Re: linguistics journals

[Robin Turner <robin@BILKENT.EDU.TR>]

la djef. cusku di'e

>>I do not think that there is anything that Lojban, or ANY language,
>>natural or constructed, can do to improve my thinking. I do not think in
>>Lojban, or English, or any other language; I just THINK. You usually have
>>to CONSTRUCT a language in which to express your ALREADY EXISTING
>>thoughts, and I consider that thought and language are separate things.
>

This is an extremely controversial philosophical point, and one which I
think has surfaced before on this list, so I won't go into the arguments.
My advice to Geoff and Colin is to try "just thinking";  the most you're
likely to be able to come up with is a few pictures.  If you can do even
this without any words coming into your head, you're well on the way to a
mystical experience.  As for whether language can improve your thinking, I
think any second language will improve your thinking to an extent, and a
language which is designed to be as logical as possible ought to do this to
a greater extent.  There is in fact nothing particularly remarkable about
this; if I put a particularly knotty problem into symbolic logic, all I am
doing is using a different language to help me think better.

co'o mi'e robin.

============================================================================
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Robin Turner

Bilkent Universitesi,
IDMYO,
Ankara,
Turkey.

<http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Delphi/8309>