R. Hale-Evans on SUPERL and lojbab

[lojbab (Bob LeChevalier)]

Ron Hale-Evans writes [regarding a humor piece on "SUPERL":
>I sent a xerox of this piece to Bob LeChevalier
>(lojbab@snark.thyrsus.com), prime mover behind Lojban, but he didn't
>think it was very funny.  I wonder why?

Who me?  I never saw this before tonight, as far as I can recall.

Actually I think it rather cute, if not particularly deep, and bristle
more at the Big-Brother-ism that is implied in the last paragraph, which
isn't that funny in these days of 'political correctness'.  The funniest
lines are the most ridiculous - puns about count nouns and mass nouns,
etc.  But that may be my taste in humor.

On the other hand...

If Ron is merely politely suggesting that I take myself and Lojban too
seriously, he is both correct and incorrect.

He is correct in that anyone who stops working for a salary to work on
an artificial language had better be taking it seriously.  I don't get
paid for my work on Lojban, and hence want/need to get the work I have
to get done on it finished, so I can resume a more remunerative pursuit
(or find someone with deep pockets to support me working on Lojban - but
I ain't holding my breath.  %^)

As many people know, I am not interested in constructed languages for
their own sake.  I have come to the opinion that inventing a "real"
language is impossible for one person, and other than for the idle
intellectual entertainment it provides, such efforts aren't worth
bothering with.  A con lang has to have a goal to drive it, and a
community to develop it, or the "lang" doesn't apply.

I recognize that people (including my wife, by the way) are interested
in con langs, including Loglan/Lojban, as intellectual toys.  But it is
not MY interest.

I didn't know a whit about linguistics when I started on Lojban, but
I've had to learn.  For Loglan/Lojban to succeed, we have to convince
the linguistics and the AI community that we know what we are talking
about, and as the stuckee for the role of principal spokesperson, I've
had to try to give myself a degree's worth of education in my (copious
:-( spare time.  This doesn't leave a lot of time or energy for taking
the subject lightly, but I still do.  Around here, we do a lot of Lojban
joke-making, and bi-lingual puns abound.

For a con lang to be successful as a language will require at least some
of us to take a professional attitude towards our work.  Linguists see
con langs as a radical fringe, spawned by people ignorant of language
and its inherent complexity, and usually motivated by universalist
ideals that themselves are not universally accepted.  (Linguistis also
resent, in general, the poorly argued insistence by supporters of
international languages to force the subject on them.  Such debates
usually hinge on "the language problem", and I doubt that most linguists
accept that there IS a "language problem", or if so, that it can be
solved.)

Association with science fiction fandom of those who work on con langs
does not help the goal of gaining acceptance outside that fan community.
All goals EXCEPT the "linguistic toy" goal for a language such as
Loglan/Lojban require such acceptance.

As a result, I keep an arm's length relationship with the fan community
and with the international language community, even though a large
portion of Lojban's supporters come from one or the other of these
communities.  Since I myself am not a "fan" in the sense of the SF
community, and have no particular interest in international languages
except in that Lojban may be useful as one if the world decides it wants
an IL.

My interest and purpose in working on Lojban isn't light-hearted.  I'm
trying to ensure that a work of genius, James Cooke Brown's Loglan
language concept, have a chance to achieve its goals.  I am doing so, as
many know, under rather un-humorous circumstances.  I, along with many
others, split with JCB because we believe his policies and attitudes
have prevented Loglan's success, cheating those of us who have put time
and effort into making Loglan work.

I think Loglan has more chance than any other con lang (except perhaps
Esperanto) at gaining acceptance, primarily because of its variety of
practical applications.  I also think that it would be useful to gain
real evidence on Sapir-Whorf one way or the other, because whether it is
true or not, a lot of modern political philosophy ASSUMES it is true
WITHOUT QUESTION (Orwell-ism, some feminist linguistic issues, and the
debate over Black English are obvious examples.)

My personal interests in Loglan/Lojban is as a tool of thought (a goal
that the SUPERL satire makes fun of), and as a tool for learning about
other languages and about the nature of language itself.

