Re: what is a loglang?
| From: | Ray Brown <ray.brown@...> |
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| Date: | Thursday, May 6, 2004, 17:15 |
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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.
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. But - and I mean this in a strictly objective
sense - Esperanto is by no stretch of the imagination a loglang in sense
(1) above. 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.
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.
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On Wednesday, May 5, 2004, at 11:06 PM, Henrik Theiling wrote:
> Hi!
>
> jcowan@REUTERSHEALTH.COM writes:
>> certain objectively certifiable criteria. Voksigid, e.g., is an engelang
>> but hardly a loglang.
>
> However entered it into LangMaker.com was of a different opinion:
>
>
http://www.langmaker.com/db/mdl_voksigid.htm
>
> Or maybe their 'logical language' is used differently.