Talk:Loglan

vedma

I just thought that I should note that, as someone who wasn't previously familiar with loglan, I found the arbitrary introduction of the completely undefined word "vedma" to be VERY confusing.

—The preceding unsigned comment was added by 24.110.133.93 (talk) 05:27, 6 May 2007 (UTC).

22 meanings?

Or one can directly and precisely say any of the 22 different meanings of the English phrase "a pretty little girls school."

That has no meanings I can lay my hands on, though with an apostrophe added somewhere, I can pick out 12:

1. a (pretty ((little girl's) school))
2. a (pretty ((little girls') school))
3. a (pretty (little (girl's school)))
4. a (pretty (little (girls' school)))
5. a ((pretty little) (girl's school))
6. a ((pretty little) (girls' school))
7. a ((pretty (little girl's)) school)
8. a ((pretty (little girls')) school)
9. a (((pretty little) girl's) school)
10. a (((pretty little) girls') school)
11. (a ((pretty little) girl's)) school
12. (a (pretty (little girl's))) school

-- Smjg 14:44, 5 Aug 2004 (UTC)

1. (a (pretty (little (girls school))))
2. (a (pretty ((little girls) school)))
3. (a (pretty (little girls)) school)))
4. (a ((pretty little) girls) school)))
5. (a ((pretty little) (girls school)))
6. ((a (pretty (little girls))) school)
7. ((a ((pretty little) girls)) school)
8. (((a (pretty little)) girls) school)
9. ((((a pretty) little) girls) school)
10. (((a pretty) (little girls)) school)
11. ((a (pretty little)) (girls school))
12. (((a pretty) little) (girls school))
13. ((a pretty) (little (girls school)))
14. ((a pretty) ((little girls) school))

Without an apostrophe, and keeping order in mind, I found 14. Maybe there are nonordered meanings:

1. (a pretty little girls school)
2. (a (pretty little girls school))
3. ((a pretty little girls) school)
4. (a pretty (little girls school))
5. (a (pretty little girls) school)
6. ((a pretty little) girls school)
7. (a pretty little (girls school))
8. (a pretty (little girls) school)
9. (a (pretty little) girls school)
10. ((a pretty) little girls school)
11. (a (pretty little) (girls school))
12. ((a pretty) little (girls school))
13. ((a pretty) (little girls) school)

Though they make 27. lysdexia 16:33, 5 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Assuming by "without an apostrophe" you mean "ignoring the apostrophe", then only the first seven of your 'meanings' are meanings in any sense to me. What does a pretty mean? And as for a (pretty little), I guess it could be a variation of a little (of something, or in the sense of "slightly"), but as for whether it means anything in this context, maybe number 8 could make sense (as in school somewhat slightly belonging to girls), but that's kind of pushing it. -- Smjg 11:36, 10 Jan 2005 (UTC)

lojbab: Actually, later exhaustive analysis showed that there are 40 different meanings. A complete list with Lojban translations can be found at

http://www.lojban.org/publications/reference_grammar/chapter5.html in section 16 (at the end of the chapter)

You're talking at cross purposes with the rest of us. That list enumerates the possible ways in which the four predicates (pretty, little, girl and school) can modify each other. This is somewhat different from counting the ways in which the English phrase a pretty little girls' school or a pretty little girl's school can be parsed. In particular, that list completely disregards the English meaning of pretty as an adverb, and blurs the distinction between girl's and girls'. -- Smjg 11:36, 10 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Since this claim has not been proved for over 2 years, I removed the reference to the number 22 from the article, leaving only '... one can directly and precisely say any of the different meanings of the English phrase "a pretty little girls' school."' -Pgan002 02:55, 29 January 2007 (UTC)

General comments

This article is not very encyclopedic. It even contains a sentence with "you see", which is condescending as well. I can't fix up this since I have little familiarity with the topic, but statements about what is possible and not possible in loglan are patently ridiculous. You can make nonsensical statements in all languages - how is it different from Noam Chomsky's green colorless things? Also time travel tenses? Give me a break!

