again, our 'affricate' and can be treated as either one sound or as purpose was to compare what was present in the Esperanto two. In Lojban, we treat all affricates, including 'tc' rules with a corresponding level of detail about the Lojban and 'ts', as two sounds; so do most linguists. rules. We recognize that neither set of rules is complete; This is due to the simple reason that if you say the stop we want to be able to point this out to Esperantists that and the fricative together, they phonetically blend to form cite the 16 rules as a statement of Esperanto's simplicity. the affricate in a way indistinguishable to most listeners. So Don has made our point for us. Thus, if we were to write the affricates as a single letter, we would have to forbid the two-letter combinations "Most Esperantists ... definitely obey a particular rule that are equivalent. Since no other single letter sound in of word-formation ... -- one that, so far as I know, has Lojban can alternatively be expressed as two sounds, to never been written down, and would be difficult to codify match the Esperanto distinction in only a couple of cases in a few simple sentences." - Hopefully Lojban is would be inconsistent. (Does Esperanto forbid the two- sufficiently regular that no one ever will have to say this letter equivalent combinations of the affricates to prevent about the language. Our word compounding rules are quite confusion?) rigid, and yet fairly unrestricted. We don't constrain any Esperanto's approach causes untold heartache to typists, word from modifying another, and provide some fairly forcing the addition of non-standard diacritical marks to esoteric grammatical conversions to allow you to combine several letters to fit the language within the Roman concepts that are grammatically incompatible. alphabet. (There is at least one typo in the Esperanto rules because of this - I forgot to manually go back and 20 add an Esperanto diacritical mark that is not supported by readers are missing useful and perhaps important my word processor or printer.) information. Esperanto is not consistent on the matter of the In Lojban, there are other factors, based on its unusual affricates, by the way. While representing the affricate grammar. Where logical structure is always explicit, the sounds that are expressed by Lojban 'tc' and 'ts' with a convoluted logic of some English sentences has to be single letter, as well as the voiced equivalent of the expanded to great length; on the other hand the English "it first ('dj' = English 'j'), Esperanto does not have the is not the case that" is expressed briefly as Lojban "na". voiced equivalent of 'ts' as a single letter as consistency When Athelstan translated Saki (see JL10) he found the would require. The sound of 'dz' in it is expressed using resulting text was about the same length or shorter. two letters in Esperanto words (an example is found in one (There are actually more words, since Lojban words seem to of Don's footnotes), even though it is a 'single sound' by average about 30% shorter than English words; there are the identical logic as the other three. also more syllables - Lojban words seldom have syllables In Comrie's book on the languages of the world, similar more than 3 letters and certainly not as long as comments to mine are made in explaining why 'ts' and others 'strengths'.) are not considered as one in Germanic languages. It is I doubt that Don's objection to the old saw proves true pointed out that linguistically, any stop can be combined for all languages, by the way. I suspect that regardless with any fricative, and each such 'affricate' combination of the translator, most Romanized Chinese (where most words could be treated as one sound or as two. Examples include are one or two syllables) translates to Russian (with in- 'ps', which will be recognized from Greek, and 'pf' from flectional suffixes that are one or two syllables long on German. But neither Esperanto nor English nor Lojban treat most words) resulting in a longer text. 'ps' or 'pf' as a single sound. Don is wrong in equating the 'kh'/Lojban 'x' sound with "That it took Lojban 35 years to reach the point at which the two affricates. 'x' is a pure fricative - called an it was speakable is not, I think, a point in its favor as a 'unvoiced velar fricative' or an 'unvoiced palato-velar' means of communication." - Wrong. It shows that we were fricative depending on exactly where the tongue is placed diligent in our research. And with good reason; we know (these are the sounds of German 'doch' and 'ich', respec- much more about language now than in Zamenhof's time, and tively). The 'x' sound linguistically has nothing to do we have a tougher and more skeptical audience (the academic with an 'h' sound, which is actually formed in the world) to please. We also had a bigger job to do, since epiglottal region. That we represent 'x' as 'kh' in Lojban was designed from scratch. English is a convention; it has nothing to do with sounds Whether or not Don is right about the Indo-European-ness (notwithstanding this, trying to combine a 'k' with an 'h' of Zamenhof's grammar, there is no doubt that Zamenhof will give a reasonable 'x' sound). started with European grammar and simplified. We Unlike English and German, IPA does use a single letter (originally Brown and later others as well) started with for this sound. (The true velar affricates - combinations nothing except a goal of matching predicate logic of stops and fricatives - aren't pronounceable either as structures, and the vague notion of speakability. Because single or double sounds for English speakers - in Lojban, we had no working language to emulate, there were un- they would be expressed as 'kx' and 'gq', if 'q' is defined doubtedly going to be false starts and re-engineering of as the voiced equivalent of 'x' - found in Arabic as the major features. I suspect that much of Zamenhof's sound at the beginning of Libyan leader Qaddafi's name.) development period was used to select the root word stock; only a small fraction of Loglan/Lojban development time has "... the old saw ... 'any translation into any other gone into word-making. language will average about 25% longer than the English In a sense, Esperanto took the entire evolutionary period original' ..." - Almost any literal translation will take of Indo-European grammar to be developed. (Of course, by longer than the original. Translating Lojban to English the same logic, Lojban took 2500 years, since predicate literally is usually even more expansive than 25%, often 2- logic was invented, to be developed). to-1 or greater; just look at any of our translations here (You can also compare the actual Esperanto development in JL. On the other hand, the reverse direction gives the period with the time that we've taken to redevelop the same result. Lojban version of Loglan from scratch to avoid copyright - The translator's art involves producing idiomatic non- less than 3 1/2 years so far, and I suspect that our design literal translations that capture the approximate sense of is far more intricately specified than Zamenhof's was when the original. This will sometimes be shorter, sometimes he published. By Don's histories that I've read, I gather longer, since the source language may be using an idiom that Esperanto was not complete in a sense of being that has no counterpart in the target language (which is standardized until sometime after 1900. Depending on your always the case with Lojban at this point). Also, almost definitions, we will be comparably standardized either when any culturally-based word has to be expanded into a phrase the textbook and dictionary are done or after the 5 year in another language if meaning is to be preserved. If Don baseline period proves the language is stable.) is 'always shorter' as he claims, he is undoubtedly I've been told that a major milestone occurred as late as omitting subtleties of the source language version that he 1905 when the annual Esperanto meeting was first conducted considers either obvious or irrelevant given the context. in Esperanto; at this meeting it could first truly be said If he is correct, he is a true artist; otherwise, his that Esperanto was a 'living language'. Lojban should 21 achieve that status in a much shorter time, although the average American is going to think that you are possibly with a smaller speaker base. speaking English because it is easier or more convenient I note that Jim Brown considered his language speakable than Esperanto. And if it IS easier for you to speak in 1977, or possibly even earlier (there are reports that a English than Esperanto to another Esperantist, you are group called the 'Loglan Sogrun' conversed to a minimal missing out on a prime opportunity to learn to speak it extent in the 60's). Brown actually tried to teach the better, while demonstrating that the language is useful to language to college students in the 50's - though with no passers-by (something most of them are probably unconvinced particular success - and sold books teaching the language of). starting in 1966. When I can speak Lojban fluently I will try to speak Brown's books of the 60's were probably as complete as Lojban at convention tables promoting the language, if the Zamenhof's 1888 book, but Brown did not have the follow- other people manning the table also speak comparably well. through that Zamenhof did, nor the 'market' ripe for the If I have problems with people who seem repelled, I'll add language that Zamenhof had with the simultaneous collapse a sign inviting them to ask us what we're saying. of VolapЃk. Also, to put it simply, Brown's books, while This will entice people and cause them to see that we they explained things in considerable detail, had no text think the language is worth speaking when we could be longer than individual sentences. They were thus at best speaking English instead; they will also be curious as to mediocre in teaching the language for actual use. But this what we are saying, and we'll happily explain. This may was not a flaw in the language or its design, but rather in not be how it works out in reality, but this is our goal, its inventor's teaching and writing style. and our limited experience so far is that using the Loglan/Lojban has had an added handicap over Esperanto - language in public prompts curiosity and not repulsion. a changing plural set of goals which is more than mere (We've done nicely at conventions with people who notice 'speakability', and rising standards on what it takes to our buttons with the slogan "e'osai ko sarji la lojban.") achieve those goals. The standard of unambiguity changed If we're wrong, Don can say "I told you so". But if this with the development of computer tools like YACC, and a turns out to be the case, then I am most pessimistic that language thought to be unambiguous suddenly wasn't. I any language will be acceptable as an International believe I've done more work researching language universals language to Americans. At any given time on the path to than Brown did. acceptance, there will be Americans who don't know the The whole point of the JL11 discussion, of course, was language. If a foreigner is not going to learn English (in that comparison of development periods just isn't which case English is the international language), then the practical, and the various numbers in the above discussion American must learn Esperanto or whatever before the need should prove this. But Athelstan and I were trying to arises where it must be used, or she/he won't be fluent respond to comments and questions that have been frequently when that need arises. And this means speaking the raised by Esperantists. If the '35-year' development language extensively with English-speaking cohorts before effort can be claimed as a strike against us, we have the then, by definition. right to argue it as a virtue instead. In any event, to go from a few thousand to 250 million Americans speaking a particular foreign language will take "... more people -- or at least Americans -- are repelled some aggressive (and skillful) marketing which may be when they hear a conversation they don't understand than offensive to some people. Possibly as offensive as the are attracted. When possible, I always use English under USEnglish people are in promoting English (whether one such circumstances." - I was merely observing that at a agrees with their opinions or not, their words and tactics convention table 'selling' a language, it seemed strange are pushy and offensive). The trick is to market not to hear the language. I would expect that Americans aggressively while minimizing offense. are not much repelled to hear a 'strange' language if they I should note that I while I disagree with Don on this expect to hear one, and one would expect to hear one at an point, I find many of the Esperanto marketing techniques Esperanto table, which is not a BART train. I certainly quite skillful, and hope that we Lojbanists can learn from did, which is why I made the comment. them. This is only practical under a cooperative, as (On the other hand, Americans are often offended to hear opposed to competitive relationship between the two a language other than English when visiting a foreign communities. country, but this is the Americans' problem, not the natives. In the US these days, perhaps 10-20% of the people have a native language other than English, so Masters of Tongue Fu Americans will have to get used to hearing things other by Donald J. Harlow than English.) I also have a different philosophy as to what it takes to originally published in The ELNA Newsletter sell a new language to Americans. If you use English reprinted with permission whenever that is a possibility because it is a common language, you merely support the argument that 'we don't When people say "International Language" today, they are need Esperanto (or Lojban) because English is already probably talking about Esperanto. In China, in fact, the spoken by most everyone who wants to talk to people from language is better known as shi jie yu, which simply means another culture'. Regardless of whether it is true or not, "international language," than as "Esperanto." In those 22 parts of the world where "interlinguistics" is an accepted Auguste Kerckhoffs. The resulting struggle destroyed the part of the science of linguistics, articles on the subject language, many of whose proponents in any case were -- if they are not purely historical in nature -- will shifting their allegiance to the rising (green) star of Es- almost certainly refer almost exclusively to Esperanto. peranto by the end of the eighties. By the beginning of Discussions of the literature of artificial languages will the new century, VolapЃk was all but dead, though at least concentrate totally on that of Esperanto, since only very one (very small, very irregular) bulletin in the language underdeveloped literatures exist for other artificial seems to have appeared as late as 1960. When Bernard languages, and for most of them, don't exist at all. Any Golden went in search of speakers of VolapЃk on the lan- study of the sociology of an artificial language, too, will guage's 100th birthday, he found a total of ten -- all of concern itself only with Esperanto, since only two other whom also spoke Esperanto. artificial languages ever had populations of adherents even It is worth noting, however, that at its peak VolapЃk remotely comparable to that of Esperanto, and then only for boasted perhaps 100,000 adherents -- though how many of very short periods of time. them could actually speak the language is open to question. But Esperanto is neither the first not the only In this regard, it is interesting that it shared several "international language." Attempts to create such a characteristics with Esperanto. The two of these that are language go back at least to the thirteenth century, when perhaps most important, in my view, are: (1) an the Abbess Hildegarde of Rupertzberg, a lady more recently agglutinative system of word-formation, in contrast to the exhumed -- and justly so! -- by the women's movement, the standard Indo-European system (more correctly: lack of a gnostics, and various musical organizations (how refreshing system); and (2) the desire of the inventor to solve the it is that Hildegarde, one of the earliest of the problem of communication between people of different "Renaissance Men," was a woman!), created her "Lingua languages, not just to invent an artificial language. Ignota." The philosophers Comensky, Leibniz, and Descartes I don't want to go into Esperanto's history in any detail all wrote about the international language; Bishop Berkeley here. If you want to read a good book about the early worked at developing one. In the last century, the period, get a copy of Edmond Privat's Historio de la Lingvo Frenchman Sudre created Solresol, a language meant to be Esperanto, or his Vivo de Zamenhof. I would only wish to whistled or trumpeted, and it enjoyed a very long period of say that, more than a hundred years into its existence, Es- popularity in some circles in France; at one point the peranto's eventual fate has not yet been decided. Given French military even considered adopting it, possible that over its history the language has had few friends, because trumpets can be heard over greater distances than except for a (relatively few) far-sighted and courageous shouted commands. Who knows? Had the French followed souls who have actually gone out and learned it, while it through with this idea, their defeat in the Franco-Prussian has succeeded in gaining for itself a notable array of War in 1871 might not have occurred, and all later history enemies -- Adolf Hitler and Josef Stalin spring immediately would have been different. to mind -- the staying power that the language has No one knows how many "international languages" have demonstrated is quite encouraging. actually been proposed. The figure certainly exceeds a Let me only add here that Zamenhof, like Schleyer, was thousand. These range from genuine a priori languages, all interested not in creating and artificial language but in of whose material is invented out of whole cloth, to finding some viable solution to the problem of slightly modified ethnic languages, such as Basic English. communication between different peoples. And in Zamenhof's But of the thousand or so such languages, only a few have case -- he was a Jew living in late 19th century Russia -- ever attained any degree of popularity, and most of that the problem was far from a theoretical one. has been spurious -- a creation of the news media, ever in Zamenhof stated (in his First book) that Esperanto was search of some new and interesting story. Chronologically, not our typical European language. Arguments over these most famous of international languages have been: Esperanto's Europeanness go on even today. Certainly, VolapЃk, Esperanto, Ido, Occidental, Basic English, and despite recent modest accretions from Japanese and other Interlingua. For those who know little or nothing about non-European languages, Esperanto's lexical material the origins and fates of these languages, I would like to remains primarily European, chiefly Romance, in origin. give an introduction to them. Other aspects of the language's structure are less VolapЃk was invented in 1880 by a German priest, convincingly European. Certain tendencies in popular use Monsignor Johann Martin Schleyer. Schleyer, a polyglot, of the language -- for instance, the occasional doubling of recognized among his less talented parishioners the need short adjective roots to show emphasis, rather than through for a language to communicate across national boundaries, use of the -EG suffix -- show a pattern of thought in the and set our to create on. The result was VolapЃk. The language reminiscent of Chinese. language enjoyed tremendous popularity over the next I don't intend to argue here over whether Esperanto is decade, but, because of certain aspects of its grammar and fundamentally European or non-European; but certainly many vocabulary, it generated a strong movement for reforms early speakers of the language in Western Europe found it among many of its speakers; and Schleyer, who saw himself less European (more particularly, less West-European) than as the language's Pope, so to speak, refused to even they would have liked. This was particularly true in consider such reforms. The language's most vocal adherents France, where many early leaders of the national Esperanto split into two factions, one supporting Schleyer and on movement would have preferred