Re: The design of Lojban

[John Cowan <cowan@DRV.CBC.COM>]

Andrew Sieber wrote:

> I have been under the assumption (and
> have assumed that everybody else was also under the assumption) that
> Lojban tests the hypothesis only by lowering existing thought barriers
> in natural languages, not by raising new barriers, and so far I haven't
> seen any reason to change that assumption.

Well, perhaps.  There are some things that are hard to say unless
you understand predicate logic to some degree, and some places where
Lojban can't be vague where other langs can.

> Also, some specifics of Lojban:
> In English, "or" can mean either inclusive-or (and/or) or exclusive-or
> (either-or).  Is there an unambiguous separation of the two
> interpretations in Lojban?

Yes.  However, there is no single word that is ambiguous between
the two (Latin didn't have one either, AFAIK).

> In English, relationships are represented by (or are at least ambiguous
> with) ownership.  "My sister's husband" implies that my sister owns her
> husband, and also that I own my sister.  In Lojban is there a way to
> make references to relationship without implying ownership?

Lojban has four levels: mere association ("my friend"), specific
relationship ("my seat on the bus"), extrinsic possession ("my toothbrush"),
intrinsic possession ("my arm").

> I assume that Lojban has gender-neutral "pronouns."  Does it also have
> gender-specific ones, or must gender be specified only by using a
> gender-neutral one and then using a separate, explicit modifier to
> specify gender?

The latter.

> [H]ow are we ever to convince the Eskimos of Greenland to learn
> Lojban?  They use base 20.  (We can ignore the Babylonians, who used
> base 60, because they're all dead.  No hard feelings.)

Using the alternate-base-separator "pi'e" (see the same chapter)
we can express any base whatever, as well as compound bases like
pounds and ounces.

> Also, are there
> any _symbols_ beyond 0, 1, 2 ,3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, and 9 ?

No.  Lojban doesn't define new symbols.

> [W]hy not simply use the symbol h as being synonymous with the
> symbol ' and thus type comfortably using an unmodified Dvorak keyboard?
> For people who want to publish texts which they have created in this
> manner, all they have to do is use the find/replace feature of their
> text editors to change all occurences of h to ' and then their
> mischievous alphabet-molesting habits will never be noticed.

Whatever you want to do privately is fine with us.  The canonical Lojban
orthography uses the apostrophe.

--
John Cowan      http://www.ccil.org/~cowan              cowan@ccil.org
                        e'osai ko sarji la lojban