---

lojbab (non-wiki user asked to comment on this page) opines: As leader of the Lojban redesign, I think that the article is fairly good up to the "For example" sentence that mentions the 'time-travel' tenses (which I agree is not the sort of thing worth making especial note of). The remainder of the article is, in my opinion, worded poorly and is sometimes inaccurate, in some cases seeming to be contentious. I would simply drop it. The only other feature of the language that it is important to mention, is that Loglan/Lojban has a wide range of words used for expressing emotions and attitudes about what one is saying, although unlike natural languages, these are kept clearly distinct from the actual statements being made. This is important to mention because the initial impression people have about a language based on logic is that it would be computerlike, and devoid of human emotion.

While the generic Lojban website address is useful, the site is very large. People looking for more specifics about the language and examples might be directed to the published introductory book (available for free download at http://www.lojban.org/publications/level0.html, so this is not really intended as an commercial advertisement) or the beginners' lesson book (as yet unpublished) in HTML at http://ptolemy.tlg.uci.edu/~opoudjis/lojbanbrochure/lessons/book1.html

If someone does want to mention more about the features of the language, material from the introductory book is suggested and is usable under Open Publication License.

The only other wording change I suggest is minor: "although he released many papers about its design he never "released" it freely to the general public" is disputable based on the meaning of "released" and "freely". I suggest the more straightforward: "although he released many papers about its design, he continued to claim intellectual property restrictions on its use".

Something to be considered (I'm not sure whether this is priority for encyclopedias, but tends to be of interest to the audience that would seek information about Loglan) would be to mention that Loglan has seen mention in a couple of science fiction works, one being the well-known Robert Heinlein book "The Moon is a Harsh Mistress"; another is Robert Rimmer's utopian "Love Me Tomorrow". Language inventor James Cooke Brown also wrote a utopian science fiction novel "The Troika Effect" that uses Loglan phrases but calls the language a different name.

---

Kedamono I wonder if it wouldn't be out of line to mention that Loglan is used as the official interspecies language in the roleplaying game, FTL:2448. Kedamono 07:41, 13 January 2007 (UTC)

Example

Anyone, an example? Like, how can I say hello? -- Taku 22:48, Dec 5, 2004 (UTC)

In TLI Loglan "Loi"; In Lojban "coi"

blanking?

"age after the split.

For example, you can lite"

Is there something missing form between those pargraps? - Omegatron June 30, 2005 02:39 (UTC)

what does this sentence mean?

"price would be botso with a little word to make price the first variable"

Cleanup

Removed the following claims, which I believe to be unsubstantiated, from the article:

• that powerful expressibility for logic and calculation was a design goal for the language
• that including expressive features from natural languages was a design goal (indeed, I believe the original intent was to make it as constrained as possible)
• that Brown used "maximally stable phonemes". This seems to be a diachronic claim (that phonemes would not drift over time), and it is AFAIK not known by Brown or anyone else which phonemes this would be. I think this rather refers to the effort to reduce phonemic ambiguity (which may or may not have been successful)
• that "the formal grammar was disambiguated mechanically (at first)". Sentences in Loglan may have been disambiguated using a formal grammar, but this was only done many years later.
• that Loglan's lack of a verb/noun distinction is the oddest and most difficult thing for a speaker of Indo-European language
• that Loglan has no objects, direct objects, indirect objects, possessive forms, or tenses.
• that all arguments in Loglan are variables (it can have description NPs as well)
• "After long use, the world has a sort of timeless, objectless, actorless flavor. Time words and location words fall away except when needed to make a point, usually with emotional emphasis. It is rather easy to avoid blame for responsibilities in Loglan. Scheduling is ambiguous because the tenses are optional."
• that one cannot mumble Loglan
• that relaxed pronunciation is virtually nonexistent

Other editors are of course welcome to reinsert those claims that they can verify.

Other edits:

• I have also removed some occurrences of "powerful", because I find it non-NPOV, and am not certain which NPOV term I could replace it with.
• "Every language feature has standard, regular forms for acting in compounds." This probably tries to explain affixes, which should perhaps be described, but as it stands, it's just confusing.
• Section on time-travel tenses in Loglan removed because I'm not sure if Loglan has ever had such tenses. Also, the example seems irrelevant.
• Removed "even when run together, the language is still parsable." -- applies to any language, hence irrelevant. [Oh, yeah? What about English "ice cream"/"I scream"? -- Jack Waugh 13:43, 8 November 2007 (UTC)]
• Moved sections around in an attempt to make it flow better (but could probably still be improved)
• Extended intro section to mention Loglan as the forerunner of many languages.

