Re: What is Loglan/Lojban

[And Rosta <a.rosta@UCLAN.AC.UK>]

Lojbab:
> >As fir what is
> >> language - I think it is a matter of definition.  I choose to include
> >> all means of expression which CAN be consciously controlled at least in
> >> part.  Lojban as a language design can prescribe for that entire range
> >> of expression.  Whether people will or will not follow that prescription
> >> is of course an individual decision.
> >
> >This definition of the Loglan project is news to me. If it is
> >LLG policy, there ought to be a far more explicit articulation
> >of it. I doubt, for example, that any linguist would realize,
> >from the available documentation, that the scope of the project
> >was as broad as this.
>
> I suspect you read more into this than I intend.  Lojban CAN prescribe some
> pragmatics, because we HAVE done so, both in the refgrammar and in other less
> solid prescriptive documents (e.g. the draft textbook).  Specifically, in the
> areas of attitudinal use, in the stated obligation on the speaker to be clear,
> and in several aspects of the tense system, I think we have made prescriptive
> comments about pragmatics.  In the case of the attitudinals, we have extended
> the language into traditionally extralinguistic arenas.  In the case of the
> metalinguistic sentences, we have grammaticalized that which has traditionally
> been conveyed by pragmatics (i.e. that a statement is indeed metalinguistic).
> sumti-raising and its avoidance is another area where Lojban prescription
> counters natlang norms.
>
> The scope of the project is such as to make the core of the project "work",
> and have integrity for the designed purposes.  If people nibble away at the
> edges based on pragmatics, then the core loses much of its integrity, since
> you can avoid everything in the language without difficulty.  Some have
> said that we did this too far, already - surely you and Jorge have seemed to
> me to complain that too much of the language excepts the speaker from needing
> to be rigorous with things like scope.  I myself have worried about that one,
> but decided that Lojban cannot at this point force logical thinking on people,
> only enable it, since most potential Lojban speakers don't have the training
> to follow a set of rigid rules on logical usage.

What you say is not unreasonable, but if you find yourself in
a position where you want to tell linguists what Lojban is,
I very much urge that you be more explicit.

I would suggest that you describe Lojban as a set of constraints
on linguistic behaviour. The goal of the Lojban project (as
defined by LLG) is for there to be a speech community whose
linguistic behaviour is governed by these constraints. The grammar
of Lojban is only a subset of these constraints: that is, one of
the constraints on behaviour is "Use grammatical Lojban sentences".

It is true that I myself have advocated certain additional
constraints on behaviour: keeping the logical meaning of the
sentences one uses maximally close to the logical meaning
one wishes to communicate. But I have not advocated treating
this as part of Lojban itself (since I hitherto conceived of
Lojban as a generative grammar - i.e. a set of well-formedness
constraints on sentences).

--And