Re: veridicality in grammar

[Chris Bogart <cbogart@quetzal.com>]

>Perhaps I should put this a different way: if Lojban speakers turn out
>to be *unable* to categorize sumti_tails with {lo} and {le} with as
>little effort as I am categorizing the utterances of these paragraphs
>for time and number, then the Lojban project will have failed to
>develop a language (although it won't have failed as an experiment).

More accurately, the project will have failed to develop a language
easily-speakable by humans.  Lojban *is* a language, as is C++, French, and
the set {"a", "b", "aa", "bb", "aaa", "bbb", "aaaa", "bbbb", ...}  I see the
need for a different term.

Some Esperantists like to argue that theirs is a "human language", but I
don't think that's a useful distinction, since even C++ is designed to be
written and read by humans, as well as read by computers.  Some weird
language that took conscious effort to use would be very human, because what
other animal or machine is capable of such conscious effort?

"Natural language" is a useless term, I think, because it would seem to
exclude Esperanto, and include Norwegian, even though the former has almost
nothing in it that isn't borrowed from a European language, and the latter
has been deliberately engineered to bring together some disparate dialects
into "Nynorsk".

We need a term that includes any language, whether evolved or planned, that
obeys whatever constraints are wired into the part of the human brain that
is best at learning langauge.

If it turns out to be impossible to learn to categorize lo vs. le as
effortlessly as one makes such distinctions in English, I don't think that
means the system should be discarded and chalked up as merely insight into
what can't be done.  If it's a useful distinction, it may be something some
people want to continue with, even if it always takes conscious effort.
Just because evolved languages require no effort doesn't mean that languages
which do require effort aren't useful!  Again, consider C++.
 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
 Chris Bogart
 cbogart@quetzal.com
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