Mime-Version: 1.0 Date: Wed, 19 Nov 1997 00:13:02 -0800 To: Kennexions Distribution List:; From: Ronald Hale-Evans Subject: First KENNEX message Derek, Marty, and Steve-- This is the first message to the core of the group working on the Kennexions game. First, let me say that I'm very happy and greateful you all have decided to help out. Kennexions has been growing and growing in my head and notebooks, and it is getting a little too large at this point for me to manage by myself. A recent I Ching consultation pointed toward involving others in the development effort, and you are the first people I thought of. (I have also invited Gail Sullivan, but she is busy with a thesis. She may join us in 1998.) At the moment, this list is a "distribution list." That means when you reply to messages, unless you intend your reply to be *private*, you should use the "group reply" feature of your mailer. I use Eudora 3 on the Mac and have "group reply" set as the default. Eventually this list will probably become a proper Majordomo mailing list, with archives, a central address, and so on. I am investigating this possibility now. Let's call the list in whatever incarnation "Kennex" to distinguish it from the game and book "Kennexions". Marty and I have spoken extensively F2F, as I live with her. Derek and Steve sent me separate private responses to my emails requesting them to join the development effort. I would like to reply to these posts individually, and I think the others on Kennex may like to see the posts. D and S, may I post the correspondence to our list to get things rolling? Apart from welcoming you and requesting forwarding permission for our private email so far, I have little to say tonight. I hope to make a public reply to the posts I have mentioned, and to fill you all in on some of the more arcane aspects of Kennexions that I have not yet mentioned on the canonical GBG lists, including what will be one of the most important aspects for us -- the Nomiclike "transfinite" pattern language in which the rules of Kennexions will be written. Now I'm off to sip some chamomile tea and go to bed. Derek and Steve and I know one another, but nobody knows Marty too well yet, and M doesn't know D and S. Why don't you all take a moment to introduce yourselves? Ron Ron Hale-Evans...The Not Ready For Apocalypse Players...rwhe@apocalypse.org I CHING MAILING LIST = http://www.apocalypse.org/~rwhe/hex8.html "KENNEXIONS" GLASS BEAD GAME = http://www.apocalypse.org/~rwhe/gbg.html RON'S INFO-CLOSET = http://www.apocalypse.org/~rwhe/ Mime-Version: 1.0 Date: Wed, 19 Nov 1997 00:22:43 -0800 To: Kennexions Distribution List:; From: Ronald Hale-Evans Subject: KENNEX: admin Please let me know if the addresses of the other list members showed up in your headers. They didn't on mine, and it might make it hard to do group replies. Here is the list of "subscribers" as I have it: Derek Robinson marty@apocalypse.org rwhe@apocalypse.org scranmer@cfauvcs12.harvard.edu (Steven R. Cranmer) If you can't do group reply, you might want to create your own mail alias with theses eddresses, and CC all group mail to that alias. G'night. Ron Ron Hale-Evans...The Not Ready For Apocalypse Players...rwhe@apocalypse.org I CHING MAILING LIST = http://www.apocalypse.org/~rwhe/hex8.html "KENNEXIONS" GLASS BEAD GAME = http://www.apocalypse.org/~rwhe/gbg.html RON'S INFO-CLOSET = http://www.apocalypse.org/~rwhe/ Date: Wed, 19 Nov 1997 09:33:35 -0500 (EST) X-Sender: drdee@mail.interlog.com Mime-Version: 1.0 To: Ronald Hale-Evans From: Derek Robinson Subject: Re: KENNEX: admin Cc: marty@apocalypse.org, scranmer@cfauvcs12.harvard.edu Ron et al. -- This is just a << test >> so please forgive the lack of content ... I'm not sure my PC version of Eudora can do the group reply or aliasing trick; about the only thing I see here is which will send the reply to all recipients of the original message -- "Kennexions Distribution List" seems to be Ron's alias for our addresses, but my system doesn't know this. That said, I have no problem for now just copying Marty & Steve's handles into the Cc: list, as above. But I'd be grateful for any other suggestions / hints ... Latte -- D. Date: Thu, 20 Nov 1997 13:49:17 -0500 From: scranmer@cfauvcs12.harvard.edu (Steven R. Cranmer) To: rwhe@apocalypse.org Subject: KENNEX: intro, admin Cc: marty@apocalypse.org, drdee@interlog.com, scranmer@cfa.harvard.edu X-Sun-Charset: US-ASCII Ron, Marty, and Derek, I apologize for not getting back to you earlier, but work intervened. For now, I think that just CCing everyone on the list is a good solution to our varied email problems; it might grow less convenient if the number of people gets much larger. Mainly for Marty's sake, let me introduce myself. I'm an astronomer at the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory