Re: Language superiority, improvement, etc.

Matt Pearson wrote:

> I wonder if other people on this list have had that experience, of being
> carried along by some semi-conscious aesthetic impulse, arriving at a
> particular set of choices which even the conlanger himself does not fully
> comprehend.
In a sense that happened to me in writing the Lojban reference grammar.
I started with a "machine grammar", a pure specification of syntax,
and began to ask Lojbab questions:  "What does this form mean? What does
that form mean?"  Often, no answers were forthcoming!

As a result, I had to work out the meaning of many constructions from
first principles or from very general hints.  In turn, of course,
my work on compositional semantics (Lojban is nothing if not
compositional) influenced the machine grammar, eventually generating
some 70-odd changes, all very minor.

--
John Cowan      http://www.ccil.org/~cowan              cowan@ccil.org
        You tollerday donsk?  N.  You tolkatiff scowegian?  Nn.
        You spigotty anglease?  Nnn.  You phonio saxo?  Nnnn.
                Clear all so!  'Tis a Jute.... (Finnegans Wake 16.5)