a more Francophone, or even supporting his chief opponent, a French professor named Anglophone, tone to the language. A few of these 23 gentlemen, in fact through a rather underhanded process, The language's very name gives away De Wahl's motivation. set themselves up as "reformers" of Esperanto, and in 1907 An early Esperantist, he also abandoned the language early produced a version of Esperanto that appeared much more in on, apparently in protest against its non-traditional tune with the linguistic norms of the world -- i.e., French structure. Whether he was ever a practicing Idist, I don't and English. For a while, they expected that their new know, but suspect that from the time he left Esperanto he language would replace classical Esperanto, but when this followed a very different and more radical route. did not happen -- a vast majority of ordinary speakers of Occidental, built upon the basis of an earlier project, the language refused to make the necessary changes in their Julius Lott's Mundolingue, can best be described, I think, habits -- the "reformed Esperanto" split off and became an as a late and very highly rationalized Romance dialect, artificial language in its own right, Ido. with noticeable German accretions. It was, in fact, While Ido shows a decided shift away from Esperanto's nothing less than an attempt to codify West European agglutinative word-formation system, back towards a more thought processes in a constructed language. Supporters of Western European orientation, it does not represent a Occidental justified this by asserting that civilization, complete break with the linguistic ideas expressed first in being essentially European in nature, should be represented VolapЃk and then more clearly in Esperanto. The real by an essentially European language. In this way, the difference between the two languages lay in the motivations language would help make the blessings of European thought of the men who developed them. It is fairly apparent that available to the rest of the world -- or help keep the rest the problem of communication was of little interest to of the world under the European thumb, as the more cynical Prof. Louis Couturat, Louis de Beaugront, and Major Charles might tend to think. Lemaire, the primary motors behind the development of Ido; The nineteen thirties were, in some ways, the apogee of they were more concerned with what they saw as Esperanto's language construction; Occidental was merely the most linguistic blemishes. This is hardly surprising; the successful and best known of a series of attempts to create pleasant little conspiracy into which they entered for the a new international language. The famous Danish linguist purpose of replacing that Russian Jewish eye-doctor as the Otto Jespersen, for instance, a long-time mainstay of the guiding force in the international language movement shows Ido movement, abandoned the language in favor of his own in them an ethical blind spot that would not fit well with project, Novial, which was largely a clone of Occidental. a genuine concern for the communications needs of ordinary But the best-known project of this period probably remains people. Insofar as Ido did prosper -- and it prospered, in Basic English. fact, much more than did any other "international language" Basic English, invented in 1930 by the Englishman C. K. except VolapЃk and Esperanto -- it did so, I believe, Ogden, was an attempt to simplify English and make it more despite the people behind it, not because of them. suitable for international use. Ogden claimed to have Ido, in fact, appears to have attained a maximum reduced the entire vocabulary of the language to 850 words. population of about 10,000 adherents by the early 1920's -- The problem was that his claims were spurious; the language not all that far behind Esperanto in that period. But as included far more than 850 words (Ogden did not count the ranks of Esperanto swelled through the twenties, to "international" words such as alcohol in his 850 word reach more than a hundred thousand by 1930, those of Ido vocabulary, though they were considered part of the appear to have declined. It nevertheless remains extant language; and he added several 1000-word technical even today, though in what seems to be a basically moribund vocabularies). Also, many people felt that Basic English state. Ido, like Esperanto, has actually produced a small was merely a "Trojan horse" for a more standard brand of original literature -- though, strangely enough, so far as the language. The event proved this latter group correct; I know the only genuine literary work ever published in in the 1960's, the British Council, a government-sponsored Ido, a collection of original poetry, was published by the organization devoted to spreading English among the Kultura Centro Esperantista in Switzerland. heathens, bought the rights to Basic English, and since A recent newspaper article about another constructed that time it has been used only as in introduction to stan- language project referred to Esperantists as "verbal dard (read: British) English. Though several famous hobbyists." As a matter of fact, Ido did much to cull the English-speakers supported the language from time to time, verbal hobbyists out of the Esperanto movement very early among them Winston Churchill and H. G. Wells (who, in The on. One result of this is that, for many years, the Esper- Shape of Things to Come, had the whole world speaking Basic anto movement has been remarkably free of individuals who English), no popular movement for this language was ever see the language only as an interesting project, whose main generated. purpose in existing is to improve itself by adopting their Because of the growing number of language projects, there recommended reforms. Another result is that the Ido was some confusion as to which one would be, or even should movement ended up consisting mainly of just such people. be, the ultimate international language. This confusion It is hardly surprising, then, that when yet another had begun when VolapЃk, which had offered such high hopes "improved" international language came along, it would skim to the world, fell apart and was replaced by Esperanto; and off a far greater percentage of members from the Ido it had become endemic when the Ido schism occurred in 1907. movement than from the Esperanto movement. This language By the late twenties, with Esperanto and Ido and Occidental was Occidental, proposed in 1922 by the Estonian Edgar De and who knew how many other projects vying for attention, Wahl. it was understandable that the ordinary individual would throw up his hands in disgust. An American Esperantist, 24 Mrs. Alice Vanderbilt Morris -- of the New York Vanderbilts, I believe -- funded the establishment of a new Although Interlingua is not the only postwar entry into organization to do research into the problem and find some the international language competition, it is the only one sort of acceptable solution, for instance a compromise to receive any publicity and to generate a supporting between the different language projects. The organization movement of any size. And it is a product of the year was called the International Auxiliary Language 1950. It appears that, to a great extent, the production Association, or IALA for short. of such languages peaked in the 1930's, and went largely IALA, located in England, though it did valuable research out of style after the Second World War. Why? work, had little luck in convincing anyone to compromise. I would tend to blame the apparent "success" of English The Romance-based "naturalistic" languages such as for this. The War gave French, already in decline, a Occidental and Novial would not be ready to yield in the deathblow, and by about 1950 it was apparent that English direction of "schematic" Esperanto; and Esperantists at was destined to become the international language, by that time were not yet ready to forgive the Idists for the default. So what need for Esperanto, Interlingua, Ido, and dirty work at the 1907 crossroads. In any case, the other entries into the competition? The outcome was Esperantists, who even then made up between 80 and 95% of already decided. The other postwar projects -- the the entire International Language movement, felt that they Romanids, Neos, Intals, Loglans, etc. -- were doomed to had no need to compromise. Furthermore, by the mid obscurity. Esperanto survived this period, and even thirties they had other and more pressing problems to at- prospered to some degree, not because people saw it as the tract their attention -- proscriptions in Germany and the coming world language (though there were those who never USSR, for instance. lost this hope) but because (a) it had already developed an Eventually, IALA, after moving to the United States at independent infrastructure that could keep it going even the outbreak of war, came under the directorship of Dr. through the most difficult periods -- as Soviet Alexander Gode, and set out to create its own language, Esperantists proved during the period from 1937 to 1956 -- which was published in 1950 and given the name Interlingua. and (b) it had already developed other reasons for Interlingua is even more quintessentially Romance that existence besides as a solution to the world language prob- Occidental, and in its turn attracted away many of the lem. remaining adherents of Occidental, which tried to stave off But the success of English has always been more apparent the inevitable by renaming itself "Interlingue." But again than real. The growth of English in the intervening period its creator really had no interest in resolving com- carried the language from 11% of the world's population to munications problems; he himself stated that his real about 8.5% -- not the most inspiring rate of growth. Where purpose was to provide the world with a "standard average English has failed, of course, we have tended to blame European" vocabulary, culled from the Romance languages. local conditions for this, or to assume that this failure Interlingua made modest inroads in the American press's is non-representative of the world as a whole -- as when, coverage of attempts to solve the language problem through for instance, after a hundred years of concentrated English the fifties and early sixties, and there exists a small teaching has not produced a nation of English-speakers in Interlingua movement, mainly in Europe, even today; but the Japan, we insist that "improved teaching methods" would no language never had the widespread support that Esperanto doubt resolve this problem, or when columnist Neal Peirce, developed even in its earliest years. Its one notable supporting California's English-only initiative, insists success was in giving the coup de grace to Occidental, that we tend to retreat from English in this country "while whose last magazine bit the dust in 1985. the rest of the world stampedes to English." To recap the situations of these various languages today: Forty five years after the end of World War II it is, I 1) VolapЃk is a dead issue and has been for the better think, apparent to anyone that if English has not failed as part of a century. It is not and has not ever been THE international language, it has certainly come nowhere represented by any kind of corpus of literature. near fulfilling all those promises that were made for it at 2) Esperanto continues to grow, and today boasts at least that time. Nor is it likely to do so in the foreseeable two million speakers, perhaps more, of whom some one future, even granting continued U.S. military and economic hundred thousand actively use the language and participate primacy in the world -- a very unlikely possibility. in the movement to promote the language. Some 150 to 200 Which means that the whole question of the international periodicals appear regularly in the language, not counting language is open again. It means that the Esperanto local club bulletins. It has a large and growing body of movement, barring the sort of deliberate repression we've literature, both original and translated. seen from time to time in Russia and China and Rumania and 3) Ido retains a small movement and several periodicals Germany and elsewhere, will prosper anew. Indeed, it has to link that movement, though none of them seem to appear been doing so since the mid-seventies. more often than quarterly. It has a very small body of And it means that, in the field of artificial languages, original and translated literature. Esperanto may begin to see some aspiring competitors spring 4) Occidental is dead. up. In fact, those competitors are already here. In 1972, 5) Basic English as a separate language is dead. an Englishman, Leslie Jones, published his Eurolengo, a ba- 6) Interlingua has a small relict supporting movement, sically Romance language based on English and Spanish. A mainly in Europe. It has few if any periodicals, and no young French teacher made the pages of the Guardian in body of original literature to speak of. Britain (favorably) with his Uropi. Two summers ago, 25 several Esperanto clubs in this country received letters probably be able to get a book out the state library, but from a young man developing a project he called Linguos. nowhere else will any information be available. Loglan, a product of the late fifties which made the pages Esperanto remains the only truly viable artificial of Scientific American in June, 1960, has recently been international language: easy to learn, relatively neutral, revived in two different forms. And just the other day the with a wide base of cultural and practical services for the ELNA Central Office received a booklet, mostly in German, user to call on around the world. Of all the artificial about a new Romance-based project called Unitario. languages extant today, only Esperanto is, not the result None of these projects has, at least in this country, of an attempt to create a language, but the result of an received the sort of publicity that panicked Esperantists attempt to solve a problem. in the early fifties when Interlingua appeared. A recent And only Esperanto lives. article on Lojban (a schismatic variant of Loglan) that was picked up by the wire services and published in many __________________________________ newspapers around the country, appears to have been less than enthusiastic about the language; with the exception of Bob responds (actually not very much): Funny, I thought Uropi, none of the others listed above have even been Don Oldenburg's article was quite favorable towards the mentioned in the American press. language (and so did he), though I'll admit that the But I think that we will hear more of them -- and others headlines used in some newspapers could be taken as like them -- in the future. And much of what we hear, as satirical. Certainly the amount of print space given the was the case with Ido and Occidental and Interlingua, will language was quite significant. But a good news story not be why they are ideal solutions to the problem of reports facts rather than conveys enthusiasm, so I can communication between different peoples, but why they are understand Don not finding much enthusiasm therein. superior to Esperanto. Are they superior to Esperanto? Probably so, at least on "In Esperanto's own terms -- facility of learning, their own terms. Ido was superior to Esperanto in its cultural and political neutrality -- none of these adherence to West European linguistic norms. Occidental languages was in any way superior to Esperanto, nor even was superior to Esperanto in its similarity to other equal to it." - This invites all kinds of disagreement. Western languages. Interlingua was certainly superior to Facility of learning is of course an open question. Esper- Esperanto as a quintessential Romance language. And if anto probably has better teaching materials at the moment what you wanted was a watered-down form of English, Basic because of 100 years to develop them; probably many of the English certainly filled the bill better than Esperanto. other languages proposed would be equally easy to learn. In Esperanto's own terms -- facility of learning, As to cultural neutrality, Don admits early on that cultural and political neutrality -- none of these Esperanto derives its lexical materials from European lan- languages was in any way superior to Esperanto, nor even guages. Even if Sapir-Whorf is true, it is likely that a equal to it. The same can be said, I think, about recent language's word-stock has far more overt ties to culture and future projects. than does grammar. Don has (in letters to us) written The mentioned projects fall basically into two about the ideology held by Esperantists - a language with categories, from what I have seen of them, Eurolengo, an ideology is the antithesis of politically neutrality. Uropi, Linguos and Unitario appear to be fundamentally what The goal of being a world language is itself inherently po- we may call Euroclones, like Occidental and Interlingua. litical; some cultures will view such a concept as a The designers of these languages, apparently unfamiliar threat. Lojban's goals as a whole are basically non- with the work of De Wahl, Jespersen and Gode, are making political; international language aspects are a side- the same mistakes again -- assuming that the world will benefit rather than a primary goal. best be served, and will let itself be served, by an (In one letter to Dr. Brown, Don actually criticizes us artificial language with nothing to recommend it but its for not having an underlying ethic other than ensuring Europeanness. They don't realize that if this is what the clear communication - a purely linguistic goal. Apparently world wants, it is more likely to learn Spanish. Don doesn't realize that a non-linguistic ethic is Loglan and its offshoot Lojban fall into quite a inherently a cultural bias. If Esperanto has such an different category. Of the mentioned languages, they have underlying ethic, it is false to claim that it is cul- been getting the most publicity. But it should be noted turally neutral without demonstrating that the ethic is that no language as a priori in its origins as Loglan has universally accepted in all cultures - an unlikely ever succeeded in generating a body of speakers. To add to prospect.) Loglan's difficulties, it was originally created as a means of testing the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis (now largely "Of all the artificial languages extant today, only discredited), and for this reason its author claims to have Esperanto is, not the result of an attempt to create a made it as far from ordinary linguistic patterns as he language, but the result of an attempt to solve a problem." could. This may be a fine way of establishing an experi- - Don says this right after saying that Lojban was designed ment, but for purposes of communication it's a non-starter. to test the 'untestable' Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, which was Loglan will most likely go the way of Barnett's Suma; a few 'discredited' primarily because it was untestable (which is years from now, if you want to learn about it, you will obviously bad science). Testing an untestable hypothesis as important as Sapir-Whorf sounds like an attempt to solve 26 a problem to me. So is developing a speakable language persist in relying on them will, I predict, lead us into with an unambiguous syntax, as well as developing an a species suicide and extinction. priori language that removes constraints on thought rather than imposing them (as all other attempts I know of tried). I DECLARE the possibility of intentionally revising our There are other problems in the world relevant to language lived assumptions. We can re-build these patterns we live besides the one Esperanto is associated with. by so that we live not from the practice of defending our presumed "absolute certainties" (or from what I call self- "And only Esperanto lives." - A nice slogan, but defending), but rather, from the practice of testing our questionable at best. Don seems to base this on the own guesses (which I call self-correcting). existence of an original literature. (By most other In other words, I declare that we humans now have it standards of 'living' Don mentions in his article, at least within our grasp to produce a fundamental, principled, Interlingua would be considered 'alive', if sick-a-bed.) conscious, and deliberate revision of the structure of Michael Helsem seems to be on the road to matching the human social transacting. For example, we can build up entire original literary