in Cambridge, Mass. In my "spare time" (which has gotten much less frequent since I left the limbo of being a grad student), I've been interested in Glass Bead Games and their relationship to esoteric traditions for several years. I am also interested in the Western/Hermetic traditions for their own sake, and most especially the history and symbolism of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn. It's sometimes a precarious path to trod, between the physical sciences and the "occult." There are many aspects to the latter that I just cannot swallow -- such as natal astrology and the literal existence of various hierarchies of spirits -- but I am well aware that my scientific colleagues, when thinking or talking about these topics, tend to lump a lot of good and valid ideas in with the superstitious. Anyway, I am working on a Glass Bead Game variant that is probably in a similar "stage of evolution" as Kennexions -- a lot of notes, some sketchy playtesting, but nothing "rigorous..." Based on what I said above about astrology, it might surprise you to know that my GBG system uses astrological symbolism. But that's another kettle of fish, for another day. Ron, please feel free to quote my email of a few days ago on the list, and by all means let's begin talking about... > the Nomiclike "transfinite" pattern language in which the > rules of Kennexions will be written. There are three terms there that are fascinating in their juxtaposition: (1) Nomic: a game whose primary "moves" are changes to the rules of the game. On some archetypal level, Nomic scares me. :) (2) Transfinite: a mathematical term for "countably infinite" numbers. That is, if you can produce a simple "finite" algorithm for counting out a never-ending string of numbers, the one you will eventually reach is "transfinite." This is opposed to "uncountably" infinite numbers, which also scare me. (3) "Pattern Language" was something written about by Christopher Alexander, and was (I think) a systematic way of characterizing aesthetics in architecture. (That doesn't really scare me.) Let the discussions begin! Steve scranmer@cfa.harvard.edu http://cfa-www.harvard.edu/~scranmer/ X-Sender: marty@apocalypse.org Date: Thu, 20 Nov 1997 12:10:10 -0800 To: rwhe@asylum.apocalypse.org, "drdee@interlog.com"@asylum.apocalypse.org, "scranmer@cfa.harvard.edu"@asylum.apocalypse.org From: "M. Hale-Evans" Subject: Intro and so on Mime-Version: 1.0 Hi all -- >>I apologize for not getting back to you earlier, but work intervened. >>For now, I think that just CCing everyone on the list is a good solution >>to our varied email problems; it might grow less convenient if the >>number of people gets much larger. I concur. Nice to meet y'all! I'm Marty (duh!). I currently work as a technical editor for Microsoft, although I'm an artist and jewelry maker sometimes. I am a Neo-pagan, although not strictly a Wiccan -- I sometimes think of myself as "wiccish". My spiritual work is closely tied to my work in feminism and size acceptance, as well as to my art. I suspect I may be a bit more oriented toward the intuitive than most of the GBGers I've met. I am very eclectic in my studies, so I really don't know how else to begin describing myself! Feel free to ask questions, and maybe Ron will help describe me too. :-> I have been closely involved in Kennexions since the beginning (for obvious reasons). I haven't begun any formal work on a GBG of my own, although I've toyed with the idea a bit. My speculations tend to be linked (more than anything else) to Kabbalah and tarot, since I've been reading tarot for about 15 years now. From this perspective, I've become quite involved in the ideas of archetype and pattern across time and space, which, I guess, makes me a sitting-duck victim of GBG waiting to be hit. Ron is also intriguing me by pointing out that a lot of my jewelry designs are literally bead games of a sort -- my main work lately has been on a line of ritual jewelry tied to the four elements. Each design -- earth, air, fire, water -- is composed of beads and charms that have been chosen because their color, metal, material, design (animals and so on) or some other attribute resonates magickally with that element, or the associated season, or the associated Goddess archetype. So they are actually air/Spring/Maiden, water/Autumn/Mother, fire/Summer/Amazon, and earth/Winter/Crone designs. Much about tables of correspondence and so on. Ron and I have also thought that, when Kennexions is more formed, jewelry that conveys literal messages could be designed, using elements that correspond to factors in the game. >>> the Nomiclike "transfinite" pattern language in which the >>> rules of Kennexions will be written. >> >>There are three terms there that are fascinating in their juxtaposition: >> >>(1) Nomic: