more Re: [unrev-II] Thinking about communicating

From: Jack Park (jackpark@thinkalong.com)
Date: Sun Aug 19 2001 - 16:37:56 PDT


I should point out that there is a scripting language called Loglan,
usually it looks like Loglan 82 and the like at Google.
Also, there is a fork in the Loglan road called Lojban. For the time
being, I'm sticking with Loglan.

Jack

At 04:29 PM 8/19/2001 -0700, you wrote:
>I have 2 of the Loglan books that were available. I don't know whether they
>still are.
>
>One aspect of the language that intrigued me is that the dictionary consists
>of predicates, each of which takes a specified set of arguments --
>essentially subroutines or method calls.
>
>I have thought for years that such an endeavor in English would make a
>useful set of checklists for any text that had to be precise, such as
>software specifications or requirements documents.
>
>BTW, Loglan is based on a context free grammar and it is said that a
>computer programme with it is still the most 'fluent' speaker of Loglan.
>
>Whether Loglan istelf is worthy of adoption for precision communication, I
>think that many of the ideas used in it could be very useful.
>
>Thanks,
>
>Garold (Gary) L. Johnson
>
>----- Original Message -----
>From: "Jack Park" <jackpark@thinkalong.com>
>To: <unrev-II@yahoogroups.com>
>Sent: Sunday, August 19, 2001 3:12 PM
>Subject: [unrev-II] Thinking about communicating
>
>
> > Many moons back, James Cooke Brown decided to test the central Whorfian
> > thesis, namely that the structure of individual languages does in some way
> > shape the thought of monolingual speakers of those languages. We might ask
> > the same question ourselves as we ponder our OHS notions.
> >
> > That work began the evolution of the language Loglan
> > http://www.loglan.org
> >
> > From the forward to the book _Loglan 1_ which is entirely online in
>HTML,
> >
> > "At the beginning of Christmas Holidays, 1955, I sat down before a bright
> > fire to commence what I hoped would be a short paper on the possibility of
> > testing the social psychological implications of the Sapir-Whorf
> > hypothesis. I meant to proceed by showing that the construction of a tiny
> > model language, with a grammar borrowed from the rules of modern logic,
> > taught to subjects of different nationalities in a laboratory setting
>under
> > conditions of control, would permit a decisive test. I have been writing
> > appendices for that paper ever since. I believed, once or twice, that I
>had
> > glimpsed the end of it; but I cannot yet be certain."
> >
> > I present that quote in order to respond a priori to questions about
> > Esperanto and other invented languages (aren't all languages
> > invented?). Esperanto, for instance, is relatively easy to learn and use;
> > indeed there are lots of Web sites that speak Esperanto (google got
>487,000
> > hits, only 3360 for loglan!) But, Loglan appears to be different; it is a
> > fabrication with a scientific bent, and one that might be important to
> > those of us who wish to build software tools to enable enhanced human
> > communication and learning.
> >
> > The argument can be made that English is rapidly becoming the lingua
>franca
> > of the Web, and so it may be. My thinking is that it may still be worth
> > taking a look at fabricated, restricted languages as a means to continue
> > our efforts to understand the nature of communication.
> >
> > I landed on Loglan not by chance, but by way of the insight of Charles
> > Moore, the creator of the Forth computer programming language, a language
>I
> > have used a lot. He pointed out an article in a back issue of Scientific
> > American, and that's where I started. More recently, I have observed
> > discussions on the Standard Upper Ontology list about the use of
>restricted
> > natural languages as an interlingua, so long as those languages can be
>used
> > as a means of expressing KIF expressions (Knowledge Interchange Format,
> > http://logic.stanford.edu/kif/kif.html). There is a discussion on
> > "controlled natural language" by John Sowa at
> > http://users.bestweb.net/~sowa/misc/ace.htm
> >
> > Mentioned there is ACE (Attempto Controlled English).
> >
> > My point? Perhaps Loglan is worth looking at. Why start with English? Why
> > not start over with something already much closer to KIF?
> >
> > Cheers
> > Jack
> >
> >
> >
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>
>
>
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