[Date Prev][Date Next][Thread Prev][Thread Next][Date Index][Thread Index]
FAQ
Lojban List FAQ Dec 7, 1995
==============================
TECHNICAL
1a. Why do some texts use <h> instead of <'>?
1b. Could I take a text with <h>s and do a search & replace with <'> and end
up with "standard" lojban?
1c. Why is one better than the other?
2. How do you borrow words from other languages?
3. Isn't it confusing that some rafsi are identical to cmavo?
4. What are those lojban word that you are using even in English text?
What's all the other jargon and acronyms you use?
===============================
RESOURCES
5. What's the best way to start learning Lojban?
6. How can I look up gismu, lujvo, and cmavo when I am translating from lojban?
7. Sources of text to read?
8. What messages are appropriate for the Lojban List?
9. What are the abbreviations used on the list's subject lines?
10. Are there archives? WWW site? ftp site?
11. What's available in languages other than English?
12. What software's available?
===============================
GENERAL
13. Who is everybody? Who's in charge?
14. How many people are there in the Lojban community? How many can use Lojban,
and how well?
15. What is LogFest?
===============================
PROJECT STATUS
15. What parts of the language are well worked out, and which parts are in flux?
16. What are the most current revisions of each part of the language
descriptions?
17. What projects are being worked on? When will they be done?
18. What can I do to help?
=============================
HISTORICAL
19. How was the default place order of sumti in a selbri determined? (There
does not appear to be any rhyme or reason for the order of sumti in many
gismu.)
20. How did the gismu get made: discussion, etymology examples
21. What's the diff between Loglan, Lojban? How is Loglan-82 related? (it's
not!)
22. Why does it have a special meaning when the verb comes first?
23. Why are there so many words for AND? Why not just let {.e} connect
two sumti, bridi, bridi-tails, or anything else?
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
TECHNICAL
1a. Why do some texts use <h> instead of <'>?
Aesthetic reasons. And Rosta in particular thinks <mohi> looks better in print
than <mo'i> and uses it the hopes that he can influence the Lojban community to
accept this other spelling convention.
This is purely a difference in spelling; they are pronounced the same, and
should
be considered different ways of writing the same "letter".
This alternate spelling also is somewhat closer to the spelling of TLI Loglan
(see #@ below). There is another similar spelling system, which has never
been used, designed to make Lojban look more familiar to potential converts
from TLI.
1b. Could I take a text with <h>s and do a search & replace with <'> and end
up with "standard" lojban?
Probably not, because And uses a number of non-standard spelling conventions:
<'> is omitted altogether where the vowels couldn't possibly be
stuck together; for example he'd write <coe> for <co'e>, since <oe>
is not a legal combination.
He uses <.> as in English, to end a sentence, rather than as a pause.
He capitalizes the first word of the sentence.
1c. Why is one better than the other?
The standard usage is better because each letter corresponds to one sound and
each sound corresponds to one letter. And's usage is better because <.>
and <'> are ugly in the middle of words, and sentences ought to start with a
capital letter to better conform to Roman alphabet spelling conventions.
2. How do you borrow words from other languages?
There are four ways to borrow words. Only the most common method is covered
here; see the web or ftp sites for more detail.
Borrowed words are called {fu'ivla}, meaning approximately "copied words" (after
all, "borrowing" implies we're going to give them back someday!)
A fu'ivla consists of three parts:
- the classifier
- the glue
- the borrowed part
The quintessential example is {djarspageti}, meaning "spaghetti". {dja} is the
classifier: it's the short form (rafsi) for {cidja}, meaning "food". {r} is the
glue: its necessary to keep the word from falling into two parts. {spageti} is
the Lojbanized version of "spaghetti".
The classifier is glued on the front for two reasons: it helps identify strange
borrowings, and it prevents borrowings that happen to coincide with things that
are already Lojban words. For example if you borrowed the word "spageti"
directly,
it could lead to ambiguity in a phrase like *{ko bevri re spageti palta}
which could
mean "Bring two plates of spaghetti" or something like "Be a carrying
reptile and
a plate made of this" *{ko bevri respa ge ti palta}. In a natural language
there
would be no doubt which of the two was meant, but Lojban is constructed so
that you shouldn't need to understand the sentence to know where one word ends
and the next begins.