a game whose primary "moves" are changes to the rules of >> the game. On some archetypal level, Nomic scares me. :) Nomic scared me until I played it. Then the particular players (Ron and his friends) scared me. ;-> After that, though, I really liked it. Frankly, I'm still getting up to speed on a lot of the references that are being thrown around, so I'm afraid I don't have much synthesis to contribute yet. Let me get my feet wet, and then there'll be more. :-> Marty O ( @ ) O ( @ ) O ( @ ) O ( @ ) O ( @ ) O ( @ ) O ( @ ) O ( @ ) O ( @ Marty Hale-Evans marty@apocalypse.org Seattle, WA USA Dig me further at: http://www.apocalypse.org/~marty Book of the month: _Possessing the Secret of Joy_, by Alice Walker Mime-Version: 1.0 Date: Thu, 20 Nov 1997 14:14:23 -0800 To: Kennexions Distribution List:; From: Ronald Hale-Evans Subject: First attempt at glyphic Kennexions game All-- I just put up my first attempt at drawing a "glyphic" Kennexions game instance. The game is in BELL, or Bliss-Encoded Logical Language, a way of encoding Lojban/Loglan using Blissymbolics (also called Semantography) and the Ogham alphabet. What I have up now is a BELL representation of the PATER/FILIUS/SPIRITUS SANCTUS EST/NON EST Trinity diagram of medieval scholasticism. As we iron out the rules for Kennexions, I hope to polish this game into more grammatical BELL and to expand it by using kennings for each of the three Persons of the Trinity based on the Maiden/Mother/Crone and Brahma/Vishnu/Shiva trinities, and maybe even to make it self-referential by bringing in the Oulipo constraint/potential/clinamen triad I've posted about on Magister-L. It's probably quite cryptic at the moment, but I'll explain it in depth tonight, and probably post a pointer on ML and GBG too. Meanwhile, you can see the glyphic diagram at http://www.apocalypse.org/~rwhe/belltrinity.html Question: aside from my rough drawing and crude scanning (I'm not very good with the scanner yet), is it aesthetically pleasing? That is, can you imagine someone "making an art of" rendering such a diagram "calligraphically", as Hesse says the Castalians did, or is it unavoidably ugly? Ron Ron Hale-Evans...The Not Ready For Apocalypse Players...rwhe@apocalypse.org I CHING MAILING LIST = http://www.apocalypse.org/~rwhe/hex8.html "KENNEXIONS" GLASS BEAD GAME = http://www.apocalypse.org/~rwhe/gbg.html RON'S INFO-CLOSET = http://www.apocalypse.org/~rwhe/ X-Sender: marty@apocalypse.org Date: Thu, 20 Nov 1997 14:31:51 -0800 To: rwhe@asylum.apocalypse.org, "drdee@interlog.com"@asylum.apocalypse.org, "scranmer@cfa.harvard.edu"@asylum.apocalypse.org From: "M. Hale-Evans" Subject: First attempt at glyphic Kennexions game Mime-Version: 1.0 (Rearranging some pieces of the note for discussion purposes.) >Question: aside from my rough drawing and crude scanning (I'm not very good >with the scanner yet), is it aesthetically pleasing? That is, can you >imagine someone "making an art of" rendering such a diagram >"calligraphically", as Hesse says the Castalians did, or is it unavoidably >ugly? I wouldn't say it's unavoidably ugly, but your particular drawing strikes me as a) trying to hard to "pretty it up", and b) overly obfuscatory, by which I mean the swirliness of it tends to veil the structure rather than bringing it out. If I, as an artist, were to take on this subject, I wouldn't want to make a piece of art that was meant to distract the mind/eye away from the basic structure. I wonder if you're not projecting your misgivings about the aesthetics of it, trying to decorate rather than express it? >As we iron out the rules for Kennexions, I hope to polish >this game into more grammatical BELL and to expand it by using kennings for >each of the three Persons of the Trinity based on the Maiden/Mother/Crone >and Brahma/Vishnu/Shiva trinities, and maybe even to make it >self-referential by bringing in the Oulipo constraint/potential/clinamen >triad I've posted about on Magister-L. This is probably a good place to inject my concern about cultural relativism and cultural appropriation, for the non-Ron members of the list. :-> I have a concern that one of the greater temptations of playing GBGs is oversimplification of ideas and constructs in the interest of fitting them into one's structure (who owned that mythical bed, Procrustes?). This is especially tempting, I think, in the case of ideas/structures developed from foreign cultures, that one may not truly understand, but that one may *think* one understands if one reads about it -- a distinct case of a little knowledge being a dangerous thing. In the cases above, I am concerned that Ron is overemphasizing various trinities he can find, simply because he's interested in trinities, without regard for the more complicated underlying mythical structure. Certainly, for example, the