CHAT: Conlang-friendly linguists

dirk elzinga wrote:


> So Manaster-Ramer and Sampson are conlang-friendly?
Both of them (at different stages) were quite impressed by Lojban/
Loglan:  GS wrote a highly favorable review of the 1969 edition
of _Loglan 1_, with favorable comments on conlanging generally:
to the effect that if it were possible to construct a complete
equivalent for a natlang, it would serve as an excellent probe
of acquisition questions, by allowing someone to acquire it;
and that even if it turns out not to be possible to construct
a complete language, a great deal would be learned in the
process.  (Can't ask for more than that.)

AMR has been heard to say that Lojban could
be quite useful in semantic disambiguation (his example was
that the Polish term usually translated 'orange' actually
covers a much narrower range of variation than the English and
Western European words).

> Alexis e-mailed me a month or so ago about some
> collaborative work on Uto-Aztecan he was interested in doing
Wow.  Did he pick you out of a catalog, or did you know him before?
AFAIK his reputation, backed up by the few exchanges I had
with him, is for being eminently fair and reasonable, even
if he is a connoisseur of odd theories (at the time, at least,
the only non-Nostraticist who would say publicly that N.
hadn't gotten a fair shake on bogus a priori grounds --
"we just can't reconstruct past 6 KYBP, no how, no way ...").

--
There is / one art             || John Cowan <jcowan@...>
no more / no less              || http://www.reutershealth.com
to do / all things             || http://www.ccil.org/~cowan
with art- / lessness           \\ -- Piet Hein

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