Re: Hypersimple & Dreadfully Unnatural Grammars

At 9:04 pm -0500 24/3/99, John Cowan wrote:
>Raymond A. Brown scripsit:
>
>> Now the lojbanist have developed a "prefix notation" language which does
>> work, is used and I've been told - and I have no reason to doubt it - is
>> spoken from time to time.  So take heart and keep with it and see how it
>> goes  :)
>
>Lojban is not a prefix notation language (although it does have an
>RPN sublanguage for numeric matters only).  Indeed, most Lojban
>sentences are SVO, although SOV works just as well.
Sorry - I'd better go back a take another look.  I thought Loglan had been
based  on clausal form logic a bit like Prolog, which is certainly prefix,
e.g.
killed( conspirators, 'Caesar').
loves(  'Antony', 'Cleopatra').
etc.

I blithely assumed lojban was much the same.

Mea culpa  :=(

Anyway, I think a language could be derived from such a system and that
Gary is doing a worthwhile experiment with the RPN approach.

Ray.