ruminations on bangu, place structures, and corners

[Ivan A Derzhanski <cbmvax!uunet!COGSCI.ED.AC.UK!iad>]

>  Date:     Fri, 15 May 1992 08:51:49 -0400
>  From: Logical Language Group <lojbab@COM.GREBYN>
>
>  I think you can eliminate the problems of 'rarna
>  bangu' by making it "rarna farvi bangu" (naturally-developed language).

True.  (But I still don't promise not to say {rarna bangu}.)

>  1. "of people x2" might refer to any speaker of the language, with any
>  degree of fluency (or even with a specified minimum degree of fluency)
>
>  2. "of people x2" might refer to the group of people who are native
>  speakers
>
>  3. "of people x2" might refer to a community of speakers who use a
>  language regularly in daily life

None of these satisfies me.  My interpretation is

 4. "of people x2" refers to the group of people with a realised (as
 opposed to theoretical) capability of using the language.

>  When we use "Russians" to refer to people who speak Russian, <...>

Which you should _not_ do.  Speaking Russian doesn't make one Russian,
any more than speaking English makes one an Englishman.

>  This may suggest a fourth possibility, which is that buying into a
>  language to the degree necessary to be part of its 'community' means
>  buying into the 'culture' of those who speak the language.  That there
>  is a tie between language and culture is inarguable even discounting the
>  determinism proposed by the Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis.

Why is it inarguable?  There is no Lojbanic culture, but there are
Lojban se bangu (the group of intended readers of any text in Lojban
that any of us produces).

>  One also has to deal with the question of the importance of 'speaking':
>  does a mute person who uses 'Signed English' (as opposed to ASL) belong
>  to le se bangu be la gliban?  How about someone who merely reads and
>  writes a language, possibly fluently, but does not speak it?

Yes and yes.  Speaking is just one of the forms of using a language,
and there is no reason to single it out among the others.  ("x1 is a
language spoken by x2, understood by x3, written by x4, read by x5...")

>  But if le se
>  bangu only refers to native speakers, then Lojban isn't a language of
>  any kind.  Some linguists indeed feel this to be the case - that a
>  language must have native speakers to be a language <...>

Count me as one of those who disagree with this.  A language is a
system of symbols which serves for communication.  Whether it is
natively or nonnatively acquired by those using it is irrelevant.

>  We haven't yet addressed one other, more devastating problem:  does
>  'bangu' exclude computer languages, mathematical language, etc.

I vote against this.  I'd like even formal languages to be bangu.
I se bangu Prolog and Lisp, for example.  (Does a computer se bangu a
language if the language has been implemented for it?)

>  One possibility, but I'd like to see others' ideas:
>
>  x1 is a language used by x2 to communicate x3
>
>  (which ties more strongly to cusku and meaning 1 above)

Yes, I like this.  Down with the native speakers.

>  Latin is a bangu even
>  in the present tense: it is the language of "loi pu latmo prenu".
>  Lojban can also be a bangu to those of us who believe it viable because
>  it is the >potential< language of speakers - it is innately capable of
>  being a native language.

Now wait a minute.  I am not convinced that Lojban is innately capable
of being a native language.  If the basic premises of the Universal
Grammar theory are valid, that is, if it is true that a child can
acquire his first language only because all natural languages share a
bunch of common features that are hardwired in the brain from birth,
then a language which lacks a significant portion of these features
must be natively unlearnable.

Ivan