3. Isn't it confusing that some rafsi are identical to cmavo?
Yes, it isn't.
In theory you can tell completely from the neighboring syllables whether
something
is a cmavo or a rafsi. This is how the computer is able to parse Lojban without
understanding its meaning. For example the {dei} in {bavlamdei} ("tomorrow")
is a rafsi for "day", not the cmavo {dei}, a
special pronoun meaning "this sentence". We know which is which because Lojban
words can't end in a consonant, so {dei} *must* be a part of {bavlamdei};
{bavlam} can't be a whole word. (No, it can't be a name, either. Names end
with a consonant followed by a pause, written as a ".")
In practice you can also use your knowledge of the meanings of the words to help
with this; it's possible to think up a sentence like {la .bavlam. dei cusku},
"Bavlam says this sentence.", but it's not likely in practice if you don't
know anyone named "Bavlam"!
4. What are those lojban word that you are using even in English text?
What's all the other jargon and acronyms you use?
Here are APPROXIMATE definitions.
Words in ALL CAPS on the Lojban list often refer to Lojban parts of speech.
When this convention is used, the capitalization of {'} is {h}, so the
capitalization of {la'e} would be {LAhE}
attitudinal - A lojban interjection (Wow! Eeek!)
audiovisual isomorphism - Spoken and written Lojban should be the same
BAI - Lojban prepositions
bridi - Lojban sentence - a "predicate"
brivla - any word that can act like a verb in Lojban - a "predicate word"
cmavo - a "little word" showing structure rather than carrying meaning
evidential - Special word indicating how the speaker got their information
fu'ivla - borrowed word
gadri - Lojban article or determiner - signals the start of a sumti
GEK
GIhEk
gismu - basic 5-letter lojban root word
GUhEk
JCB - James Cooke Brown, the inventor of Loglan
JL - ju'i lobypli
ju'i lobypli - an old Lojban newsletter
le'avla - the old word for fu'ivla
lo??an - lojban and loglan
lujvo - compound word
pe'i - in my opinion
rafsi - building block(s) of compound words
tanru - a phrase formed of two or more Lojban brivla
selbri - the verb-like part of a sentence
selma'o - part of speech
slinku'i - a hypothetical borrowed word, which is not a legal
only because it could be interpred as parts of other
words
TLI - The Loglan Institute
===============================
RESOURCES
5. What's the best way to start learning Lojban?
I would recommend:
Work through the mini-lesson: http://xiron.pc.helsinki.fi/lojban/minilsn.html
1. Work through the Diagrammed Summary
2. Read through the Reference Grammar -- reading for concepts, not
detail
3. Create a cheat sheet with lists of cmavo you're likely to need
4. Read and write Lojban text using the Ref Grammar and your
cheat sheets for reference
5. If you get serious about it, use Logflash to bone up on your
vocabulary
6. How can I look up gismu, lujvo, and cmavo when I am translating from lojban?
Use one of these:
- print yourself out some word lists
- Keep the dictionary online and use a text editor with searching
capability to find stuff in it
- In UNIX, make an alias with the "grep" command.
7. Sources of text to read?
o The FTP site has some things; an index is here:
ftp://powered.cs.yale.edu/pub/lojban/text/README-text
o The Lojban list will have discussion in Lojban from time to time
o The web site has a few texts:
http://xiron.pc.helsinki.fi/lojban/lojban.html
o Stuff on paper can be ordered from the Logical Language Group;
however at this time Lojbab is concentrating on other
things and it's much better if you can retrieve stuff
off the net.
8. What messages are appropriate for the Lojban List?
Beginners are very encouraged to post. Anything's appropriate as long as the
title approximately reflects the content, and you're not selling magazine
subscriptions or mail-order brides (exeption: it's OK if it's in Lojban!)
You can post on any subject in Lojban, or about Lojban in any language.
You can post in any language you think people will understand. Postings in
Lojban warm the cockles of Lojbab's heart.
