Re: loglang syntax (was: brz, or Plan B revisited (LONG))

Hallo!

Jeffrey Jones wrote:

> On Mon, 26 Sep 2005 06:54:58 +0100, R A Brown <ray@...>
> wrote:
> >
> >R A Brown wrote:
>
> [...]
>
> >Maybe senility is setting in, but they look just a tad like English
> >relexes. How is this meant to test the Sapir-Worf hypothesis?
This of course raises the question: how does one test it at all?
Have children grow up with Lojban as L1, and see how they think?
Hardly practical.  Anyway, I think the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis is
so thoroughly misguided that we need no testing of it to know
that we can safely toss it.  Languages influence thought, true.
But so do many other, more important factors.  And then, languages
are themselves influenced by the thought patterns of those who
speak them at least as much as the other way.

> I think all the lojbanistanis have flown the coop.
I don't know that idiom.  What means _to fly the coop_?

But I cannot help but notice certain similarities between loglangers
and auxlangers.  The same dead-seriousness about their proposed
languages, and the same sectarianism.  I have read in

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lojban

that the main reason for creating Lojban (which essentially seems
to be mostly a relex of Loglan) was to evade copyright claims on
Loglan (which were ultimately defeated in court, but at that time,
Lojban had already been developed).  At least, the loglangs are not
as linguistically boring as the mainstram euroclone IALs.

> >I was assuming a rather more Prolog-like syntax would be used.
>
> Some of us don't know what Prolog syntax is like. But if loglan *did* use
> that type of syntax, it would have to have anticipated Prolog by a good
> many years, I believe.
For those who don't know: a Prolog predicate has the syntax

P(X1,X2,...)

i.e. "prefix" syntax.

Greetings,

Jörg.

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