Please be aware that I am a Lojbanist, so I may inadvertently have inserted anti-Loglan bias.arj 01:24, 4 August 2005 (UTC)

Loglan - Logging Language

I have found that there is another programming language called Loglan - part of Paradigm Geophysical's Geolog software.

http://www.paradigmgeo.com/objects/pdf/geolog_xv.pdf

RobBrisbane 03:54, 20 July 2006 (UTC)

Expansion request - examples

It would be very helpful to see some actual examples of Loglan sentences, with transliteration into English morphemes. -- Beland 16:38, 24 August 2006 (UTC)

Can anyone graph a Loglan sentence for us? -- Beland 16:56, 24 August 2006 (UTC)

Person is a short word

The Grammar section says "In Loglan, it is ... possible to say that John, a person, is literally a short word." So you can say that a particular person is a word. Why is this significant? You just said it in English, and I would guess that any natural language allows you to put together such a sentence, even though it is nonsensical. -Pgan002 03:31, 29 January 2007 (UTC)

It probably has a different meaning that is hard to explain in English. All this talk of disambiguation and the author uses such ambiguous sentences. Ummonk 05:33, 7 March 2007 (UTC)

I believe it means that you can explicitly state that a person is an actual short word in the Loglan language. In English, there is no way to say "John is a short word" and have people immediately understand that you are actually saying "John (the person) is a short word", whereas this is easily accomplished in Loglan. Dilcoe 20 June 2007

This statement does need to be better written and explained. Kjaer (talk) 07:39, 3 November 2008 (UTC)

Surely the fact that the "joke" doesn't make any sense (or at least isn't funny) in English just goes to show that the thought processes in Loglan are fundamentally different to those in real languages, which is what it was designed to show? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 131.111.185.74 (talk) 23:30, 20 January 2012 (UTC)

Difficult to understand

I'm finding this article very hard to get to grips with, and I don't think it's just my usual density! Above all, the article desperately needs some examples: just seeing a couple of sentences, with explanations as necessary, would make things much easier to follow.

On a more minor note, is it really necessary to capitalise "The" in phrases like "The Loglan Institute"? After all, I'd write "I read it in the Times today", not "I read it in The Times today". Loganberry (Talk) 00:43, 9 May 2007 (UTC)

I think the article is very poorly written, even though I've studied predicate logic and should be able to understand the concepts. An important part of logic is defining terms clearly. What is a vedma? What is a "little word"? Is Loglan English-based or language-independent? Can we have examples? (Apparently not, since people asked for them 5 years ago with no response).CharlesTheBold (talk) 04:02, 21 June 2011 (UTC)

The words I remember may be out of date, but here's an example. ei tu clivu le birju means "Do you love that which we have been referring to in this conversation as though it were beer (irrespective of whether it is really beer)?". For pronunciation, note that the letter "c" stands for the sound of English "sh" (otherwise, generally, the letters have the sound values of Latin). It is not necessary to stop between the words as German speakers do; you may run the words together in speaking them (in this example). The term "little word" in the English jargon about Loglan refers to structure words as distinct from predicate words and distinct from names. In this example, ei, tu, and le are little words. Specifically, ei is a question marker, tu is the second person pronoun, and le is an article. Although the example is a question, you may speak it in a flat tone; Loglan does not share the use of tone to indicate questioning as in English. The words clivu (X loves Y) and birju (probably something like X is beer made from grain Y by brewer W using brewing method H) are predicate words. Note that the two predicate words in the example exhibit a common pattern of consonants and vowels, and that none of the little words shares that pattern. Grammatically all predicate words are treated the same although the short English translation of one is a noun (beer) and the other is a verb (to love). ei tu birju le clivu means "Are you beer brewed from the lover (what or whom we have been referring to as the lover, irrespective of whether she really loves anyone) as the grain from which you were brewed?". lo murki ferlu lo tricu means "Monkeys fall from trees." (or is there supposed to be a marker between murki and ferlu? Is it ge?). The origin of the predicate words in Loglan was not only English, but also Mandarin and several other languages. Mandarin figured most, on the grounds that it was the most spoken in the world, and English figured second, with the remaining languages (I think Spanish and Arabic were in there) each having even less influence than English. I hope someone with the current knowledge and references will expand the article with the sort of information I'm offering here but updated and cited. Jack Waugh (talk) 20:24, 13 July 2012 (UTC)