production of Ido and VolapЃk social patterns with which to replace our non-viable social before Lojban has a single fluent speaker, and I know of at institutions: the self-defeating or self-eliminating least two or three others that have more than contemplated aspects of our dealings with ourselves, and the self- literary efforts in Lojban, but either want to acquire more defending patterns in what we now call "nuclear family," skill before trying or (in at least one case) are waiting "friendship," "social group," "corporation," "local for people who can read the language without translating it government," and "nation-state." We can come to recognize first. our patterned dealings with the-human-species-as-a-whole. ______________________________________ And, having built up these newer, potentially viable patterns, we have it within our grasp to replace the older, non-viable patterns with the newer ones. Two Essays by Andy Hilgartner I PROMISE to catalyze this revision of the fundamental [Andy is interested in anybody's comments on these papers, lived assumptions of the humans species so that, by the which are tangential to Lojban, but are definitely tied to year 2007, we have put the new patterns into use planet- logic and language. You can also write to him for more wide. information; indicate whether you have any familiarity with the theory called 'General Semantics'. We also have copies And I REQUEST your direct and immediate participation in of a couple of his papers, including one inspired by his this project. contact with Lojban, available at the special-order price of 15c/page. Andy's address is: 254 Kensington Place, C. A. Hilgartner, MD Marion OH 43302, and his phone is (614) 389-4595.] STATEMENT OF INTENT Course of Development of a Theory I ASSERT that the patterns by which we and our ancestors The theoretical system developed by our research group for the past several thousand years have lived have now demonstrably and verifiably opens up a new domain of human failed us. knowledge. As of this date, it amounts to approximately 50 In my view, these patterns center on the lived assumption person-years of innovative work. In the following four that "I already know how things REALLY ARE" -- the perhaps pages, let me tell you something about the background, the unspoken, even unrecognized, pretense to "absolute increasing rigor, and the further promise of this inquiry. certainty," with a consequent unwillingness to re-examine Since 1963, the work has gone through at least three and revise "what I thought I knew." From that lived distinct developmental stages: assumption follows a certain quarrelsomeness: If I already A) My earliest paper on this topic (1963) presents a know "how things really are," and you express a view which theory of human behavior, stated in ordinary scientific differs from mine, I will find your PROVOCATIVE BEHAVIOR a English, but based on known premises which no one else had THREAT to my AUTHORITY. And if I cannot persuade, successfully used in this way. In a paper presented before manipulate or coerce you to revise what you say so it the International Conference on General Semantics in 1965, matches what I ALREADY KNOW, I may take steps to defend my I extended this theory of human behavior into the arena of own TRUTHS by suppressing your mistaken OPINIONS -- or may large social institutions. Also, I made logical claims for even set out to suppress YOU. And the means of suppressing the doctrine: self-consistency, and parsimony. When I YOU range from verbal putdowns, to fisticuffs, to murder, gave the paper, I found myself applauded rather than shot war and genocide. down. Today, we know how to use cosmic forces (such as nuclear But, while still at that conference, I came to an fission and fusion -- A-bombs and H-bombs) to defend our uncomfortable insight: I recognized that at that time, no "absolute certainties." Under these conditions, I assert, one had yet specified the relations between logical those lived assumptions which lead us to pretend to assumptions and grammar for even one discursive language. "absolute certainty" have outlived their usefulness. To That means that any discursive language remains in the role 27 of "a language of unknown structure." Further, I rec- ii) I can express the central tenet of the developing ognized that one cannot know a doctrine better than one theory in terms of the construct of an organism making a knows the language in which one states the doctrine. distinction or discrimination -- expressible by a sentence Therefore, my theory lacked rigor -- as long as I left it such as "This IS NOT that!" In a world of ceaseless change stated only in a discursive language such as English, I ("at-a-date"), this sentence appears valid in general. could not back up logical claims made for it. iii) To express the contrary of this tenet requires the I left that conference determined to perform a logical construct of our organism not-making a distinction, analysis of my doctrine, and to state it as an axiomatic expressible by a sentence such as "This IS that!" In a system in a mathematical language of known structure. I world of change, this sentence appears never valid. intended to satisfy myself as to whether one could in fact Indeed, by the common definition of the term mistake (Old back up the logical claims I had made for it. Norse, "to take wrongly"), whenever an organism non- B) Working with John F. Randolph, then Fayerweather verbally TAKES some non-verbal this as if it WERE some Professor of Mathematics at the University of Rochester, I other non-verbal that, he makes a mistake. succeeded in doing the required logical analysis. We wrote Let me paraphrase these simple-sounding phrases into more four long papers which utilized an algebraic set theory pretentious logical terminology: Where, in dealing with notation -- the very paradigm of "a mathematical language his environment, an organism non-verbally TREATS this as if of known structure" -- to put the doctrine into the form of it were that, in effect he posits the identity of this and an axiomatic system. that -- he errs fundamentally; where he non-verbally At that point, we had something really new: a logically distinguishes between them, he posits their non-identity -- rigorous and empirically testable theory which in that respect, he does not err. comprehensively accounts for how a human deals with Then the central postulate of the developing theory himself, with his non-living environment, with other humans requires that, on this setting, we disallow the construct and (in principle) with other species of identity (or the binary relation of identical with) in To call the theory comprehensive means that one can use any guise of form, explicit or tacit. In the developing it to study "happenings" on any level of interest, from frame of reference, the construct of identical with has no that of molecular structure -- e.g. the structure of heme usage except to designate situations in which somebody molecules with various possible side chains, only a few of makes a mistake. In discrediting the construct of which have a shape that will allow the ring to combine with identity, I explicitly extend the designated realm of error divalent iron so as to form the active center of a to include the case in which our organism posits the hemoglobin molecule -- up to that of how the human species identity of this with this (or of A with itself). The as a whole gains its living in the biosphere. construct of self-identity conceals the claim that we KNOW In 1969, the Journal of Theoretical Biology printed three what we have perceived and designated as A -- knowledge we of these four papers. That, too, created something of a do not and cannot have. stir -- we received more than 1200 requests for reprints of To take the rejection of identity as one's central one or more of these papers. postulate does not lead to paralysis or aphasia. Instead, Meanwhile, I had what mathematicians refer to as a "new it strips away the pretense to delusional "knowledge," toy" -- an empty form composed of empty set theory symbols, leaving us ready to act on our assumptions. devised originally to account for the behaving-and- However, this central tenet MIGHT contradict the modern experiencing of individuals -- and I set about finding out logical axiom of identity, which states, "For all x that what else it could do. I successfully applied it to a belong to the delimited domain D, x is identical with x." number of topics: small group phenomena; large social sys- Thus, in the mathematical theory of sets, one cannot tems; biological theory. I even made some trespassing dispense with the construct of identity: for, by postu- ventures into the physical sciences. Eventually, I began late, every set qualifies as identical with itself. using it to focus on the topic of the foundations of logic Hence, I feared, there might exist or arise a and mathematics. And at that point (Fall 1971), I began contradiction between what my theory SAYS and the notation developing another uncomfortable insight. in which it says it. At this point, I can prove that such C) The difficulty centered about a possible a contradiction does arise; then, however, I could only contradiction between the "content" of the theory and the sense it as possible and feel sick to the stomach over it. notation in which I expressed this "content" -- a collision Eventually (Christmas 1971) I concluded that, so long as between central premises. To express this difficulty, I I continued using the mathematical theory of sets, I left will need to state the setting ("universe of discourse") myself no way of avoiding or otherwise handling that for the developing theory, its central tenet, and the possible contradiction. So I resolved to abandon set contrary of this central tenet. theory, and all other formalized or discursive languages i) I can express the setting for this developing theory from the Western Indo-European (WIE) tradition, and to by means of a run-on phrase such as an-organism-as-a-whole- devise my own. dealing-with-its-environment-at-a-date. When one defines To shorten an already-lengthy story, in the spring of a notational theory on a setting, one restricts discussion 1972, I made a fundamental discovery. It concerns the to the topics which fit onto that setting -- thereby assumptions encoded, within WIE languages such as English preventing oneself from unknowingly getting off the or set theory, in the grammatical distinction between noun subject. and verb. Briefly, we tell the nouns from the verbs by re- 28 garding any noun as identical with itself, and regarding no verb as identical with itself. By the same token, we I don't recall having taken detailed notes at last year's regard that which we designate by a noun as also self- Logfest, hence I was worried at not being able to recollect identical (really existing, persisting, static-and- the discussion sufficiently to be able to write up my own unchanging), and that which we designate by a verb as also version of the Sapir-Whorf debate. I was hoping that the not-self-identical (somehow transient). In the WIE pat- other participants' reports in the newsletter would either tern, one obtains a "complete sentence" or a "well-formed suffice or help to jog my memory. Of course, these reports formula" by placing at least one noun or noun-phrase next were published last year, so my memory now requires drastic to at least one verb or verb-phrase. Thus, regardless of jogging for me to be able to remember the discussion. At our intentions, regardless of whether we noticed or not, the moment my memory is extremely vague, so forgive factual every time we form a complete sentence in a WIE discursive errors on my part. language or a well-formed formula from a notational I can only remember that I saw the light bulb go off in language, we posit at least one static-and-unchanging at least one person's head -- Athelstan's perhaps -- "thing" which enters into more or less transient meaning that I convinced one or more of you that you have "relations." In other words, by utilizing the grammar of to refine your conception of exactly what "Whorfian the WIE languages, we ACT as if, independent of any effects" you anticipate finding and how to construct an observer, that which exists independent of any observer has adequately defined and controlled test. I was disappointed a structure identical with that of the grammar of the WIE by pc, however, who stuck fast to his ill-informed notion languages. that metaphysical bias resides in the grammatical This discovery opened the way toward the development of categories, and that one should commence a Sapir-Whorf the desired non-WIE formalized language. I found a way to experiment based on that assumption. I believe I stressed disallow the hidden assumption I had disclosed, and by then, and remind you now, that meaningful experiments re- means of a small number of explicit logical steps, to quire that the variables be controlled. Not only that, one derive a grammar from by chosen premises. must know what the variables are. In comparing Lojban to This too constituted a new development. Humans had never any natural language, there are not only several variables before had a DERIVED grammar to play with, only inherited, involved, but the significance of those variables and their traditional ones; although the works of Edward Sapir and relation to hidden variables may be problematic. Suppose Benjamin Lee Whorf predict or foreshadow this development. it turns out, for example, that languages vary greatly in a About then I started collaborating with the linguist given set of surface-level grammatical features but prove Ronald V. Harrington of the University of Rochester. On not to have any significant difference at the deep- this derived grammar we developed a "Let's keep track of structural level. In that case, the surface differences what we say" language, analogous to set theory but would be deceptive and should not even be compared one-to- fundamentally different in structure. As one way it one, but rather the structures of the entire grammatical differs from set theory and other traditional WIE nota- systems and their semantic interpretations would have to be tional languages, the developing notation systematically investigated, understood, and compared. The level at which takes into account the observer. In this notation, one pc is thinking is but a shallow caricature of scientific finds it impossible to make a statement except from the method. point of view of "an-observer-observing-the-observed." Aside from reconstructing my own version of last year's Subsequently, we extended the notation, and discussion, which I could still attempt to do with the i) translated the findings of the set theory calculus of prompting of others, I have nothing further to contribute human behaving-and-experiencing into the new notation, on the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis at this point. It is your obtaining a general theory of social systems; move now, and if someone in the group can refine the Loj- ii) developed a "numbering theory," a "personal banist conception of Sapir-Whorf and Lojban's relevance to geometry", and a "notational physics with physicists in it, then I am open to further discussion. it"; I don't think you will get very far based upon your iii) provided evidence suggesting that we humans can now current thinking about Sapir-Whorf. Rather than worrying encompass the physical, biological and human psycho-social yourself about metaphysical bias and the ways different sciences within a single frame of reference, based on a languages supposedly limit what can be thought, it would be single set of postulates. This possibility seems to me to better simply to focus on what a more precise language can exceed the dreams of the seekers after a unified field do. As with formal logic and mathematics, or Arabic theory in physics. numerals as compared to Roman numerals, it is possible to At the very least, the new frame of reference gives us an extend one's thinking beyond what one can normally do unfamiliar standpoint from which to view, and re-think, otherwise. This is not exactly Sapir-Whorf, but it is human concerns. That alone warrants studying it with care. Lojban's only convincing selling point. The creation of a cognitive community that demands precise expression and provides a language for it is intriguing even if it does Letters, Comments, and Responses not attract research dollars. Precision and explicitness in communication, assuming that Lojban is workable in from Ralph Dumain everyday social interaction, can further the expression of on Sapir-Whorf Discussions at LogFest 89, and other topics and maybe even the formulation of thoughts, and remove sig- 29 nificant interpretive ambiguities and other difficulties on mandatory features of the language. Together with a basic the part of the hearer. I say significant, because a lot lexicon and a set of examples illustrating the language in of expressions that would confound a computer are easily use (including syntactic features not explicitly described interpreted without mistakes by humans. You once mentioned elsewhere), the "16 rules" formed the Fundamento. Of the issue of forcing assumptions on the listener. In those course, Esperanto like all other languages contains cases where such "assumptions" actually imply thousands of syntactic rules, some of which are captured in misinterpretation of meaning or intent, they could be prescriptive grammars, and many more of which the speakers removed by more exact expression. It should be understood, are unconscious. Esperanto is learned as other languages though, that those "assumptions" are not metaphysical are learned, without complete formal grammars at hand, and except when the utterance itself involves ideological non-Europeans do not have to learn an Indo-European issues, in which case the conceptual bias is located in the language before they learn Esperanto, any more than they terminology used in the utterance. would have to learn French before they could learn English. Thanks for finally publishing my bibliography, after Also, Esperanto can borrow words from any language, not stalling for a year using the lamest excuses. The intent just European ones. and viewpoint of my annotated bibliography were clearly On the alleged non-competition between Esperanto and stated, hence there never was a question of misleading the Lojban. They are non-competitive if Lojbanists refrain reader. Both the references and my comments help to com- from pushing Lojban as an international language, since the municate to the reader just how many factors and Sapir-Whorf hypothesis is of no concern to Esperanto. subdisciplines are involved in dealing with the issue of However, the minute someone makes a claim for a new inter- the relationship between language and thought. Now that national language, several issues arise. Anyone coming the readers know the different things that need to be forth with a new language who looks like a crackpot considered, they can take it from there. Since I lack the automatically discredits the international language time now to take care of it, it would help you to find a movement in the eyes of the public, hence Esperantists have linguist who could find up-to-date information on advances a stake in the matter. In the past, this means that in linguistic theory since the early 1970s that bear upon somebody hides in their attic for 15 years creating a clarification of the relation of language to cognition. language, self-publishes a little book describing his new The closest I have come to dealing with linguistics in a language, and announces in a press conference that he has long time was attending a linguistics conference here in just created the now world language. It is one thing to December. I queried a couple of friends about the current have a hobby, it is another to make bombastic proclamations state of linguistic theory, who were rather cynical. They that one's creation (whether of a language, a new monetary did not feel, however, that any given school of thought was system, or any utopian scheme) will change the world when being discriminated against in terms of research funding; the lack of social realism is so obvious to all. Those the politics is more personal than doctrinal. The book kind of people are obvious cranks, and hence they exhibit was overwhelming; there is more going on than compromise Esperanto whenever they claim that they have anyone can assimilate -- books on syntax, discourse analy- concocted a new world language, as if the