Re: what is a loglang?

Hallo!

On Thu, 6 May 2004 18:16:14 +0100,
Ray Brown <ray.brown@...> wrote:

> On Thursday, May 6, 2004, at 03:43 AM, And Rosta wrote:
>
> > Mark Line:
> >> Some things that popped up in a few recent posts made me squirm uneasily
> >> and wonder what it is exactly that we all think a loglang *is*.
> >
> > _Loglang_ is polysemous.
> > In one sense, it is an obsolete synonym for 'engelang'.
> > In another less redundant sense, it is strictly a 'logic(al) language',
> > & I interpret that as being a language whose grammatical rules specify
> > an explicit mapping from surface (phonological) forms to logical
> > forms (propositions), with 'logic' understood as propositional
> > and predicate logic or some analogue of it.
>
> In fact, I've always understood 'loglang' in the 2nd of And's definition.
So have I.

> But it's been apparent that some have used it in a wider, vaguer sense
> which IMO has not been helpful. Many over the centuries have claimed their
> creations are "logical"; I've been told this many a time, e.g. by
> Esperanto fundamentalists.
Or worse, such claims are sometimes made about *natlangs*, such as Latin
or Aymara.

>       But - and I mean this in a strictly objective
> sense - Esperanto is by no stretch of the imagination a loglang in sense
> (1) above.
Esperanto is certainly not a loglang.

>       Indeed, whether it could even be classified as an engelang is
> questionable for, altho its author certainly engineered it over many years
> to meet certain criteria, some of those criteria are IMO not _objectively_
> certifiable.
I don't think it is meaningful to distinguish engelangs (or whatever)
by the amount of time the author spent on his invention.  See below.

> Engelang IMO is a wider & vaguer term, but is useful in distinguishing one
> set of conlangs; altho, e.g. Tolkien worked on Quenya & Sindarin over many
> decades, we would not, I think, class them as engelangs but rather as
> artlangs.
They are certainly artlangs.  I wouldn't even classify a language like
Brithenig, which, in its design, is guided by a well-defined programme
(in this example, a Romance language that has undergone Welsh-like
changes), as an engelang, as the whole project is rather artistic in
nature.

Greetings,

Jörg.

Reply