Linnaean vocabulary and borrowed names

The article mentions Linnaean vocabulary and borrowed names. How are those included in the vocabulary while preserving the statement "patterns of phonemes always parse into words uniquely"? In other words, what does Loglan do if a word contains a sequence of phonemes that already parse to a certain meaning? — Sebastian 17:42, 26 October 2015 (UTC)

A name always ends with a consonant, whereas all native Loglan words end in a vowel. Also, when spoken in a sentence, a non-terminal name must be followed by a short pause to ensure that the name is not interpreted as the first part of a Loglan word. CodeTalker (talk) 19:24, 14 April 2017 (UTC)

The current situation is that Linnaean vocabulary no longer has a special status. Steve Rice noted in Loglan 3 that the Linnaean construction has a general use as a way to handle foreign names and my current opinion (Im the "CEO" of the Loglan Institute) which I think is shared by the people I talk to about the language, is that this is the proper use of the lao construction. I was just thinking about this because we are working on the dictionary: it is full of special references to the Linnaean vocabulary, which I have no objection to preserving, but I think a key to dictionary terminology should mention that grammatically these should simply be construed as foreign names. Randall Holmes (talk) 16:57, 16 April 2020 (UTC)

Linguistic practices with purported psychological benefits

Contributors to this page may be interested in a proposal to create a new Category:Linguistic practices with purported psychological benefits, which would presumably include Loglan. Discussion is found at Talk:Psychology#Linguistic practices with purported psychological benefits. Sondra.kinsey (talk) 16:09, 17 June 2017 (UTC)

Mismatch in IPA

Under the Loglan alphabet table, the letter R is listed as being pronounced as a rolling /r/ while under the consonant table, it is the tapped /ɾ/. Anyone knows which one should be the correct one? I know nothing about Loglan, I only stumbled upon a mention of Loglan in a book for a school assignment.

The Loglan dictionary (Loglan 4 & 5) describes the pronunciation of "r" as "as in 'rot' or as 'er' in 'father'". The latter is probably confusing for speakers of non-rhotic dialects, but it's clear the intended pronunciation is as the normal English "r" sound. So I've changed the article to make both instances be the alveolar approximant "ɹ". However it's worth noting that as a general principle Loglan is very forgiving of regional "accents", so pronouncing this as any type of "r" sound would be acceptable, as long as it can't be confused with another sound such as /d/. CodeTalker (talk) 14:39, 16 April 2020 (UTC)

I hope I am not violating editing practices by inserting my reply here. I'm Randall Holmes, the current "CEO" (not my choice of title) of the Loglan Institute, so I do have some standing to comment. It is stated in the Loglan literature that the phonetic value of the letter r may be any of these values. Randall Holmes (talk)

Jim Brown gives a frightening array of strange alternative ways to pronounce Loglan, most of which I do not endorse, myself. I think that the responsibility of a Loglan speaker, where possible variations do exist, is to be understandable: the same variant sound should be used (or the same set of variant sounds chosen to depend on context) by the same speaker. The places where I think variation is reasonable are in the pronunciation of y (something more definite than schwa, such as the oo in English "look", or, exotically, the sound expressed by the Cyrillic letter that looks like bI, might be preferred), the pronunciation of h (the hard ch of Scottish loch is a useful variant, in particular because it makes syllable final position of this phoneme possible) and the pronunciation of r which is under discussion, simply because this letter suggests different sounds to speakers of various national languages or even dialects within the same language: I wouldn't attempt to use anything but the standard American sound myself. Randall Holmes (talk) 17:23, 16 April 2020 (UTC)

The use of "Loglan"

I do not think that any current participant in the activities of the Loglan Institute objects to referring to le sorme lengu (the sister language, Lojban) as Loglan. We refer to our own language as Loglan, of course, but I call it "TLI Loglan" when necessary for disambiguation, and I am the "CEO" (not my choice of title!) of the Loglan Institute. I believe and hope that ill will between the language communities is a thing of the past: a large proportion of the small population of Loglanists are also Lojbanists. Randall Holmes (talk) 17:12, 16 April 2020 (UTC)