9. What are the abbreviations used on the list's subject lines?
A few different people are using different conventions for this purpose;
you may see:
TECH: technical discussion
TEXT: lojban text
JBO: or T: lojban text
GEN: or G: grammar discussion
PLI: or U: usage discussion
LOJ: or L: logic discussion
CLI: or B: beginner discussion
RET: or Q: question to the experienced (not restricted to beginners)
LIN: or W: whispers
CPE: or R: request for translation
SNU: or C: chat (bau la lojban. ju'o)
VRC: or D: general discussion (anything that won't fit) (why doesn't
vrici have a nice 3 zei lerfu rafsi .oi)
TRO: or A: list administration and miscellanea
10. Are there archives? WWW site? ftp site?
Web site: http://xiron.pc.helsinki.fi/lojban/lojban.html
FTP site: powered.cs.yale.edu
in directory /pub/lojban
Archives: On the FTP site in /pub/lojban/list
11. What's available in languages other than English?
There is a brochure in Esperanto. Jorge and Jose have translated the gismu
list into Spanish; it's available by ftp from ftp.access.digex.net in
the file /pub/access/lojbab/gismu.spa
There are also brochures in French, Spanish, and Russian.
12. What software's available?
Parser - on the FTP site
Logflash 1 - on the FTP site; teaches gismu
Logflash 3 - on the FTP site; teaches cmavo
Prolog Semantic Analyzer http://xiron.pc.helsinki.fi/lojban/analyser.html
Random Sentence Generator - currently only available by mail.
Lujvo program - soon to be available on the FTP site.
===============================
GENERAL
13. Who is everybody? Who's in charge?
[Wanna be on this list? Write a paragraph in Lojban about yourself
and I'll include it.]
Scott Brickner sjb@universe.digex.net
coi mi'e skat.
.i mi se cnino la lojban. gi'e troci .o'nai lo penydjuxa'a
.i mi nanca li cire gi'e speni .i mi se jibri le sampla di'o la ibubymym
.
sedi'o la ostyn. teksas. seka'i la merlyn. grup. .i mi ctuca mi fo la
lojban. lenu samci'etid
.i.o'acu'i mi xamgu birjyzbasu .i mi ca birjyzbasu lo ke kerfu bo grute
bo vrusi ke'e ke galtu bo fusra birje
.i mi sutra je zmadu tcidu .ije le cumymu'efi'a ralju
James Cooke Brown
The inventor of Loglan - not associated with Lojban now
John Clifford aka pc pcliffje@CRL.COM
A logician, specializing in tense logic, who's been involved with
the project for a long time
John Cowan cowan@LOCKE.CCIL.ORG
Reference Grammar author
Jose Ramon Gallo Vazquez gallo%galileo.fie@CS.US.ES
coi mi'e. xoses. .i mi spano .i mi xabju la sevi,ias. ne le sangu'e
.i mi ca nanca lireci .i mi se ctuca fo lo samske di'o le diklo ckule
ni'o mi nelci le bangu .e le kulnu .e le lijda vu'o poi su'anai tcesau
gi'a stuna gi'a cizra .iji'a mi nelci le nu tcidu loi cukta gi'e ciska
.i mi tcenei tu'a la stanislav. lem. joi la tolki,en. joi la borxes.
joi la robrt. greivz. joi so'i lo drata .i mi nelci lo drata noi
nuncusku nandu mi bau la lojban. .i mi tcenei la lojban.
ni'o be'ucu'i .i .a'o di'u na malspano vau zo'o
.i co'o mi'e. xoses.
Lojbab aka Bob LeChevalier lojbab@ACCESS.DIGEX.NET
Head of the Logical Language Group.
Cyril Slobin slobin@FEAST.FE.MSK.RU
mi'e kir.
.i lu ki,RIL. ar,KAD,ie,vitc. ZLO,bin. li'u mulno cmene mi
.i mi jbena fi li pabi pi'e so pi'e pasoxaze
.i mi rusko
.i mi xabju la moskvas.