adoption of an sis, you name it -- it's hard to get a grip on. I saw the international language were some kind of magic. Hence new book that Mouton has published on interlinguistics Esperantists have justifiably reacted negatively. (i.e. international planned languages like Esperanto), but Now, I do not claim that Lojban/Lojban is guilty of this it was too expensive to buy even at a discount. There were extreme behavior. The Washington Post article did not cast 6 books in a series on the DLT project, the machine Lojban in such a light. You have not yet claimed Lojban to translation system that uses Esperanto as the interlan- be the future international language. But you have already guage. With two other books I know about, that makes 8 resorted to dubious propaganda in order to make yourself books in all. One of those books includes articles about look good and Esperanto bad. other machine translation projects, including one that uses You suggest that, as Lojban is a superior engineering the purportedly logical Indian language Aymara as its effort than Esperanto, it can quickly catch up even though interlanguage! Esperanto has a century-long head start. The creators of A few comments on articles in your recent newsletters. Ido also thought they were superior language engineers, and The lengthy article that compares Lojban to Esperanto where are they today? There are social, political and struck me as much to-do about nothing, as no Esperantist economic reasons why no planned language, Esperanto or today believes that his language only has 16 rules. That otherwise, has been universally adopted, and those was used at one time as a propaganda device by careless obstacles cannot be surmounted by the most able of people, but I think people are more thoughtful nowadays, at engineers. Here the narrow, blinkered mentality of the least on that point. Anyway, it is necessary to understand computer specialist is so painfully evident. the historical origin of the "16 rules." They are not There is also the supposed cultural neutrality of Lojban descriptive but prescriptive. They came from the effort to that makes it superior to Esperanto. But Lojban has not put and end to the constant attempts at reforming the only neutrality, but cultural nullity. Esperanto had grammar that people who are never satisfied with the form social roots (and still does today) in the circumstances of of Esperanto or any other planned language kept attempting late 19th century Eastern Europe, and in spite of the to make. Adopted as part of the "Fundamento," the 16 rules provinciality of the Warsaw Ghetto, Zamenhof and Esperanto declared those easily describable, non-negotiable, still managed to attract the admiration and loyalty of 30 people throughout the world. The European "bias" of hence metaphysical bias) of Lojban: science fiction and Esperanto's grammar is a non-issue, as that is the part of computer buffs and the like. the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis that has been thoroughly discredited. The European lexicon of the Esperanto Bob responds on a couple of items - I'm not going to language is advantageous to technologically oriented non- discuss all of Ralph's points - I'll leave that to the Europeans, though it may ideologically repulse others. But community, especially the discussion on Sapir-Whorf. the speech community of Esperanto is most diverse, whereas Suffice it to say that I think Ralph makes some different the community of Lojban is extremely uniform and narrow -- assumptions than we do about what kind of useful computer nerds, sci-fi buffs, people interested in logic information can be obtained by studying Lojban in a Sapir- and semantics -- not much of a basis for an international Whorf context. For example, he makes comments about the culture, and certainly not an ideologically neutral or even possibility that all languages have a common 'deep divers culture. Esperantists, in spite of the European structure'. This may be so, but even if only surface bias of their language's lexicon, have risked and even structures are directly related to culture, it would be sacrificed their lives in fighting racism and fascism; no useful to confirm it. (If the only 'important' features Lojbanist I know would ever make such a sacrifice. about a language's structure are in its 'deep structure' What is most irritating is misusing facts in order to and all language 'deep structures' are the same, then support misleading generalizations. I accept as truthful Sapir-Whorf is claiming the nonsensical idea that all the statement that while sitting next to the Esperanto cultures are the same.) booth at a sci-fi convention, you did not overhear the We of course do not consider that the Sapir-Whorf claim Esperantists speaking Esperanto to one another. You of a relationship between culture and a language's grammar dishonestly suggest by that example that Esperantists are has been 'discredited', as both Ralph and Don describe it. not even accustomed to speaking the very language they are It is precisely that claim that Lojban is designed to test. advertising to others. What hypocrisy, in light of the Thus, a clear separation from European language structures fact that Esperanto conversation has been going on for a is vital to Lojban's goals, and Esperanto's lack in this century in the most diverse of circumstances, while no area is a primary reason for its unsuitability for our Loglan/ Lojban conversation in the context of any normal purposes. social interaction has ever taken place! I too have I think Ralph has an incorrect view of the Lojban staffed an Esperanto booth upon occasion, and I too have community. You are far more diverse than he claims. A only used English to speak to my fellow American large percentage are computer-literate, and many read Esperantist booth-mates, because it is basically an science fiction, but not all; in any case, even those two English-speaking environment, and I do not generally speak categories define widely varied audiences. I can see that Esperanto in an English-speaking setting although I am per- education is inherently a potential bias, but I challenge fectly capable of speaking the language. Ralph or anyone else to state actual metaphysical biases So it seems that in spite of your lip service to non- that are common to all members of either group, or to the competition, you are already pitting Lojban against Lojban community. Esperanto in a competitive fashion, and you have also To tie back to something I said regarding Don Harlow's resorted to duplicity in doing so. Under those writings, Lojban's metaphysical diversity can be shown by a circumstances, you cannot realistically expect amicable wide diversity in political beliefs among the community. relations between Lojban and the Esperanto movement. You Within the Lojban community are sizeable numbers of know that I do not tolerate dishonest propaganda on the libertarians, socialists, and anarchists, extremes of both part of Esperantists, as evidenced by my disagreements with the right and left, along with more mainstream political Don Harlow. I surely am not going to let the young philosophies. It is an incomplete argument to infer upstarts of Lojban get away with any nonsense, especially metaphysics from politics, but I think it is a reasonable when they are highly educated people who claim to be able idea. to use their language in order to improve their thinking Whether most Lojbanists (the majority of whom probably and their world view. oppose both racism and fascism) would die for their I enclose a photocopy of a commentary on Loglan/Lojban beliefs, I cannot say. At least some of our supporters are from Rick Harrison's The Alembic. I pass this along for in the Armed Forces and are committed to die for their the completeness of your archives, not to torment you. country if necessary. Ralph impugns the honor of these and Mark Tierisch's reasoning leaves something to be desired in other Lojbanists with his statements. many parts of this article. Although this article makes I recognize that Esperanto has had its martyrs. One Esperanto look good in comparison to Loglan, its reasoning would hope that martyrdom is not a vital prerequisite to doesn't hold up, especially since Esperanto like all other achieving an international language. One 'problem' with languages has a lot more than 30 grammatical rules, let martyrdom, is that, while it draws together the community alone 16. The only place where I unequivocally agree with associated with those who have died, that same strong feel- Tierisch is where he refers to Loglan as not culturally ing alienates those outside of the community, and causes neutral but as a reflection of the "culture of nerds." The them to misunderstand. Some may be drawn to a movement disparaging term "nerd" is hardly necessary, but the that people are willing to die for; others are repelled by description accurately pinpoints the subcultural basis (and the 'fanaticism' that they perceive in such an attitude. 31 In any event, fighting racism and fascism is not what Tierisch's letter made many incorrect claims about the Lojban is about, although I personally would hope that with language and suggested that he felt threatened in some way increased understanding of other cultures that is possible by Lojban's ideas (perhaps in the way Ralph suggests through learning Lojban, people would find it more Esperantists feel about 'crackpot' language inventors). We difficult to persecute those who differ from them. wrote a reply, but The Alembic folded without printing an- I will admit that any discussion of Esperanto and Lojban other issue. will lead to some comparisons. Our purpose in the articles My own feeling is that people should not feel threatened was to blunt the validity of such comparisons. My by ideas that differ from their own. I can understand that statements about Esperanto do not claim that anything is Esperantists dislike the 'guilt by association' that comes 'wrong' with it; I merely feel that Lojban is better de- from association with 'crackpots'. But this is just part signed for the purposes it is meant for than Esperanto is. of the territory. People like playing with language and But those purposes are different from Esperanto. new invented 'languages' will crop up all the time. Only where we talk about the potential for Lojban as an Reacting by disparaging the inventor merely offends the international language is there even a basis for inventor; it doesn't stop other inventors, nor helps comparison. In this area, though, I stated that Lojban Esperanto's image. I think there are better approaches. would have no significant role unless both a) Esperanto My main point here is that the positive effects possible clearly fails as an international language and b) Lojban's if both of our efforts worked at promoting created other uses make it attractive as an international language. languages in general, as well as our specific versions, The international language goal is an incidental one for instead of knocking at each other. The potential benefits Lojban (though important to some among Lojbanists, of cooperation far exceed the benefits we can gain at each including some who are also Esperantists). There is plenty other's expense. of room for both languages to successfully achieve their ___________________________________________ goals. My point is that both languages can gain by cooperation rather than competition. An Esperantist is already more from John Hodges: open to the possibilities that make Lojban interesting than a typical member of the non-Esperanto public. Similarly, a ... higher percentage of Lojbanists are aware of and interested I took to heart your essay in JL11 that "there is no in Esperanto than of the general public. If this competition between E. and L., because their goals are commonalty can be harnessed, positive synergistic effects different." But I'm not sure your argument succeeds. are likely. The goal of E. is to be an international language, to be In this light, my comments about Esperanto being spoken "everybody's second language". Notice that this is a at convention tables should be taken much more positively. global ambition, and implies that any other "second" or I did not and do not claim that Esperantists cannot speak "international" language is a competitor. They have an their language. Rather, I believe that the outside image established claim to this role, with 100 years of of Esperanto as 'useful' and 'important' suffers when they experience, 10,000 books, and 2,000,000 speakers (1990 do not and they can; Lojban will similarly suffer if World Almanac figure). Also some martyrs, persecuted by Lojbanists do not use their language. My calling this the Nazis and other militant nationalists. situation to peoples' attention, and saying that I plan to Lojban has three major goals: 1) to be a research tool do differently, says nothing at all about the relative for scientific study into the relationships between merits of the two languages. It was a friendly, and I language, thought, and culture - we hope that studies will thought constructive, criticism. (As an aside, Ralph is prove that people think more flexibly and/or more logically incorrect in stating that Lojban has not been used in in Lojban than in any other language; 2) to find computer 'normal' social conversation. Extensive use, not yet - but applications, e.g. in artificial intelligence, surely within a year even this will have changed.) human/machine interface, and machine translation; 3) to be As a final note, Ralph's last reference is to an letter an international language. (We welcome anyone to use it in The Alembic that was a diatribe against Lojban. In it, for anything, but these are the goals we had in mind during writer Tierisch (who hasn't ever been on our mailing list all those years of development.) and is unlikely to know much about the language) compares Goals 1) and 2) are less-than-global ambitions, which Lojban's rules to Esperanto's 16 that we discussed last genuinely do not challenge Esperanto. But your essay in issue. Ralph mentions this, but just a few paragraphs JL11 keeps goal 3), which does. You soften it by saying earlier said "no Esperantist today believes that his that the challenge will not be a serious one for many language only has 16 rules. That was used at one time as a years, and people should have their own choice on it, propaganda device by careless people, but I think people anyway. But it is still there, and there may be a are more thoughtful nowadays, at least on that point." Don practical conflict between goals 3) and 1). Harlow said something similar. Apparently they are wrong. Goal 1) is to be a research tool for learning about Perhaps the leaders of the Esperanto movement know the language, and the relationships between language and significance of the 16 rules, but the community of thinking. To achieve our scientific goals, we want/need to Esperantists as a whole may not. gather a body of at least several hundred fluent L. speakers from a wide variety of linguistic and cultural 32 backgrounds, who can participate in controlled studies. No remaining places added using lexeme BAI? Could we seri- doubt to get these, we will have to recruit and teach ously imagine making a Lojban Mark II that was a superset thousands. of Esperanto, so that existing E. speakers and books would To gather such a varied body of speakers, we could remain compatible? Or perhaps one that was designed to translate our teaching materials into Chinese AND Hindi AND make conversion from Esperanto as easy as possible? French AND Spanish AND so forth, or we could translate them I am out of my depth here. But if we are to seriously into Esperanto, a relatively simple task. If we CAN recruit among Esperantists, we may have to commit in recruit Esperantists, we should try to do so. But CAN we? advance to something like this, provided the experiments It is clear what the Esperanto community can do for show Lojban Mark II to be a worthwhile effort. Then again, Lojban. But what does Lojban offer the Esperanto perhaps these thoughts are way off base, and the future of community? Why should they host our experiment, given the Lojban does not lie in recruiting Esperantists. Are we, conflict implied by our goal 3)? ultimately, competitors after all? One line of thought I have explored in recent days (many of my lines of thought are half-baked - I am asking for feedback). Perhaps we should explicitly make goal 3) Bob responds - John stated the 'flaw' in my competition conditional on prior success in goals 1) and/or 2), and argument better than anyone else, but I still stand by what commit to cooperation with the Esperanto community should I said above, that both languages can co-exist without the event arise. competition between them. There are some hidden We begin by describing Lojban as "an experimental human assumptions behind a deduced 'unavoidable' competition language". (I think this is true, anyway. I expect that based on John's logic. our first five years of use will show us changes we want to The most important flawed assumption is natural for most make, when our 5-year baseline expires.) We point out that Americans: that for one language to be 'everyone's second carrying a Lojban textbook written in Esperanto book in E. language', there can be no other international language. book services will hardly threaten the spread of E.; it is For monolingual Americans, learning a second language seems just one more cultural opportunity that opens up if you onerous enough - why would anyone want to learn two learn E. 