Re: Dvorak (& Lojban)

[HACKER G N <c9709244@alinga.newcastle.edu.au>]

On Sat, 25 Oct 1997, George Foot wrote:

> On Thu, 23 Oct 1997, HACKER G N wrote:
>
> > After a bit of thought on the matter, George, I've decided that this isn't
> > really an appropriate analogy. The reason that Dvorak is easier to learn
> > after qwerty than qwerty is to learn after Dvorak is that Dvorak is MORE
> > INTUITIVE than qwerty, not necessarily more logical. The only way in which
>
> I'm not sure I follow what you mean by `intuitive'; surely this concept
> depends upon what has been learned before?

That's exactly what I mean. Dvorak is based more on what you have already
learned before; Lojban isn't.

> Or do you think some things
> (like crawling and walking perhaps) are truly intuitive?

Maybe, maybe not. I don't know.

> If so, I'm not
> sure I'd agree that a language can be intuitive in the same manner.

Actually, according to Chomsky it would. I don't know.

> The ability to speak takes a long time to develop; I'm not sure that any
> (spoken) language can be classed as intuitive in the same way that walking
> is intuitive.

And I'm sure that's correct.

> Perhaps the language of our thoughts is, though...

Or the exact character of our thoughts, yes.

>
> > it is more logical than qwerty is that it is designed to make it easier to
> > type the letters that are more common NATURALLY in English. By contrast,
> > Lojban is decidedly UN-intuitive and UN-natural. Terminators aren't
> > natural, a grammar based on predicate calculus is most decidedly
> > unnatural, and there seems no rhyme or reason to which sumti places take
>
> I think I contest the above; perhaps terminators aren't natural because
> English doesn't use them, the formalised grammer and its roots aren't
> natural because English shares neither the level of formality nor the
> derivation?

But other languages don't either. Lojban was deliberately designed to have
a DIFFERENT structure from existing languages.

> Presumably the grammer seemed natural to those who created it,
> and to others familiar with predicate calculus (with which I am not
> familiar).

Well, I'm sure that the grammar might well have been the most natural
possible derivation from predicate calculus, but that's something else
entirely from whether it's natural to an average natural-language speaker
(a member of the general public).

>
> > an abstraction, and which take a concrete, as Mark Vines pointed out. If
> > you were going to look for a keyboard that was the analagous equivalent of
> > Lojban, I would say that it would be a keyboard with all of the keys in
> > alphabetical order - I understand the original typewriter keyboards
> > actually used this layout. Whereas, if you were looking for a linguistic
> > analogue to a Dvorak keyboard, then probably something like Interlingua
> > would be the go, which was designed so that all the most familiar words
> > for a speaker of a European language were presented in Interlingua in
> > their most universally recognisable forms.
>
> Meaning that Interlingua is intuitive to one who has previously learned
> one or many European languages?

Quite right; easy to pick up, just like Dvorak is for English-speakers.

> Presumably, though, it would be no more
> intuitive to a first-time speaker... or would it?

That gets back into Chomskyesque territory. Again, I don't know the answer
to that one.

>
> > This is to say that Lojban is logical but A PRIORI, whereas Dvorak is
> > logical but A POSTERIORI. Analagously, the original typewriter keyboards
> > were also logical and a priori, and Interlingua is logical and a
> > posteriori.
>
> I see your point:
>
>
> Level 1: The Dvorak and QWERTY keyboards both communicate the user's
> desires to the computer/typewriter by way of pressing on an array of keys.
> Lojban and other languages both communicate the speaker's desires by way
> of either written/typed symbols or vocal sounds.
>
> Level 2: The Dvorak and QWERTY keyboards both generate one character per
> keypress, in general, i.e. the output is formed from the keys you press in
> the order they are pressed, one character per keypress. Lojban differs,
> though, from English in the way phrases are formed. I can't speak for
> other languages really.
>
> Level 3: The Dvorak keyboard generates different symbols, in general, for
> each keypress to those the QWERTY keyboard would generate. Lojban uses a
> different vocabulary, in general, to English.
>
>
> So the keyboards differ at level two, whereas the languages differ at
> level 3. An analagous comparison to that between English and Lojban, then,
> would be the one-handed keyboards which involve pressing several keys at
> once to generate a letter or word? I don't agree that an alphabetical
> keyboard is any better an analogy than a Dvorak keyboard, though.

I think so, because as I've already said, the alphabetical keyboard is a
priori like Lojban, whereas the Dvorak keyboard is a posteriori like
Interlingua. Nothing you have just said contradicts this, or addresses
this point.

Geoff