.i mi skami certu
.i la xelen. speni mi
.i la serges. bersa mi
.i la dinax. me le mi mlatu
.i zo'o lo lojbo cmene cu cizra mi
.i mi na ca kakne lenu zmadu cusku
.i ri'a bo la lojban. ca fange mi
.i ku'i mi pacna lenu ri ba slabu mi
Goran Topic topic@STUDENT.MATH.HR
mi'e goran. .i mi caki nanca lirepapisu'o .i le kerfa .e le kanla vu'o
po'e mi manbu'e .i mi mitre lipazeji'imu gi'e ki'ogra lixaji'imu
ni'o mi ba'o .uu mlicre lo xumske gi'e ku'i certu lo samske gi'ebo tadni
lo banske .i mi pu tadni ca'o lo nanca remei lo cmacyske .iku'i mi
steba gi'esemu'ibo sisti ca lenu mi co'a jimpe ledu'u mi selzdi lenu
cilre le vrici bangu noi so'ecu'o tcefange gi'ebazibo co'a tadni lo
banske
ni'o mi pu jivna fi lenu dansu loi spano joi xispo joi merko gi'e pu
remoi loi za'e remei pe le mi gugde .i ku'i le mi dansu kansa co'a kansa
na'ebo mi .ije mi steba dukse fi'o fanta lenu mi ctuca lo drata
ni'oji'a mi tcenei lo xarfi'a gi'e cmima lo diklo xarfi'agri .i mi
nunxeldraco kelci .i mi kelci lo selcpa karda po'u la djixad. .i mi
kelci loi drata ji'a karda
ni'osu'a mi te jinvi ledu'u cizra .ije la'edi'u pluka mi
ni'o pe'i dei banzu vau pei
co'o mi'e. goran.
14. How many people are there in the Lojban community? How many can use Lojban,
and how well?
There are about 600 people on the hard-copy mailing list, most of whom
have a rather low-level interest: they get the hard-copy newsletter
"le lojbo karni", which hopefully will have a new issue in January.
There are generally about 90 people on Lojban List. Maybe 15 people
post regularly.
15. What is LogFest?
LogFest is the annual gathering of the Logical Language Group. We are
required by law to have an annual meeting, and have used that excuse to
hold a "convention", "party", "social event". for any and all in the community
who are willing to come. LogFest is held here at my house in asuburb of
Washington DC. We have typically had around 20 people come for part or all
of the weekend, and these are usually among the more committed Lojbanists.
Usually at least one person has travellled a substantial distance in order to
attend, and that person is often treated thereby as a guest of honor of sorts,
being a little more "equal" than the others in choosing what activities we
focus on. Chris Bogart came from Colorado last summer, and was very intent on
Lojban conversation, so we tried much more of this in the last LogFest that
at any previous gathering. Other than this focus, LogFest is largely
unstructured, in part because we don't know who or how many are coming until
a couple of days before things start, and by that time Nora and I are
fully involved in preparing the house for lots of company. AS such, some have
criticized Logfest fro being illplanned, and I intend next year to get the
community via Lojban List to do more planning for the gathering.
Next year's LogFest will take place in August. I don't have the exact date
at my fingertips.
Because of the "officialness" of the gathering, and the fact thatw e actually
do have a "meeting" when people vote to set policy for the group, some of the
more major decisions tend to get made at or as a result of the meeting.
It is at those meeting where I feel most accountable to the whole community,
because some people come who are NOT actively part of the net community, and
they usually have a different persepctive on priorities than those who have
the chance to inundate themselves in Lojban daily on this list. (I will also
note here that some of our more substantial financial contributors are not
active on this list, and we are somewhat beholden to them,especially on issues
that result in income or expenditure).
===============================
PROJECT STATUS
15. What parts of the language are well worked out, and which parts are in flux?
John Cowan:
The phonology, orthography, and morphology have been essentially stable
since 1988, except for a slight change in what counts as a legal fu'ivla.
The gismu list has been stable since 1988, except that about 25 gismu
have been added and 2 gismu changed. This includes the words themselves
and the English keywords.
The rafsi have been stable since 1993, when they were radically changed.
Much existing text has not been updated, although a program to do so
has been written by LLG.
The place structures have not been formally baselined, and a few changes
are still occurring, but the vast majority of them are stabilized by
human inertia.
The grammar has been basically stable since 1993. A few marginal changes,
essentially expanding what can be said, are now being considered prior to
publishing the reference grammar.
jimc:
The basic semantics are stable. There are still ongoing disputes about
"how to say it best in Lojban"; we expect these to continue indefinitely.
As a matter of policy, changes to Lojban that would require people to
re-learn things are resisted vigorously. Extensions may be accepted
if very important.
Almost anything that practical people (i.e. beginners) would actually
use is well worked out, debugged and stable. Points of controversy
include highly technical philosophical issues such as whether empty
sets are or are not excluded as the candidate referent set of a sumti,
or whether current grammar is adequate to represent lambda calculus.