'international languages'? If the L. experiments to test Sapir-Whorf show that, as Simple. One learns different languages for different we hope, people think more flexibly and/or more logically purposes. Languages are tools for communication; you use in Lojban than in any other language, OR IF future the best tool available for the communications job at hand. computers still find transcribing/parsing/translating By this argument, of course, Don Harlow is right in using Esperanto to be beyond them, while Lojban is translated English to talk to another English speaker, and Esperanto with ease, THEN AND ONLY THEN will the question arise of when he wants to talk to someone who doesn't know English whether to trade in Esperanto for a newer model. By as well as they know Esperanto. (Which I agree with in hosting our experiment, the E. movement will have stuffed general, making exceptions for the times when the language the ranks of L-speakers with Esperantists, assuring them is on display for outsiders, or when a particular edu- the loudest possible voice in the future development of cational purpose would be served.) Lojban Mark II. Especially if Lojban proves Sapir-Whorf true to any Carrying the thought further... How much good would such extent at all, someone learning Lojban will think a voice do them? English speakers have suggested deriving differently (and perhaps 'better' by some standard) than if the gismu from English alone; this is still a rotten idea they know only Esperanto or their native language. if the favored language is Esperanto. Lojbanized gismu do We have no problem recruiting Esperantists. They have not resemble their source words closely enough. Even if the same range of interests as any other group of similar pure source words are used for gismu, they float in a sea size. In fact, Esperantists are a fertile recruiting of cmavo that makes the result incomprehensible to speakers ground because they are already interested in language. of the source language. Lojban is just too radically Some Esperantists will find the design goals of Lojban, different. But current Lojban has rules of spelling and or specific design features, worthy enough for them to word-formation designed so that today's computers, with further study the language. Then, when they know more, PRIMITIVE abilities at pattern-recognition, could they can decide to study both languages or to just study transcribe and parse spoken Lojban correctly. The one. John's argument is flawed here; he assumes that, abilities of future computers may allow us to relax those because the goal for Esperanto is to become "everyone's rules. (neural nets, optoelctronics, etc.) second language", every Esperantist holds that goal as a For the rationale above to work, Lojban Mark II would nirvana that they cannot turn away from. have to be rebuilt from the ground up. SO- hypothetical But Esperanto is not likely to achieve its purpose within question, for 10 to 20 years hence - if we wished to make a our lifetimes. So many Esperantists will be interested in language with predicate grammar, and accommodating the the language that offers them more personal gratification limits of computers of the time. and as compatible as pos- within their lifetime. Some will find this in Lojban; sible with Esperanto, how close could we come? Could, possibly others in some other language. Many, perhaps even e.g., the prefixes and suffixes of Esperanto substantially most, will concentrate on Esperanto, or will work with replace to cmavo? Could all brivla have only one or two Esperanto and Lojban. For these, Esperanto provides the places, mimicking conventional parts of speech, with the immediate satisfaction of a large speaker population with 33 which to communicate, while Lojban presents a peculiar in- People in the Loglan community are tired of learning a tellectual challenge that may at some later time prove more changing target. Regardless of how flawed Dr. Brown's rewarding. There is no competition implicit in our versions of Loglan are, the Lojban development would never existence for such people. have been conceived of, much less completed, if not for An Esperantist who denies the value of learning other Brown's intellectual property claims that forced us to work languages is as close-minded as the nationalists that from outside rather than within the Institute. oppose Esperanto. Some will be this way, and that is their If Lojban does evolve in new ways, the speakers will be right. But far more valuable to both Esperanto and Lojban the ones who decide, as John suggests. If the speakers are would be cooperation between the two groups. Undoubtedly, Esperantists, some of the underlying concepts of Esperanto Lojban will attract a lot of people that would not be will find their way into the language. interested in Esperanto (as Ralph says, computer people and However, as John points out, Lojban and any natural other scientists, and science fiction readers, are a language are too different. Lojban is also too different natural audience for Lojban). Some of these may not find from Esperanto to offer significant pattern matching. A Lojban to their liking (too different, too small a speaker predicate language is too unlike an Indo-European grammar, base, etc.), and may proceed onward to discover Esperanto. or anything that can even be described like an Indo-Eu- The reverse will be true among Esperanto recruits. By ropean grammar. If you rule out changing all the words having information on both languages available, people can once again (a relearning burden that would be unacceptably make an informed choice as to which language serves their high - as anyone who has used LogFlash with both Institute interests. Loglan and Lojban words can testify), there simply isn't A side benefit results. A cooperative, open, attitude is that much that is worth changing. (It is also possible presented to the public. This attitude ameliorates the that to make such changes would destroy whatever there is impression that international linguists are fanatical about Lojban that makes it worth 'trading in' for. idealists, an impression that turns off a lot of people. No. Lojban will stand on its own, and will gain support Our relaxed attitude towards international language success from Esperantists on its own merits, or not at all. As has not only reduced Lojban's 'threat' to Esperanto, it has long as I have influence, I will resist attempts to make calmed the portion of the Lojban community that opposes the there be an 'exclusive or' choice between Lojban and Es- idealistic 'world language' effort. peranto among potential speakers. If we do this, there Incidentally, one member of our original class here in will be no competition. (Hmmm! Could increased competi- the DC-area, Paul Francis O'Sullivan, is a lifetime member tiveness be a fallout of linguistic confusion between of the local Esperanto chapter. He finds no conflict in 'inclusive or' and 'exclusive or'? A Sapir-Whorf effect working with both languages and is translating the brochure that we might find negated among Lojbanists!) into Esperanto for us. (Reviewers are welcome to volunteer.) Jamie Bechtel, our first Lojban 'creative Let's turn to one more letter on Esperanto (and a few writer', is also an Esperantist, as is poet Michael Helsem. other subjects), from Paul Doudna. Bob's responses to some Numerous others, too. of them are embedded: We are gaining cooperation from Esperantists. Bruce Arne Sherwood, a 'big name' in Esperanto, taught courses and ... wrote articles comparing Loglan and Esperanto in the early The discussions of the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis have been 1980's, and carried on a lengthy correspondence with pc to interesting. However, I'm inclined to think that testing ensure that the facts were right. No animosity or this hypothesis may be like testing the Shroud of Turin. competition was evidenced. Mike Urban, an Esperantist That is, no matter how it is tested and no matter what the known for developing MacIntosh Hypercard teaching software results are, people will continue to believe as they did for Esperanto (and one of the Worldcon table before. representatives), has advised us on some technical points of Esperanto, as well as on teaching software. Etc. I am sending you an article on E-Prime. If you haven't We cannot test Sapir-Whorf based on teaching the language seen this already, I think you will find it interesting. through Esperanto. If all of the target population spoke The article is written in E-Prime, which is almost the same Esperanto as well as Lojban, there would be no way to as English. The author obviously believes that language separate effects of the two languages from each other. We does have a significant effect on our thinking. must use monolingual speakers who learn Lojban as their first non-native language, or better, bilinguals raised [Bob: E-Prime is a variation on English devised by speaking Lojban and their native language from birth. In General Semanticists that avoids using the verb 'to be' in this way, Sapir-Whorf effects would be least hidden by all its forms. Andy Hilgartner's articles above are uncontrolled variables (a problem mentioned by Ralph that written in his version of E-Prime, and Andy, also, we are indeed concerned with). apparently believes that language has a significant effect As for Lojban Mark II, I doubt if it will happen. If on thinking. Score one against Ralph's and Don's claim there are changes after 5 years, they will be minor, that S-W has been totally discredited.] evolutionary ones. That is why we are forcing the 5-year period, to ensure that inertia keeps the language stable. Concerning the Lojban logo, I notice that most of the suggestions involve some kind of visual ambiguity. 34 Considering that one of the primary claims of Lojban is its mately the same for all languages. A language that divides freedom from ambiguity and also the fact that some critics up semantic space into fewer words tends to end up with claim that Lojban is actually more ambiguous than English, words being used for multiple meanings. Lojban has one the use of an ambiguous design for a logo would be quite advantage in that Lojbanists generally try to avoid ironic. unnecessary figurative extensions of meaning and to explic- I showed the articles comparing Esperanto and Lojban to a itly mark those extension where accurate interpretation is friend of mine who is an Esperantist. His reactions were important.] very negative. I must agree with him that many of the points of comparison were not valid. The articles The article on negation was enlightening, as far as I themselves contained some disclaimers, implying that the could follow it. I'm not familiar enough with Lojban comparison should not be taken too seriously. In grammar to fully appreciate its significance for Lojban. I particular, the attempt to compare "rules" I don't think would have two observations: really works. The meaning of the word "rules" is used (1) I'm not sure how this will work in Lojban, but in quite differently in [discussing] the two languages. English, we typically form negatives which theoretically Here are two suggestions for a more meaningful represent contradictory statements or complement classes. comparison: In practice, in spite of the language representation, we (1) Translate some sample sentences in English (chosen tend to think in terms of contrary stereotypes. To treat equally by Lojbanists and Esperantists) into both these contrary stereotypes as if they were jointly languages. Include relevant comments on any peculiar exhaustive concepts (as the language form would seem to features of the translations. indicate) can lead to illogical conclusions. For example, (2) Compare the underlying assumptions behind the two "Un-American" and "unchristian", to give two extreme languages. Zamenhof and Brown had in mind quite different examples. concepts of what constituted an ideal language. These (2) It is pointed out, quite correctly, that negation in concepts of course determined the way the resulting English is very complex in practice. It is only roughly language should be constructed. This type of comparison analogous to the vastly simplified negation of formal might be very difficult since in many cases these underly- logic. Basically, the same conclusion applies to the ing assumptions are not made explicit. logical connectives AND, OR, and IF. That is, these words (along with NOT) in the context of formal logic do not mean When I heard a talk on Esperanto about a year ago, it what their counterparts mean in English. It will be sounded almost like the speaker was talking about interesting to see if those who use Lojban will adhere to Loglan/Lojban. There is no ambiguity in Esperanto, it was the theoretical meanings of such words (thus resulting in a claimed. (But the two languages mean something different logical form of thinking far beyond what is normally found by "ambiguity".) It was further claimed that Esperanto is among human beings), or will the meanings of these words culturally neutral. (Again, the meaning of "cultural merely shift, losing their precise logical definition (in neutrality" is not quite the same in both languages.) terms of truth tables) and evolving to something much Esperanto is completely "logical". (Meaning that the closer to English. grammar is free of irregularities typical of most languages, not that it is based on a system of logic as [Bob: On the first, we ended up adding two cmavo to Lojban attempts to do.) And of course the spelling is lexeme NAhE, the contrary negation lexeme. In addition to completely phonetic. (Both languages are alike in this re- na'e, which refers to the generalized scalar contrary, spect, although Esperanto doesn't have spoken punctuation.) we've added no'e as a scalar 'middle' or neutral, and to'e as a polar opposite. Thus Lojban allows explicit distinc- [Bob: A good response and some good suggestions. Any tions in "un-" that are not possible for English. volunteers among the Esperantists to devise some sentences On the second, Jim Brown and the Loglan community in to translate and/or some lists of assumptions and ideals. general have looked at AND, OR, and IF, much more We may need Paul to serve as a moderator to point out where thoroughly than they had NOT. In addition, with the our definitions don't jibe.] possible exception of IF, these do not have the complex questions of 'scope' that negation has. We're fairly Have the 600 rules of Lojban been published? I suspect confident that no problems remain here. When I write the that no matter how many rules are stated explicitly, that textbook on those parts of the language, we'll be more there will be a potentially unlimited number of implicit certain. semantic rules that are used in any language to actually There should not be much backsliding to English versions understand what any given sentence means. of the logical connectives if we've properly taught them, because the various non-logical English versions of these [Bob: On the first: Yes, this issue! Though the number connectives are also built into Lojban. For example, we is now closer to 550, depending on how you count. Every have causal connectives for causal IF, a wide variety of word has a 'rule' defining its semantic meaning. If you ANDs, and a flexible restatement of OR in terms of set count those as rules, than a language with fewer words has membership. The availability of the English non-logical fewer rules. However, you can turn this around. The combining forms should keep the pure logical connectives universe of discourse for 'all of language' is approxi- 'pure'. We'll certainly find out. (Note that most of the 35 English-like forms are more highly marked in Lojban than or use it as the basis for the textbook glossary. People the logical connectives, so there will be some caution are encouraged to write in with lists of words they would necessary in this area.) like to see defined in a glossary (other than the obvious Lojban ones).] In the process of trying to sort out and file the material I have accumulated over the years about Loglan/Lojban, I notice that in many cases material (such le lojbo se ciska as the article on Lojban Negation) does not contain the date and does not contain the name of the author. I First this issue is a little ditty written by realize that in the past I have written some things myself Athelstan. It's cute, if not profound. Sing it to the that are not properly identified. However, I think it tune of 'Oscar Meyer' jingle. would be useful if all material that is distributed was identified with a date and name. My Lojban has a first name it's 'logical', you see [Bob: Good idea, and we'll try to do better. We've put My Lojban has a second name out JL with enclosures on the assumption that most people the 'language' that's for me who save the material put it in notebooks as they get it, I like to use it ev'ry day and hence have stuff associated together in a 'useful' and if you ask me why, I'll say order, which is usually not by date. For next issue, I'll la lojban. cu se nelci mi try to come up with a list of our publications of the past, gi'e ve tavla do fo mi which ones are worth keeping (other than for historical interest), and explain how Nora and I have set up notebooks The last line is pronounced: to keep the 'useful' information at hand. la lojbangirz. publications often do not bear an author's /lah,LOHZH,bahn. shoo,seh NEHL,shee,mee/ name if we want the article to be seen as a product of the /gee,heh veh,TAH,vlah doh,foh,mee/ organization rather than of an individual. In such a case, we'll try to make sure the organization name is on it.] and means, roughly: Another thing that I think would be useful would be a "Lojban is liked by me, short glossary of often used Lojban terms, to be updated at and is spoken to you by me." frequent intervals. This might be published as a separate sheet to be kept as reference, or if short enough, included Also on a light note, John Cowan made his first Lojban on the back page of each newsletter. There are certain effort a real humdinger. Here's his introduction and the terms used frequently which I don't always remember (and text. See the translation section if you can't figure it new readers of the newsletter will not know at all). For out. (If you haven't tried a translation before, you may example, I am trying to find the difference in meaning want to try John's journal entries, which follow this between the definitions of bridi and selbri. They are monstrosity, first.) defined somewhere, I'm sure, but I can't locate the In this month's writings, we've tried to use the added definitions. writing conventions to make the text easier to read. Hope it helps. Hope we are reasonably consistent in our usage [Bob: I explained selbri above, but in case you missed of the conventions. it, selbri corresponds to the logic term 'predicate', while bridi (in the gismu list) corresponds to the term John: 'predication'. In other words, the bridi is the whole And (ta-dah!) my first piece of Lojban. I'm using a format sentence, while the selbri is the thing in the middle that similar to JL10's, so you can see what I said, what I meant determines the relationship among the sumti. to say, and what I was trying to say. The original, by the We used to have a glossary in every issue, up to around way, is the 1984 winner of the Bulwer-Lytton Fiction JL4 or JL5, but it got too big. The Overview was written Contest, an international bad-writing contest where the to be a textual glossary for newcomers, figuring that old- contestants submitted the opening paragraph from "the worst timers were tired of seeing (and paying for) the of all possible novels". I found it in a book called "It definitions for words they already knew. The Overview, of Was A Dark And Stormy Night", a collection of entries. course, is getting old, and has kunbri for what is now sel- bri and a couple of other minor errors. But the errors have thus far been seen as too minor to justify a revision sent to everybody. The textbook will contain a glossary of both Lojban words of this sort and English linguistic terms that are used a lot in describing the language. In addition, Lojbanist Nancy Thalblum has started putting a glossary together as she studies the language. We may publish this separately, 36 Herewith the Lojban: ni'oni'o le nimcitno goi ko'a po'u la ka,as. noi ko'a melbi bai jorne le sramudri noi ke'a kusru zi'e po le dabli'e goi ko'e po'u la danlu ku secau le kecti .i le'i prenu poi ke'a se saptutklu zi'e po ko'e ca zbasu lo derxi be loi mudri bei leko'a jamfu noi ke'a cisyselpli .ibabo le voksa noi ke'a cladu je klina zi'e po'e la nebnauzag. noi ke'a te pemci je tajnau cu fegcru <<lu ganai le do fagryrinka cu rinka lei fagri ja'e le nimcitno se jukpa gi do lifri lenu mi setca le xarci le do se citka poi ko'a romoi ko'u li'u>> As mentioned earlier, John Cowan has started writing a Lojban journal. Here are the first 3 days of his journal entries. Only minor corrections were needed. John's pleasant rhyme (you'll see), used an incorrect word. We corrected the word, calling the result a near-rhyme. Most new Lojbanists should be able to understand this text using only the gismu list, rafsi list and cmavo list, and making literal translations and educated guesses as to how the result goes together. Try it and see: ni'oni'o de'i le djedi po la lunas. vau ni'o le mutce cmalu jukni cu cpare le djacu tubnu .i carvi ja'e le nu ko'a farlu .i le solri cu febri'a le carvi .i le jukni cu rapli cpare ni'oni'o de'i le djedi po la mars. vau ni'o le mi tixnu po'u la airin. verba .i ko'a nanca li ci .i ko'a kelci je krixa .i je ko'a sipna .i ko'a bacru fi la gliban. .i mi bacru fi la gliban. .e la lojban. .i mi na'e drani bacru fi la lojban. .i mi zutse .i je mi viska le nu le mi tixnu cu kelci .i glare ni'o mi jdice le nu mi te cmene le'i djedi le'i plini ni'o cusku fa la viktorias <<lu mi ga'i ba'e na'e se zdile li'u>> .i di'u xajmi mi .i zo ga'i jibni rimni zo ba'e la lojban. .i zo na'e go'i .i le nu le'i rimni cu porsi cu xajmi mi ni'oni'o de'i le djedi po la saturn. vau ni'o cusku fa la daisets. suzukis. <<lu mi po la zen. skicu lo kilycna fo lo na'e kilycna li'u>> ni'o mi tirna lo verba zgike .i ri mutce pluka mi ni'o mi pu tcidu lo cukta be le nu ke pamoi penmi le na'e terdi prenu po'u la tranx. bei la alan. din. fostr. Next we have a letter and another poem by Michael Helsem, who has been extremely prolific in the last few months (we are pleasantly drowning in his Lojban poetry). Due to our tight schedule, we've made some changes to what he wrote that we haven't been able to run by him, so hopefully he'll forgive us if we messed something up. Michael does follow the excellent practice of sending us fairly literal English translations of everything he writes so we can (usually) figure out his intent. Michael's text is very complex, indeed probably too complex either for him or for a typical reader; it appears that Michael was trying to paraphrase his natural English idiom, throwing in plenty of attitudinals and discursives. However, the result is worth studying; the letter exemplifies several more esoteric features of Lojban grammar as well as the problems in translating idiom. At least look up the words and make your best guess what he's trying to say. Then check the translation to see what he intended. A far better practice in writing your own letters, by the way, is to figure out what you want to say, then express it in short Lojban sentences as John Cowan did in his journal. You will find after writing only a few pages that you will develop a