Loglan will get its shot at success, in its Lojban incarnation, because
it is worth hard work and commitment, and I am contributing in both of
these.  If this causes me to seem humorless, take it as a consequence of
media of communication.  Or take it as a natural consequence of someone
recognizing that he has made a commitment to something that will
probably take a lifetime to see fruition - something I think that is
worthy of such a commitment.

End of heavy essay in response

ni'o

>[The following "Non-Fact Article" appears in the science fiction
>anthology *Universe 10*, edited by Terry Carr, published in hardcover by
>Doubleday & Co. and in paperback by Zebra Books.  It is copyright (c)
>1980 by Terry Carr, and appears here without the permission of the
>publishers.]
>
>                                  SUPERL
>                            Charles E. Elliott

I want to also add that I am ethically opposed to such distribution of
copyrighted text without permission, especially since Ron is making it
clear that he knows the text is copyright and that it is available
commercially in a manner that respects the author's rights.

Being that a lot of my disputes with JCB have centered on intellectual
property rights and law, I have had to do a lot of hard thinking about
the ethical balance between the rights of an author/inventor versus
those of the people who gain an interest and a right to use ideas as a
result of publication (or volunteer work and financial support, in the
case of Loglan).  As such, I hold that an author's explicit expression
is and should be protected.  We reinvented the words of Loglan to form
Lojban to steer wide of this ethical quagmire, devising a language that
is Loglan in that it conveys JCB's ideas and goals for the language, but
cannot be claimed to copy his specific expression.

I thus cannot condone rampant posting of copyrighted texts such as this
one on the net.

I recognize that in some cases, use of copyrighted text is useful, and
sometimes even necessary for discussion of a point.  But usually it
isn't, and when it is, effort is properly made to excerpt only what is
relevant.  This does not seem to be the case here.

There is plenty of fodder for thought in the public domain.

For the same reason, we try to avoid publishing Lojban translations of
copyright texts, though we have bent this a little in the case of
popular song lyrics, which are short, being used for pedagogy (which s
fair use), and in any case doesn't include the music.

I have received a reasonably good Lojban translation of an Ursula Leguin
short story (about a hypothetical language used by ants) that I cannot
honorably use until I seek permission from author or publisher.

Sorry if this further displays a lack of humor.  As I've said, this
hasn't been a humorous topic for me these past several years.

ni'o

Returning to the SUPERL concept, as interpreted by Ron:

>*Why* can't we create a language where grammatical correctness implies
>factual correctness?  (Douglas Hofstadter is great for this stuff; see
>*Goedel, Escher, Bach*.)

Nora points out that this is trivial to achieve.  Two such languages
that are trivial modifications of English, with all of its ambiguity and
baggage can be formed by adding two different particles to the language
grammar, and making them grammatically mandatory in all sentences.  The
first particle, call it "xai" means "It is either true, false, or
indeterminate that ..." and goes at the beginning of every sentence in
Xainglish.  The second particle, cal it "xoi" means "Either "p=p" or
...", and it goes at the beginning of every sentence in Xoinglish.
There are few axiom systems that would prohibit one or the other of these
languages from always producing factual statements in all grammatical
utterances.

Of course, such a language is as useful as SUPERL, and as interesting.
And Nora didn't take 6 months to devise them (more like 5 minutes).  The
Coast Guard is apparently a bastion of bureaucratic inefficiency.

One last item, on "mu".  The Lojban "su", which is the metalinguistic
discourse eraser, is derived from this.  Unless quoted with the strong
quote "zo", or embedded in non-Lojban text, it erases to the beginning
of the current discourse.  This either allows the speaker to start over
again fresh, to change the subject, or to "unask the question".  Spoken
by a listener in response to a speaker, it is a pointed hint.  Multiple
"su"s can erase several levels of discourse.

su
su

----
lojbab = Bob LeChevalier, President, The Logical Language Group, Inc.
         2904 Beau Lane, Fairfax VA 22031-1303 USA
         703-385-0273
         lojbab@snark.thyrsus.com

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