don@allegra.UUCP (09/28/83)
First, "Non Serviam" means "I will not serve". Specifically, it is the
sin of Pride committed by Satan. (I am an atheist, but collect such
trivia.) One sees this phrase now and then in Roman Catholic
inscriptions.
I recently read James Cooke Brown's article on Loglan (in Scientific
American, June 1960). I have two questions. First, why bother
creating a whole new vocabulary. Second, supposing you just use
English words with the new rules. What is gained?
Actually, some friends and I have talked about how one might improve
English. English already stands out over other European languages
because it has a larger vocabulary, less useless grammer (gender, case
endings, etc.) and very flexible rules for using words (one can "ride a
thumb" or "thumb a ride" for instance). We had a couple ideas:
Loglan's multiple "it"s might be nice (It1 gave it2 to it3). Eliminate
last vestiges of gender by throwing out gendered pronouns (he, she,
his, hers...). Stop putting the "s" after verbs in third person
singular ("He drive a car"). Stop modifying nouns when they are plural
("many cup on table"). Make all verbs regular (they are in Swedish,
for example,where one says "I are, you are, he are, we are...").
Any other ideas? If anyone wants to add "features" I will probably
disagree.jack@rlgvax.UUCP (Jack Waugh) (10/03/83)
Loglan has its own vocabulary to avoid syntactical ambiguity and to make it easier for most people of the world to learn (what Loglanists refer to as cultural neutrality, although it's actually weighted according to how many people speak a language).
mark@utzoo.UUCP (mark bloore) (10/04/83)
why create a new vocabulary for loglan, rather than using english words
with a new grammar? (someone asked recently)
loglan's words were (and continue to be) constructed to meet certain criteria
which natural languages do not have:
different "parts of speech" have different patterns of stress and
vowel/consonant order. these are arranged in such a way that a sentence
may be unambiguously divided into words by a listener (human or computer) who
does not understand what is being said. a great help if you (or the speaker)
is not fluent.
in english there are many phrases which are difficult to say distinctly,
eg "i scream" vs "ice cream". there have been cases where i couldn't parse
a (spoken) sentence because i didn't know what was being talked about, but
would have known the subject if i could have parsed the sentence!
loglan's basic "predicate" (noun/verb/qualifier) words are based on the
eight most widely spoken languages, so as to make them easy to learn
and recognize for a large part of the world's population. no natural
language can do match this.
natural vocabularies have homonyms and words with many disparate meanings.
these are a source of confusion, and avoided in loglan.
the basic predicate set is chosen so as not to have words which sound too
much alike. again, less confusion.
in short, i think using an existing vocabulary would
make a logical language immpossible.
mARK bLOORE
univ of toronto
{allegra,ihnp4,linus,decvax}!utzoo!markshebs@utah-cs.UUCP (Stanley Shebs) (10/05/83)
Dissimilar words to *sound* dissimilar? Consistent syntax? And (probably) consistent spelling? Horrors! How are puns going to be possible? And what other kinds of jokes? It seems to me the only kind possible will be very cerebral and unfunny... Yours for *natural* language, stan the l.h. utah-cs!shebs ps Does loglan allow the invention of new words? pps perhaps computers have already become intelligent, and are attempting to coerce people into thinking like machines, thus loglan, logic programming in AI, Objectivism, and other ills...