more Lojbanic idiom. Michael actually made very few grammatical errors. There are, however, some 'wrong words', some unfortunate Americanisms that translate poorly when he tries to do them literally, and some equivalents to English pronouns, that in Lojban are frustratingly vague or misleading. All in all, though, this is an excellent effort. I editorially embedded the original of the poem included in the letter within the non-grammatical quotes "lo'u ... le'u"; the poem had one 'grammatical error' that could not be corrected without destroying the sense of his introductory comments regardin the poem. di'e zirjbo po'a xatra de'i la xav. po'e la mumast. ni'o coido'u mi dopeza ledo nu jarco le mi pemci cu ckire ra'u .i puvi'eku mi mutce cutyzu'e pi'o gi'e pu'i ninpemci jmina la'u lo mo'amei .u'u ne ki'u lemi cabi'ibajenairu'i .ia li'anai zmadu nu mutce cutyzu'e .i ta'onai pu ra ku mi pinka so'u lepu selja'o ti'u 37 .i pamai sera'a le pemci po'u se tcita <<lu leka sarcu kei vau li'u>> ku'o mi na jimpe le krinu be ledo nu punji zo <<cu>> le crastu po zo <<nu>> mu'inai lemi pu nu dunda (sei zo <<sabji>> lu'anai cu drani se'u) lo temge'a tcita (to te'i zo <<ba>> vau toi) pe vi le trixystu ne seba'i .i ti jufra <<lu le nunsti ne sekai leka pratci cu batci mu'anai li'u>> vau ?xu .i remai .uocai sera'a le seltcita be <<lu le firgai mu'anai vau li'u>> ku vi le da'amoi vlali'i ku zo <<co>> cu se setca fi <<lu fasnu cictcima li'u>> ja'e <<lo'u lo nalsti nu cictcima fasnu le'u>> (sei zo <<za'i>> basti ?xu be zo <<nu>> se'u) .i zo <<fasnu>> ca nalsarcu .i'a .iku'i ta rinka lenu mi ninzga lo puze'u nandu .i mi su'oroi pilno zo <<nu>> lo paroi tortei bo fasnu gi'e drata go'i fi lo ranji clatei bo fasnu .i re frica valsi cu sarcu vau pe'i .ije .ie mi pujeca luzypli (to tai zirjbo cai vau toi) zo <<go'i>> .iku'i .ei zasti fa le nuncumki be lo naldikni se spicru poi kakne lenu sisti vi lo crastu mu'anai .i ta'onai cimai sera'a le romoi pemci ku le da'aremoi vlali'i cu binxo <<lo'u lo pamei seizga le'u>> vau lu'anai .io .i banzu fa ta ni'o levi pemci cu pilno pa leimi terga'i be fe le sumti tcita purste (sei mi camdji djuno be leri romoi tarmi se'u) .i mi pilno <<lo'u sexebe'i le'u>> zo <<be'i>> vi le pemci noi se tcita <<lu le te pemci .e le se binxo vau li'u>> .i [<<lo'u sa'a] ko mi zasyspo .ije mi ba vuzyvuzyxru sexebe'i do .i makfa .i roroi ku mi'o zukte ra le'u>> vau sa'a Finally, Bob promised to try writing some of his 'natural' Lojban (almost everything else he's written in the language has been constrained to a limited vocabulary, such as the short readings in the draft textbook lessons). The issue is so delayed that he promised to keep it short this time (relatively). Remember. No translation is provided. You can write and ask specific questions if you make the attempt and get lost. I can't promise perfection at this stuff yet. .uo .uonai .i dukti .i na go'i .i mi ciksi ni'o zu'u zo <<.uo>> noi smuni lenu mulno cilmo ku'o cu mapti leza'i da lojbo gerna .e leza'i de lojbo gismu .i so'u cilre girzu zu'o tadni cu mulno .i so'u drata ke cilre girzu caze'a penmi joi tadni vijevajevuku .i cabi'iba le karni ke cabna selci po'u <<lu ju'i lobypli li'u>> cu se pagbu loi lojbo selsku .i ri krasi selci'a bau la lojban. (to mi bau la gliban. na pensi ja ciska [sei .ue .o'a lo pluja logji selsku po'u dei cu frili se'u] loi mulno selpei pu lenu mi samci'a dei pe ve'a toi) .i la maiky'elsym. cu te pemci bau la lojban gi'e ca mansa ke gerna drani .i la djan. kau,n. cu dikni skuci'a bau la lojban vi levo'a seirkarni .i .ua la lojbangirz. cu se ganzu fo loi lojbo .i ri mutce snada ke mulno selzu'e mi'o pe ve'u ni'o zu'unai zo <<.uo>> .ebazibo zo <<.nai>> cu mapti le lojbo pu'u farvi .i ri ba'e na mulno .i .ei .uonai le ctucku vau .i mi dunku ri ki'u lenu mi nalbanzu mulri'a .i mi xaksu loi dukse temci le zu'o ganzu joi si'orcanja joi flagau joi dintro .ianai .au .i le vlacku gunka cu balvi .i .ei la lojbangirz. ba banro zukte .i .ei loi zmadu be loi ca lobypre ba cilre .a'o le bangu .i .ei piro lei cempre ba se ganzu fo lenu pejri'a le cecmu ni'o .einai mi zukte pamei .i .ei roko zukte .i ko cilre la lojban. .i ko dunda piro lei jdini poi te marde pagbu be le selfai poi dinselxaksu .i .uuse'i loi nalbanzu jdini cu seldu'u mi gi'e rinka lenu mi gunka dirsno ni'oku'i .ia ba'a le tcini cu xagmaubi'o .i piso'ado ba sidju .i so'ida ba cilre je pilno la lojban. .i .ai .au .eicai ko morji je tinbe le selsku cnimu'i be la lojbangirz. be'o po'u <<lu .e'osai ko sarji la lojban li'u>> .i ganai ko go'i gi la lojban. snada gi'e bangu do ki'emi'e la lojbab. po'u la bab. leceval,ier. fe'o Translations Our first translation is John Cowan's first paragraph, which we'll repeat so you have it handy: ni'oni'o le nimcitno goi ko'a po'u la ka,as. noi ko'a melbi bai jorne le sramudri noi ke'a kusru zi'e po le dabli'e goi ko'e po'u la danlu ku secau le kecti .i lei prenu poi ke'a se saptutklu zi'e po ko'e ca zbasu lo derxi be loi mudri bei leko'a jamfu noi ke'a cisyselpli .ibabo le voksa noi ke'a cladu je klina zi'e po'e la nebnauzag. noi ke'a te pemci je tajnau cu fegcru <<lu ganai le do fagryrinka cu rinka lei fagri ja'e le nimcitno se jukpa gi do lifri lenu mi setca le xarci le do se citka poi ke'a romoi ko'u li'u>> Pidgin translation: 38 Totally new subject. The woman-youth known-as she1 who-is-identically the-one-called Kaa who-incidentally-is beautiful, forcedly is-joined-to the upright-wood such-that it is cruel and such that it is specific-to the fight-leader known-as he2 who-is-identically the-one-called Animal without the mercy. The-mass-of persons such-that they are-simple- tool-culture-people which-are-specific-to him2 simultaneously make a heap-of some wood at her1 feet such-that they are- sexually-used. And-then the voice such-that it is-loud and is-clear and is inalienably-possessed-by the-one-called Beautiful-male-buttocks who-incidentally-is a poem-maker and a superlative-man angrily-utters, quote, if your fire- causer causes some fire with-result the woman-youth is-something-cooked then you experience that I insert the weapon into your something-eaten such-that it is last, unquote. English original: The lovely woman-child Kaa was mercilessly chained to the cruel post of the warrior-chief Beast, with his barbarian tribe now stacking wood at her nubile feet, when the strong clear voice of the poetic and heroic Handsomas roared, "Flick your Bic, crisp that chick, and you'll feel my steel through your last meal." John's notes on the translation: There doesn't seem to be any way to say "mercy" in Lojban. I substituted "pity", which is adequate in the negative, because "pitiless" = "merciless", but pity and mercy are quite distinct in the positive. [Bob: "mercy" can be derived as a scalar negative either from the gismu for "cruel" or for "severe". Since he's already used "kusru" in the text, "naljursa" or "to'e jursa" seem like better choices.] I attempted to avoid the excessive use (to my way of thinking) of tanru in much of the Lojban I've seen to date, in favor of relative clauses. On the other hand, I'm far from sure that I have their syntax correct. [Bob: He was close, omitting only the zi'e connectives for multiple relative clauses and phrases attached to the same sumti.] I'm rather proud of "la nebnauzag." = "Handsomas". The clumsiness of "fagryrinka rinka lei fagri" is a deliberate attempt to translate "Flick your Bic" into something that sounds equally idiotic. Unfortunately Handsomas loses his terseness (strong, silent male type) in Lojban, at least in my Lojban. [Bob adds: The Bulwar-Lytton competition is actually a contest for the worst first-line of a novel. John's translation breaks it up into multiple sentences, but it is possible to combine all the separate Lojban pieces into a single sentence. (To make elidable terminators easier to track, I'm removing John's excess relative clauses; I'm also making a couple of other minor changes that I think are improvements): ni'oni'o ba lenu le melbi nimcitno po'u la ka,as. goi ko'a bai jorne binxo le kusru sramudri po le dabli'e po'u la danlu goi ko'e secau loka naljursa kei kei ca lenu lei se saptutklu po ko'e cu zbasu lo derxi be loi mudri bei leko'a cisyselpli jamfu kei le cladu je klina voksa be la nebnauzag. noi te pemci je tajnau cu fegcru <<lu ganai ledo fagryrinka cu rinka lei fagri ja'e le nimcitno se jukpa gi ko lifri leli'i mi setca le xarci ledo se citka poi seri'a romoi li'u>> The translation is fairly close to John's: Totally new subject. After the beautiful woman-youth who-is-identically the-one-called Kaa (known-as she1) forcedly joined-becomes-to the cruel upright-wood which-is-specific-to the fight-leader who-is-identically the-one- called Animal (known-as he2) without mercy, and while the-mass-of simple-tool-culture-people which-are-specific-to him2 make a heap-of wood at her1 sexually-used feet, the loud and clear voice of the-one-called Beautiful-male-buttocks who- incidentally-is a poet and a superlative-man angrily-utters, "if your fire-causer causes some fire with-result of the woman-youth cooked-thing then (imperative) experience the experience of my inserting the weapon into your something- eaten which is the causedly-therefore last". If that was too hard, you may or may not benefit from the Lojban parser output for this sample. In this case, the parser sufficiently matches the current grammar that I had to make no changes to parse the text. (The parser version I used was written last October, showing how stable the core grammar has been for the last year or so.) The capitalized words are all the elidable terminators that were 'left out', each identified by lexeme. The parentheses correspond to multi-part rules in the machine grammar, as explained in the text material accompanying the machine grammar. ({ni'o ni'o} {<[({ba <le [nu ({<le [melbi nimcitno] KU> <po'u [la ka,as. (goi {ko'a} GEhU)] GEhU>} {bai <[jorne binxo] [({<le [kusru sramudri] KU> <po [(le dabli'e KU) (po'u {la danlu KU <goi [ko'e] GEhU>} GEhU)] GEhU>} {<se cau> <lo [ka 39 (naljursa VAU) kei] KU>}) VAU]>}) kei] KU>} {ca <le [nu ({<lei [se saptutklu] KU> <po ko'e GEhU>} cu {zbasu <[lo (derxi {be <loi mudri KU> <bei [le (ko'a {cisyselpli jamfu}) KU]> BEhO}) KU] VAU>}) kei] KU>}) (le {<cladu je klina> <voksa [be ({la nebnauzag.} {noi <[(te pemci) je tajnau] VAU> KUhO}) BEhO]>} KU)] cu [fegcru ({lu <[(ga nai) ({le <do fagryrinka> KU} cu {rinka <[(lei fagri KU) (ja'e {le <nimcitno [se jukpa]> KU})] VAU>}) gi (ko CU {lifri <[le (li'i {mi CU <setca [({le xarci KU} {<le [do (se citka)] KU> <poi [({se ri'a} {ro moi}) VAU] KUhO>}) VAU]>} KEI) KU] VAU>})] FAhO> li'u} VAU)]> FAhO}) Next, we have John Cowan's journal entries. John didn't supply a translation, and I don't know Suzuki's non- Lojbanized first name, but otherwise his writing is quite straightforward. Unlike Michael's writing, and unlike John's first Lojban work above, John is choosing to write in simple, methodical sentences. The result is that he makes few and minor errors. This is the type of sentence I think most anyone can write with ease after the first few draft textbook lessons or some disciplined sentence building using the machine grammar as described in the introduction to that document. ni'oni'o de'i le djedi po la lunas. vau ni'o le mutce cmalu jukni cu cpare le djacu tubnu .i carvi ja'e le nu ko'a farlu .i le solri cu febri'a le carvi .i le jukni cu rapli cpare Dated the day of the Moon. The much-small-spider climbs-on-surface the water-tube (John has proposed a place structure change matching this usage). Rain, with result therefore of it1 falling. The sun boil-causes the rain. The spider repeatedly-climbs. [This is a translation of a familiar nursery rhyme. John had used "febvi" alone in the next-to-last sentence, with a strange place structure result. In the last sentence, "krefu" might be preferable to "rapli", being a more literal translation, but given the way nursery rhymes are so often repeated, "rapli" may be a more correct term. John's use of "ko'a" is non-standard, since he never assigns it. In some usages, it isn't necessary, since there is only one possible referent. This isn't the case here, although it is in the following.] ni'oni'o de'i le djedi po la mars. vau ni'o le mi tixnu po'u la airin. verba .i ko'a nanca li ci .i ko'a kelci je krixa .i je ko'a sipna .i ko'a bacru fi la gliban. .i mi bacru fi la gliban. .e la lojban. .i mi na'e drani bacru fi la lojban. .i mi zutse .i je mi viska le nu le mi tixnu cu kelci .i glare ni'o mi jdice le nu mi te cmene le'i djedi le'i plini ni'o cusku fa la viktorias <<lu mi ga'i ba'e na'e se zdile li'u>> .i di'u xajmi mi .i zo ga'i jibni rimni zo ba'e la lojban. .i zo na'e go'i .i le nu le'i rimni cu porsi cu xajmi mi Dated the day of Mars. My daughter, the one named Irene, is a child. She1 is measured in years the number 3. She1 plays-and-cries. And she1 sleeps. She1 utters in English. I utter in English and in Lojban. I non-correctly utter in Lojban. I sit. And I see my daughter playing. Warm! (observative) I decide I will name the set of days, the set of planets. Expressed, by Victoria "We (Hauteur!) are not amused." The last sentence is funny to me. "ga'i" approximately rhymes with "ba'e" in Lojban. "na'e", too. The event of the set of rhymes being sequential is funny to me. [I suspect that John wanted a specific attitudinal where he said "glare", given the context. A lot of possible meanings, otherwise. I'm wary about naming "the set of days, the set of planets". I think he wanted "lu'e" (lexeme LAhE) in front of the second set, making it that he was naming "the set of days, the symbols for the set of planets". But this is a fairly advanced usage that John probably hadn't seen yet.] ni'oni'o de'i le djedi po la saturn. vau ni'o cusku fa la daisets. suzukis. <<lu mi po la zen. skicu lo kilycna fo lo na'e kilycna li'u>> 40 ni'o mi tirna lo verba zgike .i ri mutce pluka mi ni'o mi pu tcidu lo cukta be le nu ke pamoi penmi le na'e terdi prenu po'u la tranx. bei la alan. din. fostr. Dated the day of Saturn. Expressed by ?Daisets Suzuki "We of Zen describe a sharp-shovel (spade) as a non-sharp-shovel (non-spade)." I hear some child-music. It (the music) pleases me. I did-read a book about the-event-of first-meeting with-the non-earth-person who is Tranx, by Alan Dean Foster. [No problems, and the last sentence was both excellently grammatical, and about as complex as I could expect from most students of the draft lessons studying on their own. The "ke" in the last sentence is legal but unneeded, possibly a remnant learned from something I wrote more than 1 1/2 years ago, when "nu" unnecessarily required the "ke" following it.] Now, here is the translation and commentary for Michael Helsem's letter. We'll present the text and translation as a whole so you have some idea what the letter is talking about, then go back and look at each sentence. The italicized text is a literal translation, which in places will be difficult to understand. The normal English text is what Michael was apparently trying to say, paraphrased from his own translation and somewhat simplified. It is not always exactly what he said. di'e zirjbo po'a xatra de'i la xav. po'e la mumast. The following utterances are a "purplish-lojbanic" (figuratively) letter dated that named 6 which is possessed by Five-month (6th of May). The following is a letter in "purple Lojban" dated 6 May. ni'o coido'u mi dopeza ledo nu jarco le mi pemci cu ckire ra'u .i puvi'eku mi mutce cutyzu'e pi'o gi'e pu'i ninpemci jmina la'u lo mo'amei .u'u ne ki'u lemi cabi'ibajenairu'i .ia li'anai zmadu nu mutce cutyzu'e .i ta'onai pu ra ku mi pinka so'u lepu selja'o ti'u Greetings! I, to you-all, for your showing my poems, am grateful (Most important point!). Earlier, throughout this space-time, I'm very affair-active used-ly, and could-and-did poetry-quantity add (to something) in-amount a too- few-some (Repentance!) which (the-too-few-some is justified by my then-until-later-but-not-continuously (Belief but Obscurity!) greater state of affair-activity. Anyway, before that (an unclear reference), I comment(ed?) on a few of the earlier shown-things, associated with time unspecified. Hi, y'all. Thanks for showing my poems. Earlier (all over) I was very busy, and can add too-few poems because of my from-now-on, but not continuously, even more busy state. Anyway, before that (the poems), I'll comment on a couple of the previously printed ones, while I'm at it. .i pamai sera'a le pemci po'u se tcita <<lu leka sarcu kei vau li'u>> ku'o mi na jimpe le krinu be ledo nu punji zo <<cu>> le crastu po zo <<nu>> mu'inai lemi pu nu dunda (sei zo <<sabji>> lu'anai cu drani se'u) lo temge'a tcita (to te'i zo <<ba>> vau toi) pe vi le trixystu ne seba'i .i ti jufra <<lu le nunsti ne sekai leka pratci cu batci mu'anai li'u>> vau ?xu First, about the poem which is tagged "The Necessity", I don't understand the reason for: your putting "cu" on the front-site of "nu" despite motive of my previously giving ["providing" approximately is correct] an interval grammar tag, specifically "ba" which is at the back-site, incidentally with a motive. This (?) is a sentence about (the quote) "the stopping, characterized by produce-tool-ness, is biting", isn't it? First, about the poem "The Necessity" (the 3rd limerick in JL11). I don't understand why you put "cu" before "nu", and omitted the "ba" that I had further back. I intended the equivalent of "the stopping, characterized by produce-tool- ness, is biting". (The answer, explained below, is that his original English translation was ambiguous and did not convey this meaning to me.) .i remai .uocai sera'a le seltcita be <<lu le firgai mu'anai vau li'u>> ku vi le da'amoi vlali'i ku zo <<co>> cu se setca fi <<lu fasnu cictcima li'u>> ja'e <<lo'u lo nalsti nu cictcima fasnu le'u>> (sei zo <<za'i>> basti ?xu be zo <<nu>> se'u) .i zo <<fasnu>> ca nalsarcu .i'a Second (whew!) about the be-labelled-by "the face-cover ...", in the next-to-last word-line, "co" is inserted into "event-ish wild-weather" therefore with result "a non-stop act of wild-weather event" ("za'i" replaces, doesn't it, "nu"). "fasnu" is unnecessary (Acceptance!). Second. About the poem "The Unmasking" (also in JL11). If "co" were inserted into the selbri of the next-to-last line, would the result be "a non-stop act of wild-weather event"? Also, "za'i" should replace "nu", shouldn't it? I accept that "fasnu" is unnecessary (responding to one of Bob's comments in JL11). 41 .iku'i ta rinka lenu mi ninzga lo puze'u nandu .i mi su'oroi pilno zo <<nu>> lo paroi tortei bo fasnu gi'e drata go'i fi lo ranji clatei bo fasnu .i re frica valsi cu sarcu vau pe'i .ije .ie mi pujeca luzypli (to tai zirjbo cai vau toi) zo <<go'i>> .iku'i .ei zasti fa le nuncumki be lo naldikni se spicru poi kakne lenu sisti vi lo crastu mu'anai But, that causes that I now-observe an in-the-past, for-a-long-time, difficulty. I a-few-times use "nu" for a one- time, short-time-interval, event, and otherly use ... for a continuing, long-time-interval event. Two different words are necessary, I opine. And (I agree) I then-and-now loose-use, (by method of purple Lojban!), "go'i". But (Obligation!) existing is the possibility of non-regular piece-utterances which are able at ceasing at-the in- front-of-site (End of example). But this raises a difficulty I've had for a while. Sometimes I use "nu" for short, one-time events, and sometimes for long, continuous events. I think two words are necessary. And I agree that I loosely-use "go'i" after a "purple Lojban" fashion. But there ought to exist the possibility of an unsystematic ellipsis which is able to stop short. .i ta'onai cimai sera'a le romoi pemci ku le da'aremoi vlali'i cu binxo <<lo'u lo pamei seizga le'u>> vau lu'anai .io .i banzu fa ta (Returning to subject), thirdly, about the last poem, the antepenultimate word-line becomes "a single self- observer", precisely, respectfully. Enough, is that. Thirdly, in the last poem (in JL11 actually, he meant the next-to last one), the antepenultimate word-line should indeed become "lo pamei seizga". But enough of that. ni'o levi pemci cu pilno pa leimi terga'i be fe le sumti tcita purste (sei mi camdji djuno be leri romoi tarmi se'u) .i mi pilno <<lo'u sexebe'i le'u>> zo <<be'i>> vi le pemci noi se tcita <<lu le te pemci .e le se binxo vau li'u>> This poem uses one of my modifications of the argument-label previous-list [I intensely want to know its (the list's) last form.] I use ??"sexebe'i" for "be'i" at the poem, which incidentally is labelled as "The Poet and the Thing Become". This poem uses an extrapolation from one of the words in the old lexeme BAI list. I sure want to know what the final lexeme BAI list is. I use "sexebe'i" for "be'i" at the poem, which I call "The Poet and the Thing Become". .i [<<lo'u sa'a] ko mi zasyspo .ije mi ba vuzyvuzyxru sexebe'i do .i makfa .i roroi ku mi'o zukte ra le'u>> vau sa'a [" editorially inserted quote for ungrammatical text] Temporarily-destroy me; and I will yonder-yonder return through the medium of you. It's magic. All the time, we do it (with purpose) [" editorially inserted end-quote and "vau" to make the non-grammatical quoted poem a valid 'incomplete sentence'. Now lets go over it in detail, answering Michael's questions, and raising a couple of points about the language not covered in draft textbook lessons (or at least not clearly). Don't let the extensive comments imply otherwise - Michael did an outstanding job considering the complex grammar he tried to use. He made fewer errors than his previous attempts, and they were more of the nature of not knowing the right word and/or depending on English idiom, than they were grammatical flaws. I've broken the text into individual sentences. A parser output is also included for each line. The parentheses match over the whole text, but will not match perfectly for each line (there will usually be an extra right parenthesis at the end of a sentence corresponding to a left parenthesis near the beginning of the text). We'd like feedback on how useful the parser outputs are to you. Do they tell you anything, or are they just so much gibberish? 