The answers are very important (no joke), but people have been speaking
natural languages for years without knowing the answers, so don't worry
about Lojban. And you don't have to know what lambda calculus is.
The major point of controversy that is significant to beginners is a
feeling in some quarters that the policies used to design the place
(argument, sumti) structures of gismu (basic predicate words) were not
exactly optimal. Mainly the rarely used places are at issue. Most
likely, we'll go with what we have to preserve the investment people
have made in learning the language.
16. What are the most current revisions of each part of the language
descriptions?
17. What projects are being worked on? When will they be done?
FTP site - maintained by Erik Rauch, who acts by requests from Bob
or John Cowan.
Reference grammar - John Cowan has written a draft of this book and it
is currently being reviewed by the online Lojban community.
Textbook - a draft of the textbook is available online, but it is out of
date and incomplete. No one is working on it right now; it's considered
fairly low priority.
Dictionary - A draft is online, compiled primarily by Lojbab. It needs to
have lujvo added to it; Jorge Llambias and Nick Nicholas are working on this
project.
Web site - Veijo Vilva maintains the web site.
FAQ - Chris Bogart (cbogart@quetzal.com) maintains the FAQ.
18. What can I do to help?
A few possibilities:
Write in Lojban on the list
Post beginner questions and don't be intimidated
Write something in Lojban
Come to LogFest in July/August
in Fairfax VA (near Washington, DC), U.S.A.
Try expressing yourself in Lojban
Send money to LLG
Keep a diary in Lojban
=============================
HISTORICAL
19. How was the default place order of sumti in a selbri determined? (There
does not appear to be any rhyme or reason for the order of sumti in many
gismu.)
They went through a lot of revisions; it's something in between planning
and evolution. Some people continue to lobby for reforms.
20. How did the gismu get made: discussion, etymology examples
Lojbab replies:
I have put the full set of etymologies up
on my ftp site ftp.access.digex.net /pub/lojbab file "finprims.ety" 282K.
There isn;t a lot of explanation, but the etymogies in 6 languages and
the scoring for each language are given, in order Chinese/English/Hindi/
Spanish/Russian/Arabic - a 0 score means that the language made no contribution
to the word, and thus its etymological keyword did not matter.
21. What's the diff between Loglan, Lojban? How is Loglan-82 related? (it's
not!)
James Cooke Brown came up with the idea of Loglan in around 1960. It's been
evolving
ever since. In 1985 or so there was a disagreement and the Loglan community
split
into two efforts, with Brown at the head of one, The Loglan Institute (TLI), and
Bob LeChevalier at the head of the other, the Logical Language Group (LLG).
The latter
is Lojban, which LLG (backed up by a court decision) considers a subcategory
of Loglan.
Loglan-82 is a completely unrelated computer language.
22. Why does it have a special meaning when the verb comes first?
In Loglan it used to be a command, but now we use either {ko} or attitudinals.
In a {poi broda} phrase it's likely that you'll want x1 to be {ke'a}
and to explicitly state x2. If V-initial weren't special, and if syntax
within a poi were consistent with sentence-level syntax, then you'd have to
explicitly use {fe} or {zo'e} or {ke'a} to get to the x2.
For example, now we say {le nanmu poi prami mi} and the x1 of {prami} is
elided,
and we can assume it's {ke'a}, which here equals {le nanmu}. Without this
special treatment of V-initial, we'd have to say {le nanmu poi prami ke'a mi}
or {le nanmu poi ke'a prami mi} or {le nanmu poi ke'a mi prami}. So: it saves
2 syllables in what's arguably the most common way of using {poi}. May or may
not be worth it, depending on how you value word order flexibility vs. brevity.
In general it lets you easily get to x2 in sentences without an x1.
23. Why are there so many words for AND? Why not just let {.e} connect
two sumti, bridi, bridi-tails, or anything else?
Lojbab replies:
We use different connectives for different scopes. Doing so helps the
listener keep track of what exactly the speaker wants connected. This is
MUCH more important in speech than in text, because in text you can reread and
ponder. If you have a multipart nested sumti joined to another multipart
nested sumti, having clear indicatoirs of scope may make the sentence
understandable when otherwise it is not. It is therefore hoped that spoken
Lojban and written Lojban can be similar in level of complexity. (You
know, audiovisual isomorphism)