Re: Linguistics journals

[Chris Bogart <cbogart@QUETZAL.COM>]

Could Lojban be used, if not "studied" as such, by a linguist/logician as
a tool for discussing and illustrating some fine points of linguistic
logic?  Not writing *in* lojban, just giving examples in Lojban.  An
abstract discussion of how abstraction, quantification, and argument
raising (to pick three things out of the hat) would be less readable and
more prone to error than one that analyzed example sentences with {nu},
{ci}, and {tu'a} in them.  In other words, maybe Lojan could be useful in
the same way math notation or normal predicate calculus are useful.
Obviously its rigor is going to be less well-accepted by a logician's
audience at first, but if nothing else it provides something concrete to
shoot holes in.  As several people have pointed out, reading abstract
discussion of logic is *difficult*.  I'm fascinated by Lakoff's "Women,
Fire, and Dangerous Things", but there are several chapters I just can't
get through.

Chris