42 di'e zirjbo po'a xatra de'i la xav. po'e la mumast. ({di'e CU <[zirjbo po'a xatra] [(de'i {<la xav.> <po'e [la mumast.] GEhU>}) VAU]>} The following utterances are a "purplish-lojbanic" (figuratively) letter dated that named 6 which is possessed by Five-month (6th of May). Comment: To date the letter, we used "de'i" (associated with date ...) and not "ca". Using "ca" claims that it was a letter at the time of the date given, without saying anything about what it is now. In addition to "de'i", "tu'i" and "ti'u" perform the same function for letters, respectively with regard to location and time-of-day. None of these three serve a 'tense' function; they attach a date, location or time as a labelling relation. ni'o coido'u mi dopeza ledo nu jarco lemi pemci cu ckire ra'u {ni'o <coi do'u>} {<[({<[({<[({<[( mi {do <pe [za (le {do <nu [jarco ({le <mi pemci> KU} VAU)] KEI>} KU)] GEhU>}) cu ({ckire ra'u} VAU)] Greetings! I, to you-all, for your showing my poems, am grateful (Most important point!). Comments: In his original, Michael omitted the "do'u" after "coi". This had strange (and humorous) effects: in "... coi mi dopeza ..." the "coi" grabs hold of the next sumti ("mi"), causing Michael to greet himself and imply that the rest of the letter is addressed to himself. The rest of the sentence then said (to himself) roughly that "You-all are grateful to the showing of my poems for something unspecified." Moral: either be specific who you are greeting, remember to terminate the vocative, or immediately start a new sentence. Michael also had attached "lemi pemci" to "jarco" with the "be" link. This is grammatical, but wasn't necessary. "nu" and other abstraction clauses presume that an entire sentence follows, and you can include all of the sumti you want without attaching them. Remember that you have to terminate abstractions (with "kei") if another sumti follows (it doesn't in this case), or you'll have the same kind of strange effects as the vocative "coi" caused. Mike translated "ra'u" in the above sentence as an incidental "(of course)"; his Lojban actually indicates that his gratefulness was his most important point of the letter. Note that Michael's "ra'u" attaches specifically to "ckire", and not to the whole sentence. To apply a discursive or attitudinal to the sentence as a whole, you must put it at the beginning of the sentence, or express the normally elided "vau" at the end of the sentence and attach the "ra'u" to that. .i puvi'eku mi mutce cutyzu'e pi'o gi'e pu'i ninpemci jmina la'u lo mo'amei .u'u ne ki'u lemi cabi'ibajenairu'i .ia li'anai zmadu nu mutce cutyzu'e i [({<pu vi'e> ku} mi) CU ({<[mutce cutyzu'e] [(pi'o KU) VAU]> gi'e pu'i <[ninpemci jmina] [(la'u {<lo [mo'a mei u'u] KU> <ne [ki'u (le {mi <[(ca bi'i ba) (je nai) (ru'i ia li'a nai)] [zmadu (nu {<mutce cutyzu'e> VAU} KEI)]>} KU)] GEhU>}) VAU]>} VAU)]> Earlier, throughout this space-time, I'm very affair-active used-ly, and could-and-did poetry-quantity add (to something) in-amount a too-few-some (Repentance!) which (the-too-few-some is justified by my then-until-later-but- not-continuously (Belief but Obscurity!) greater state of affair-activity. Comment: Some complicated but cute tense constructions that come close to what Michael intended. What he said, "puvi'eku", is kind of self-contradictory; "vi'e" means throughout an interval of space-time (which includes a time dimension), but Michael has already specified a specific time as "pu". "vi'u" is the corresponding space-only interval 'tense', so "puvi'uku" might accomplish what he intends. Another possibility is "pufe'eroroi". But Michael has also relied incorrectly on English idiom, or he wouldn't have said this at all (Michael isn't really everywhere doing anything, though he might feel it sometimes), so I didn't change what he wrote. "puvi'uku" sets the time in the past. Michael then adds a second tense, "cabi'ibajenairu'i", apparently not realizing that this second complicated tense of the sentence is an offset from the first. Compare the English "I realized three weeks ago that I would shortly be very busy." Note that the parser output breaks the compound "cabi'ibajenairu'i" into individual words. "ca" means "at the same time as" the tense implied by "puvi'eku", which is of course sometime in the past. The "bi'i" indicates that there is a time interval involved, in this case starting at "ca" and ending later at "ba". But "ba" is still an offset from the initially set (past) tense of the sentence; thus the sentence refers to a situation that might be entirely in the past from NOW, the time when he wrote the letter, though this seems not to be what Michael intended. Moral: use multiple tenses in a sentence only when you are fairly sure you know what you are doing. One error is as much our fault as his: Michael used "pi'o", intending "instrumentally" (which normally should be "sepi'o", but was erroneously listed as "pi'o" in the October 1988 cmavo list). I left "pi'o" unchanged, though, since it isn't clear what Michael really meant by "instrumentally". In this context, I would guess that "instrumentally" 43 would mean that he was busy 'using something'. "pi'o", on the other hand, means that his busy-ness was 'being used by someone/something'; i.e. possibly, he was busy in his employment. Hopefully, this is what he meant. Nora recommended adding the "ne" in "... .u'u ne ki'u"... . Without "ne", the causal "ki'u" phrase modifies the whole bridi (in this case, the 2nd half of a compound bridi centered on selbri "ninpemci jmina"); with the "ne", the phrase is an explanation of the 'too-few-some'. Based on my best guess as to what Michael intended, I changed his causal from "ri'a" to "ki'u". He seems to be presenting a justification for his too-few-some of poems. With "ri'a", he is saying that his then-until-later-busy-ness physically caused the too-few-some. There is a second interpretation of Michael's English such that, using "ri'a" and no "ne", Michael's busy-ness caused the adding of too-few-some; this alternative wasn't noticed until just before press time. .i ta'onai pu ra mi pinka so'u lepu selja'o ti'u <i ta'o nai> <[(pu ra) mi] CU [pinka ({<[so'u BOI] [le (pu selja'o) KU]> <ti'u KU>} VAU)]>} Anyway, before that (an unclear reference), I comment(ed?) on a few of the earlier shown-things, associated with time unspecified. Comments: "pu ra" is unclear here, the previous sentence is just too complex to figure out what 'that' is. My best guess is that he intends the "too-few poems", but only by assuming English idiom; Michael isn't commenting before "the too-few-some poems (that) were added", since the poems were already written; he is commenting before he includes them. Avoid vague references - they are unfair to the reader/listener. My 'lojbanic' preference would be to say something like "le pemci kansa deipeza" ("the poems accompany this writing"), then followed by (in this sentence) "pu la'edi'u" ("before this accompaniment") instead of "pu ra". Michael also could also have been tantalizing and correct with "pu da'u" ("before what I will eventually express") Michael originally had "pu ra ku", which became illegal about a year ago when we increased the varieties of elidable terminators, so it isn't Michael's fault. "ku" closes a description, or it early-terminates a sumti tcita that isn't accompanied by a sumti such as "ra" thus preventing it from absorbing a following sumti unintentionally; e.g. "puku mi klama" ("Earlier, I came.") vs. "pu mi klama" ("Before me, (something) comes") Michael translated "ti'u" here as "while I'm at it". "ti'u", as mentioned above, is used to tag letters and events ('the 6 o'clock news'). Using "ti'u" without a time is merely confusing. There may be a way to say what he wants briefly, but it isn't apparent to me; Michael already used one vague tense marker ("pu ra") in the sentence, and Lojban gets really nebulous when you pile vagueness upon vagueness. Given my alternative "pu la'edi'u", described above, the simple tense "ca" on the selbri, or "caku" at the end would convey "while I'm at it". Other possibilities exist, perhaps using the sumti tcita "po'i". .i pamai sera'a le pemci poi se tcita <<lu leka sarcu kei vau li'u>> ku'o mi na jimpe le krinu be ledo nu punji zo <<cu>> le crastu po zo <<nu>> mu'inai lemi pu nu dunda (sei zo <<sabji>> lu'anai cu drani se'u) lo temge'a tcita (to te'i zo <<ba>> vau toi) pe vi le trixystu ne seba'i {i pa mai} {<[(se ra'a) ({le pemci KU} {poi<[se tcita] [(lu {<[le (ka {sarcu VAU} kei) KU] vau> FAhO} li'u) ku'o]>})] mi> CU <[na jimpe] [(le {krinu <be [le (do {nu <punji [({<zo cu> <[le crastu KU] [po (zo nu) GEhU]>} {<mu'i nai> <le [mi (pu {nu <[dunda (sei {zo sabji lu'a nai} cu drani se'u)] [({lo <temge'a [tcita ({to te'i} {<[zo ba] vau> FAhO} toi)]> KU} {pe <vi [(le trixystu KU) (ne {se bai KU} GEhU)]> GEhU}) VAU]> KEI})] KU>}) VAU]> KEI}) KU] BEhO>} KU) VAU]>}) First, about the poem which is tagged "The Necessity", I don't understand the reason for: your putting "cu" on the front-site of "nu" despite motive of my previously giving ["providing" approximately is correct] an interval grammar tag, specifically "ba" which is at the back-site, incidentally with a motive. Comment: Though very complex, this one made sense to me. I took out extraneous "be..bei..." constructs and replaced "lu...li'u" by "zo" when he quoted a single word. The only grammatical error was minor he originally had *"... po'u se tcita ...". "po'u" indicates a relative phrase (a sumti or tagged sumti) follows. You need "poi" for a relative clause (a full bridi). Michael's question relates to the 3rd limerick in JL11. His original third and fourth lines read ".iku'i le pratci / nu sisti ba batci ...", which I changed to ".iku'i le pratci / cu nu sisti kei batci", and he is asking why I left the "ba" tense off my rewritten version, using "cu" instead. Answer: His original English translation of the limerick is a superb example of ambiguous English. He said: "But the produce-tool / cessation bites ...". This can mean "But the produce-tool is a cessation biter ..." or "But the produce-tool cessation is a biter ...". One always assumes non-figurative usage in Lojban, so only the first is plausible - a tool can conceivably 'bite', a 'cessation' isn't a physical thing. 44 Note that his English makes no use of future tense; I probably ignored the "ba" since it didn't match his English; it may have looked like a typo. However, his original is grammatical, and means "But the produce-tool cessation will bite ..." which matches closely the second, figurative, usage that Michael intended. Given my interpretation of his English, my "cu" made the "ba" ungrammatical. Furthermore, if I removed the "ba", a "kei" was required where the "ba" was to close off the "nu", else the event clause would include the "batci": "nu sisti batci" ("event of cease-r biting ..."). The peril of trying to write Lojban poetry at this early stage is that the people who read it may not understand it, even if it IS correct. Figurative metaphors are sometimes chancy in English poetry - in Lojban, with no idiom, they are nonsense (and in most cases make illegitimate cultural references, a no-no in a culturally neutral language). Can good poetry be written using only 'analytic' metaphors? I'd like to see Michael try. The answer, then, seems to be that my change was incorrect. Hopefully, we'll remember this when it comes time for Michael's first Lojban poetry book. .i ti jufra <<lu le nunsti ne sekai leka pratci cu batci mu'anai li'u>> vau ?xu i (ti CU {jufra <[lu ({<[le nunsti KU] [ne ({se kai} {le <ka [pratci VAU] KEI> KU}) GEhU]> cu <[batci mu'a nai] VAU>} FAhO) li'u] [vau xu]>})] This (?) is a sentence about (the quote) "the stopping, characterized by produce-tool-ness, is biting", isn't it? Comments: Michael's sentence was grammatical, but malglico (very 'English'). Warning! The demonstratives "ti", "ta", and "tu" are unconscionably vague in written text! They presume that the listener has a way to tell what the speaker is indicating. In writing, the only way to do this would be to draw an arrow to the referenced item. ("ti" might be used to 'obviously' refer to the letter itself, but "deipeza" is much clearer; better to avoid these by rule in writing.) English pronouns are extremely tricky to translate into Lojban, since we use them so sloppily in English. It will be the mark of malglico translation (as opposed to original Lojban expression) to see sloppy pronouns when Lojban has so many specific mechanisms for 'pronoun' anaphora (oops! I promised to use "ba'ivla".) In this case, no ba'ivla could be clear, since Michael intended to refer to what he had originally written in his letter to me, something I had to dig out of the files to check. Michael needed to be explicit: "lemi selsku" ("my expression", and possibly even "le ba'emi selsku" to emphasize that it was his version that he wanted me to check). Even using his English translation of the letter, I would not have assumed 'this' to refer to his original letter; I only dug it out because there was no "ba" in the version printed in JL. Moral: an unambiguous language requires that its speakers remember to check for possible misunderstandings of vague references. Having gotten past the first word of the sentence, there is a major logic problem of label/reference confusion, a problem of the sort made famous in Through the Looking Glass, when Alice talks with Humpty Dumpty about what the song is, what the song is called, what the name is called, etc. Michael is saying in this bridi that something ("ti") is a sentence about the quoted text given. The sentence he is referring to is not about the quoted text. He means that his sentence was intended to say the same thing as the quoted text. The term for this is 'indirect discourse', and is most familiar in English in the form "He said that he was going to the store." The cmavo "la'e" accomplishes indirect reference in Lojban; it refers to the referent of any sumti it precedes. So Michael should have had "la'elu" at the start of the quote. I added the "vau" to have the true/false question "xu" clearly apply to the whole sentence and not just to the quote; I wasn't sure what he was asking. Colloquial Lojban will almost certainly express yes/no questions with the "xu" at the beginning - it is simplest grammatically. If the question is about a specific part of the sentence, something we indicate in English with emphatic stress ("You went to WORK, didn't you?"), then the question will probably still be pre-marked with "pau", warning the listener to expect a question. .i remai .uocai sera'a le seltcita be <<lu le firgai mu'anai vau li'u>> ku vi le da'amoi vlali'i ku zo <<co>> cu se setca fi <<lu fasnu cictcima li'u>> ja'e <<lo'u lo nalsti nu cictcima fasnu le'u>> (sei zo <<za'i>> basti ?xu be zo <<nu>> se'u) [i re mai uo cai] [({<[se ra'a] [le (seltcita {be <lu [({le <firgai mu'a nai> KU} vau) FAhO] li'u> BEhO}) ku]> <vi [le ({da'a moi} vlali'i) ku]>} {zo co}) cu ({se setca} {<[fi (lu {<[fasnu cictcima] VAU> FAhO} li'u)] [ja'e ({lo'u lo nalsti nu cictcima fasnu le'u} {sei <zo za'i> CU <[basti xu] [be (zo nu) BEhO]> se'u})]> VAU})]> Second (whew!) about the be-labelled-by "the face-cover ...", in the next-to-last word-line, "co" is inserted into "event-ish wild-weather therefore with result "a non-stop act of wild-weather event" ("za'i" replaces, doesn't it, "nu"). 45 Comments: If the "whew" applies to the stuff that preceded being complete, it should have gone before this sentence, which starts a new topic; Michael's usage suggests that this second point is his concluding one, which is not the case. The attitudinal would be clearest in a separate 'sentence': "... .i .uocai .i remai ...". In an unambiguous language, quotation can be a problem, especially, as in Michael's letter, when he wants only a few words out of context. Lojban's grammar requires that a quotation be fully grammatical standing on its own, and most out-of-context quotes are not. The quote must also match the original, of course - you can't normally add words inside the quote to make the text grammatical without telling the listener/reader. In English print, editors abbreviate quotes and correct grammar by putting interpolated text in brackets and using ellipsis marks to indicate omitted text (e.g. "editors abbreviate ... [with] brackets ..." as a shortening of the last sentence). In Lojban, all punctuation must be spoken, so this isn't easy to do while remaining clear (we do have a way of expressing this when appropriate, though, which I'll get to in a moment). Thus, in Lojban, if what you want to quote is less than a complete sentence, or has omitted text, the easiest way to do this is with the 'error-quotes' "lo'u ... le'u". I changed Michael's second out-of-context quote to use these (as well as some others further on in the letter). The other way is to make the result grammatical and mark all the changes to the original quote. The Lojban words for "etc." are "vau" and "mu'anai", The former is a grammatical particle, of course, marking that there are no more sumti being expressed. The latter is a discursive having no grammar, and meaning roughly "concluding my examples"; it thus does not serve the all-purpose role of English "...". Lojban simply cannot do the latter with all the flexibility of English and still be grammatically unambiguous. I'll discuss this further below when I talk about Michael's comments on "go'i". First an interlude on editorial manipulation of quotes (you probably won't mind a break from plowing line by line through the letter.) We've put several features in the language to make manipulating quotes easier, some of which I've added to Michael's letter. However, for extensive use of out-of-context quotes, only "lo'u... le'u" is practical if you want to keep clear what was quoted and what wasn't. To summarize the quote manipulation features briefly: - the word "sa'a" is the most important. Attaching like a discursive to a word or a construct, it says that word or construct wasn't actually part of the original quote. This allows you to insert text in an ungrammatical text to make it grammatical, while making it clear what you added. The result is similar to an editor's bracketing text that was added (usually after omitting a longer text in a quote) to allow the remainder to make sense (e.g. "The ... [woman] sat next to me"). (By the way, for sticklers who ask how to quote text with the word "sa'a" embedded, a second "sa'a" after the first says that the first is really there. We think we've provided adequately for the infinite series of complications that can be concocted along this line of analysis.) - the word "li'o" followed by "sa'a" to show that the word "li'o" isn't really part of the quote can be used to replace the "..." ellipsis in a quote provided that the result is grammatical. This usually requires some other modifications to the quote, each marked with "sa'a" as well. - the 'unquote parentheses' "to'a...to'i", again with "to'a" marked with "sa'a" to show they are to be taken metalinguistically, are used to interrupt a quote to get back to the "quoter's" level of the sentence. The classic use of this is for conversation quotations ("That window", he said, pointing down the hallway, "is dirty"). In such a split quote, the two pieces are each ungrammatical, but the whole is grammatical. The division in the text is purely stylistic, providing a certain emphasis. Note that the material between the two quotes is also fully grammatical. In Lojban we express this by having the quote be the basic text, jumping out-of-quote with "to'asa'a", and then returning to the quote with "to'i" when the commentary is complete. Again, both the inside of the parentheses and the outside have to be completely grammatical as separate units. Furthermore, the 'unquote' has the grammar of a parenthetical remark - a 'free modifier', and is mildly constrained on where it can be inserted (not in the middle of a digit string representing a number, for example). For those who ask, interrupted quotes are important to Lojban for literary usage (they are seldom used in spoken language); we added them after Athelstan tried to translate Saki (see JL10). They are used in all natural languages that we've investigated, with few constraints on where the interruption can occur. The alternative is the stylistically 'boring' "He said '...'. She said '...'. He said '...'." which is the 'natural grammar' form for both "cusku" and "bacru". Others ask why have all these unfriendly limits and constraints, as Michael does later in his letter. The answer is 'unambiguity', of course. For these people, there is the 'error quote' that tells the listener to treat the quote as a literal quote, but to not worry about the grammar of the content. (For out-of-context quotes, though, putting a "li'o" discursively after the ending quote would show that text was omitted, a useful notice that makes it clear that the 'error quotes' were used for out-of-context ellipsis, and not to mark truly ungrammatical expression.) 46 Now, finally answering Michael's question as I understood it, which is based on his JL11 poem entitled "The Unmasking", if you insert "co" into "nu fasnu cictcima", you get "nu fasnu co cictcima". The former means "event of being an occurring type of wild-weather", the latter means "event of being an event of-type wild weather", and is equivalent to "nu cictcima fasnu" ("event of being a wild-weather event"). The difference between the two forms is that the final brivla determines the place structure for any attached sumti. Since this selbri is bare within a "nu" abstraction, that criterion does not apply here (the place structure of a "nu" abstraction is constant, and there are no expressed sumti anyway). The choice then is based on whether the event that Michael wants to describe (it is inherently an event because of the "nu") is a "(weather type of event)-event" or an "(occurring-type of-weather)-event". The "fasnu" still seems redundant. Michael also asks about "za'i" in a metalinguistic parenthesis (he originally had this parenthesis in the middle of the quote - this would have required "sa'a" as mentioned above, and made the quote grammatically difficult to follow, where in this case the exact grammar was relevant to his question). "za'i" could indeed be used instead of "nu". "za'i" refers to a subset of event/state abstractions, for which the general word is "nu". "za'i" states are those event situations which are being seen as essentially stable and uniform within the event, which have either a finite or an infinite duration, as opposed to being a point event, and which, if either starting or stopping boundary exists, it is effectively a single point. Thus we normally think of 'being awake' as a 'state', whereas being hit by a car is a point event, expressed by the achievement abstractor "mu'e". (Obviously, we don't necessarily think of being hit by a car as an achievement, but by Aristotelian logic it is, based on the 'shape' of the event, called the "event contour".) I may write more on abstractions for either JL14 or JL15, since they relate also to the changes made to the tense design. Writing them up will help me in creating the textbook sections on these topics. But no promises. .i zo <<fasnu>> ca nalsarcu .i'a i <[zo fasnu] [ca ({nalsarcu i'a} VAU)]>} "fasnu" is unnecessary (Acceptance!). .iku'i ta rinka lenu mi ninzga lo puze'u nandu {i ku'i} {ta CU <rinka [(le {nu <mi CU [ninzga ({lo <[pu ze'u] nandu> KU} VAU)]> KEI} KU) VAU]>}) But, that causes that I now-observe an in-the-past, for-a-long-time, difficulty. .i mi su'oroi pilno zo <<nu>> lo paroi tortei bo fasnu gi'e drata pilno fi lo ranji clatei bo fasnu i (mi {<su'o roi> <[(pilno {<[zo nu] [lo ({pa roi} {tortei bo fasnu}) KU]> VAU}) gi'e ({drata pilno} {<fi [lo (ranji {clatei bo fasnu}) KU]> VAU})] VAU>})] I a-few-times use "nu" for a one-time, short-time-interval, event, and otherly use ... for a continuing, long-time- interval event. Comment: Michael had used "go'i" here where the second "pilno" appears ("... gi'e drata go'i fi ..."). "go'i", however, refers to the bridi in the previous sentence, not to the first half of this compound bridi. One of "go'i"'s major purposes, is to enable answering "xu" questions. If "go'i" counted bridi that were pieces of sentences, you would have trouble answering a "xu" at the beginning of this compound sentence asking whether the entirety were true. There is no member of lexeme GOhA for Michael's purpose, either - there are several other ways to rephrase what he wrote. For example, in a compound bridi where there is a common selbri like this, you can rearrange the sentence. I've used subscripted tenses to deal with the dichotomy of times, and added in the dichotomy discursives "zu'u" and "zu'unai" to show their usage: .i mi pilno zo <<nu>> lo zu'u paroi tortei bo fasnu ne su'oroikuxipa .e lo zu'unai ranji clatei bo fasnu ne su'oroikuxire I use "nu" for on-the-one-hand a one-time, short-time-interval, sometimes1, AND, on the other hand a continuing, long-time-interval event, sometimes2. Other ways to express the time dichotomy include 'termset' constructions that allow logical connections between sets of sumti. .i re frica valsi cu sarcu vau pe'i i [({re BOI} {frica valsi} KU) cu (sarcu {vau pe'i})]> 47 Two different words are necessary, I opine. Response: Indeed. And we have five (or more). As mentioned above, "nu" is the general, abstract event/state term, while we have for words for 4 various kinds of events/states, also within lexeme "nu". In most communications, it is not necessary that you be specific about the 'event contour'; it is irrelevant or obvious from the context. On the other hand, if you wish to make a distinction in which the kind of event is important, you can do this as well. The Lojban concept is to minimize metaphysical assumptions. In this case, by this, we mean that we don't require the speaker to assume that being awake is a 'state', while being hit by a car is an 'achievement'. You can talk about the 'state' of being hit by a car or the 'achievement' point-event of being awake. The former is a bit mind-boggling, I'll admit; the latter occurs for me sometimes when Nora gets up in the morning to go to work, at the inhuman hour of 6AM. Of course, you can choose not to decide how to think of the event, and use "nu", since Lojban doesn't require you to specify the type of event in order for it to be an event. This is the same argument that justifies optional tense in Lojban. .ije .ie mi pujeca luzypli (to tai zirjbo cai vau toi) zo <<go'i>> <i je ie> <mi [(pu je ca) ({luzypli <to [(tai {<zirjbo cai> vau}) FAhO] toi>} {<zo go'i> VAU})]>} And (I agree) I then-and-now loose-use, (by method of purple Lojban!), "go'i". Comment: The logical connective between sentences here seems unnecessary. The ".i" at the beginning of most Lojban sentences sentence can be translated as the run-on "and" that often occurs at the beginning of English sentences like Michael's; in Lojban you have to run-on, unless you are done talking or changing subjects. malglico! (You use the logical connectives between sentences when there is logical import to the joining. For example, in "da blanu .i da klama", because there is no logical connective, the two "da"s could refer to different 'something's. In "da blanu .ije da klama", both "da"s are 'bound' under the same logical scope, and hence must refer to the same thing.) Michael loosely-uses the English meaning of the word "loose" in the lujvo "luzypli". We want Lojban words to have a simple, pure meaning, without importing all the connotations of English. I can think of several meanings for the tanru 'loose-user' that keep us from wanting to import this phrase from English. What I think Michael intended is more clearly rendered as "jbige'a pilno" ("approximate-grammar use") or "jbidra pilno" ("approximately-correct use") With these clearer tanru, Michael's comment practically answers itself. Michael also probably wanted "ta'i" instead of "tai" in the parenthesis. Both words convey some senses of English "in manner". "ta'i" refers to a form, while "tai" refers to a method. The context indicates that he expresses in the form of purple-Lojban. .iku'i .ei zasti fa le nuncumki be lo naldikni se spicru poi kakne lenu sisti vi lo crastu mu'anai {i ku'i ei} {zasti <[fa (le {nuncumki <be [(lo {naldikni <se spicru>} KU) (poi {kakne <[le (nu {sisti <[vi (lo {crastu mu'a nai} KU)] VAU>} KEI) KU] VAU>} KUhO)] BEhO>} KU)] VAU>}) But (Obligation!) existing is the possibility of non-regular piece-utterances which are able at ceasing at-the in- front-of-site (End of example). Comment: Good sentence, with sumti rearrangement to liven it up. The relative clause gives a pleasantly Lojbanic active sense in talking about the 'abilities' of an utterance. The clause could more briefly be expressed with a 'potential tense', lexeme CAhA: "poi ka'e sisti vi lo crastu" ("is-innately-capable-of ceasing at-the in-front-of- site"). Of course, in a sentence based on "cumki", the tense can be optionally omitted entirely, since 'possibility' implies 'timeless capability' in most circumstances. I unfortunately can't agree with Michael's statement. As I stated above, the grammar cannot provide total flexibility to just stop any old place and have the listener able to unambiguously determine what you meant. Pragmatically, this may be desirable, but most incomplete sentences are grammatically ambiguous. My favorite example is the English "I went to the window quickly and ...", which has innumerable possible follow-ons, using several different grammatical forms. In English literary usage, ambiguity is permissible and sometimes desirable. In Lojban, it cannot be, or we don't have any special claim as a language. Lojban, on the other hand, has expressive flexibility that isn't possible in English, derived from the increased varieties of vagueness (semantic ambiguity) that Lojban gains by not having an ambiguous grammar. Pragmatically, whether people will speak Lojban grammatically, or will 'loose-use' Lojban is unknown. Michael seems to have enough command of the language to help set the example for the former, though this will undoubtedly cramp some of his poetic style. But then, Lojban poetry that uses Lojban's unique distinction between grammatical and semantic ambiguity will truly be a new art form. 48 Incidentally, as a aside that seems relevant here, John Hodges queries Michael for comments on the following (with input sought from anyone else with an opinion): "I've heard that poetry gains beauty from a disciplined structure, that precision is not the enemy of art. If so, great. I have noticed that the first thing many people try to do with a 'logical' language is write poetry in it. This may be only because it is new and therefore exotic." Presuming John's intent: on the other hand, Lojban may impose a discipline that may make it possible to achieve 'beauty' that isn't possible in a language as unstructured as English or indeed in any natural language. What do people think on this subject? .i ta'onai cimai sera'a le romoi pemci ku le da'aremoi vlali'i cu binxo <<lo'u lo pamei seizga le'u>> vau lu'anai .io (i ta'o nai ci mai) ({<[se ra'a] [le ({ro moi} pemci) ku]> <le [(da'a re moi) vlali'i] KU>} cu {binxo <[lo'u lo pa mei seizga le'u] [vau lu'anai io]>})] (Returning to subject), thirdly, about the last poem, the antepenultimate word-line becomes "a single self- observer", precisely, respectfully. Comment: Some confusion here as to which poem Michael meant. Michael really means the next-to-last poem in JL11; the last one pertains to Sapir-Whorf. From examining my comments, Michael is choosing one of my alternate expressions for the line in question. .i banzu fa ta i [banzu ({fa ta} VAU)]> Enough, is that. Comment: Another dangling demonstrative. Who knows what "ta" is? The bare ".i banzu" would have been more clear, and Lojbanic, although this sentence is the truly appropriate place for the ".uocai" he put in an earlier paragraph, as anyone who has plowed through all this can agree. ni'o levi pemci cu pilno pa leimi terga'i be fe le sumti tcita purste (sei mi camdji djuno be leri romoi tarmi se'u) ni'o <[({<le [vi pemci] KU> cu <pilno [({pa BOI} {lei <mi [terga'i (be {fe <le [(sumti tcita) (purste {sei mi CU <camdji [djuno (be {le <ri [(ro moi) tarmi]> KU} BEhO)]> se'u})] KU>} BEhO)]> KU}) VAU]>} This poem uses one of my modifications of the argument-label previous-list [I intensely want to know its (the list's) last form.] Comment: Excellent. Hopefully, Michael will be at least temporarily satisfied by the cmavo list enclosed. .i mi pilno <<lo'u sexebe'i le'u>> zo <<be'i>> vi le pemci noi se tcita <<lu le te pemci .e le se binxo vau li'u>> i {mi CU <pilno [({<lo'u se xe be'i le'u> <zo be'i>} {vi <[le pemci KU] [noi ({se tcita} {<lu [({<le [te pemci] KU> e <le [se binxo] KU>} vau) FAhO] li'u> VAU}) KUhO]>}) VAU]>}) I use ??"sexebe'i" for "be'i" at the poem, which incidentally is labelled as "The Poet and the Thing Become". Comment: Michael used *"mi pilno zo sexebe'i zo be'i ..." in his original. "zo" is a very picky single word quote - it truly wants a single Lojban word. "sexebe'i" is a 3-word compound, and the "zo" quoted only the first word of it. Lest you think me to be picky, Michael's result was actually grammatical, if nonsense, parsing as (I use "se" with transmission media "be'i"...), since "xebe'i" is a valid sumti tcita, and in fact was probably the one he wanted based on his English for the poem. A double conversion is meaningless for a modal, which can only specify one place the im- plied bridi relationship; using lexeme SE before a modal indicates that the indicated non-first place of the associated brivla describes the relationship of the attached sumti. The cmavo list enclosed with this issue exhaustively interprets the modals for first two places associated with each lexeme BAI member, and gives the identified 'useful' ones that access at-least-third places (some of the 2nd place conversions seem redundant to the unmarked 1st-place modals, such as "du'i" and "sedu'i"). 49 .i [*<<lo'u sa'a] ko mi zasyspo .ije mi ba vuzyvuzyxru sexebe'i do .i makfa .i roroi ku mi'o zukte ra le'u>> sa'a vau sa'a i ({lo'u sa'a ko mi zasyspo i je mi ba vuzyvuzyxru se xe be'i do i makfa i ro roi ku mi'o zukte ra le'u sa'a} vau sa'a)] FAhO>}) [" editorially inserted quote for ungrammatical text] Temporarily-destroy me; and I will yonder-yonder return through the medium of you. It's magic. All the time, we do it (with purpose) [" editorially inserted end-quote and "vau" to make the non-grammatical quoted poem a valid 'incomplete sentence'. Comment: Note that the parser makes no attempt to figure out what is inside the quotes, which is why "lo'u...le'u" exist. There were several minor problems with this succinct poem that totalled to an overall bad effect; one of the problems I had to correct to even legally put it in error quotes instead of non-Lojban quotes, which seemed unfair to Michael, who made a game attempt. 1. Of course the erroneous sumti tcita made the text ungrammatical. This is actually the only grammar error in the whole poem, but warranted the error quotes. 2. The lujvo in the second word is properly formed, but Michael's original word *"vuzvuzyxru" was not. The latter breaks up morphologically, with the CV at the beginning falling off in spoken form, resulting in *"vu zvuzyxru", which is based on the long-rafsi form for a hypothetical Lojban gismu *"zvuza" (or some other final vowel). The test described in the lujvo-making algorithm applies here: if you start off with a CVC rafsi, and the first consonant cluster is a permissible initial, the CV will fall off. You have to break up the permissible initial with a hyphen "y" to keep this from happening. 3. The only other serious problem is "ra" which has no legal referent, since all of the preceding sumti are personal pronouns which cannot be anaphorized (oops! se ba'ivla). In any case, from Michael's English translation, he probably wants "lenu go'i" or some other member of GOhA, depending on what "it" is - the English is too ambiguous for me to guess. On the other hand, another possibility is "le go'i", an option only because he uses "It's magic" as the translation for the observative "makfa", which has no sumti. This suggests that the "it" in the last line is the same it that is ellipsized in the observative. This, if it was what Michael intended, would be an new and unforeseen use of Lojban's unique capability for grammatically unambiguous ellipsis, a truly Lojbanic poetic usage. 4. Not quite as bad are some curious and possibly malglico word choices. However, it is possible that Michael actually intended what his word choices mean: "zasyspo" expands literally to "temporary-destroyer"; the underlying tanru suggests to me that the brivla relates to temporarily performing acts of destruction, as opposed to destroying with temporary effect, which is what the rest of the poem implies. Of course, both are possible and Michael may have intended the semantic ambiguity. But I don't like it 'enshrined' as a lujvo when I can't be sure what it means. "roroi" is a version of "always" that means literally "at all times" or constantly over the unspecified interval of time. The colloquial English "all-the-time" suggests one of the aspect tenses like "habitually", "regularly", and "typically", all found in lexeme TAhE, might have been what Michael intended. I suspect that Michael made the bad lujvo discussed in 2. above partially because it looks and sounds interesting. It makes me uncomfortable though, to make a lujvo solely for that purpose, when the lujvo-based bridi has no grammatical advantage (in terms of grouping or terminators) or Zipfean advantage (length) over the shorter and simpler "mi bavuvu xruti", which I believe is both grammatical and means what Michael intended, keeping the tenses in the tense place. I gave rafsi to the locators of lexeme VA to allow potential for relative lujvo such as "the here-sitter and "the there- sitter", say, for use by a teacher in a classroom, where situations might frequently arise for using such relative words. I won't pose an alternative for Michael's poem. He needs to re-express what he meant. I ended up not doing more of his poetry in this issue (including a few more poems in the same letter) because a lot of his poems have word-choice 50 questions of this sort that I can't quickly resolve. (This means, Michael, that I'd like you to go through your poems one more time, looking for the types of problems I've discussed here. Also, try back-translating your poems 'literally' without your English handy.) Michael's doing an excellent job of exercising the language though. I just wish he had a parser so he could see how some of his sentences are taken. Perhaps the parser outputs above will help him and others. Michael's expressions are very complex, and sometimes I suspect, very English in phrasing. I wrote the instructions for using the machine grammar specifically with people like him in mind. Several of you, like Michael, want to express very complicated thoughts in Lojban right from the start. The only way I can see to accomplish this, without taking the extensive analysis that this letter required, is for people to exercise building up sentences from smaller, simpler pieces, as described in the instructions for the machine grammar, then seeing what they've built. If John Hodges is right about discipline and art, then this kind of disciplined grammar development may be far more useful to an artist than creative tanru and lujvo-making, at which Michael is clearly exceptional. Now its your turn. I'd like to report next issue that we're pleasantly drowning in Lojban text from all 110+ level 3 students and a few of the rest of you. co'o