Maiden/Mother/Crone trinity is an oversimplification, especially when one considers that it was very likely developed to directly mimic the Christian trinity, as a bridge to lure pagans over to Christianity rather than a true expression of any particular mythological matrix. I suspect our understanding of the Hindu trinity above is also affected by our sources having been largely filtered through a Christian lens at some point. Certainly everything is a part of the whole, so everything is relevant, but I wonder how much authenticity or true resonance one can get by corresponding constructs that were patterned on each other -- whether this is taking the easy way out rather than the harder road of seeking deeper, more complex patterns that would only be available through deeper study. Marty O ( @ ) O ( @ ) O ( @ ) O ( @ ) O ( @ ) O ( @ ) O ( @ ) O ( @ ) O ( @ Marty Hale-Evans marty@apocalypse.org Seattle, WA USA Dig me further at: http://www.apocalypse.org/~marty Book of the month: _Possessing the Secret of Joy_, by Alice Walker Mime-Version: 1.0 Date: Thu, 20 Nov 1997 15:16:06 -0800 To: "M. Hale-Evans" , rwhe@asylum.apocalypse.org, "drdee@interlog.com"@asylum.apocalypse.org, "scranmer@cfa.harvard.edu"@asylum.apocalypse.org From: Ronald Hale-Evans Subject: Re: First attempt at glyphic Kennexions game At 2:31 PM -0800 11/20/97, M. Hale-Evans wrote: >(Rearranging some pieces of the note for discussion purposes.) > >>Question: aside from my rough drawing and crude scanning (I'm not very good >>with the scanner yet), is it aesthetically pleasing? That is, can you >>imagine someone "making an art of" rendering such a diagram >>"calligraphically", as Hesse says the Castalians did, or is it unavoidably >>ugly? > >I wouldn't say it's unavoidably ugly, but your particular drawing strikes >me as a) trying to hard to "pretty it up", and b) overly obfuscatory, by >which I mean the swirliness of it tends to veil the structure rather than >bringing it out. If I, as an artist, were to take on this subject, I >wouldn't want to make a piece of art that was meant to distract the >mind/eye away from the basic structure. I wonder if you're not projecting >your misgivings about the aesthetics of it, trying to decorate rather than >express it? Thanks, Marty. I worried about this too. Actually, this was a simple as I could make it. I guess I could have made the lines straighter, but the lines had to begin and end at particular positions on the "cartouche" rectangles (e.g. left side, upper left corner, right side) because the where the lines touch the cartouches has semantic value. This stems from the fact that Lojban words have a "place structure" -- they have "parameters" like functions in math or computer languages. Here's what I mean: "tavla" in Lojban means "talk". But where you position words relative to "tavla" has meaning. The more or less official definition of "tavla" is "x1 talks to x2 about x3 in language x4." In Lojban this looks something like "x1 tavla x2 x3 x4". So if I say "mi tavla do ti lojban", it means "I talk to you about this in Lojban," where mi=I, tavla=talk, do=you, ti=this, and lojban=Lojban (Logical Language). If I said "mi tavla ti do lojban", it means "I talk to this [person] about you in Lojban." See? So I represent place structure in BELL by attaching the sumti (arguments) at positions on the cartouches. Roughly: x2-------x3 x1--| | x4-------x5 The diagram above shows where the arguments attach to the "predicate" or the sentence. Ron Ron Hale-Evans...The Not Ready For Apocalypse Players...rwhe@apocalypse.org I CHING MAILING LIST = http://www.apocalypse.org/~rwhe/hex8.html "KENNEXIONS" GLASS BEAD GAME = http://www.apocalypse.org/~rwhe/gbg.html RON'S INFO-CLOSET = http://www.apocalypse.org/~rwhe/ Date: Thu, 20 Nov 1997 20:09:46 -0500 (EST) X-Sender: drdee@mail.interlog.com Mime-Version: 1.0 To: Ronald Hale-Evans From: Derek Robinson Subject: Re: First attempt at glyphic Kennexions game Cc: "M. Hale-Evans" , scranmer@cfa.harvard.edu Hi. Okay, now we've got something to chew on. First impression -- not ugly, maybe a bit swirly (but I like swirly, e.g. Celtic / Scythian / Oceanic knotwork). If I had an objection it would be that the boxes [ = ] attached to the 3 arcs seem redundant, at least as far as this figure goes. "Whatever is universal can be ignored" -- I think George Spencer Brown said this (his "Laws of Form" another stab at a bead game perhaps, though finally incomprehensible, at least to me). Here all 3 links are doing the same thing, so I would question whether the directed arcs really require annotation beyond the tail / head (source / sink) distinction. Also, not knowing Blissymbolics or Lojban (and why do I always want to read that as 'logjam'? ;-), the [ = ] says "equals", which goes against the one-way-ness of the relations depicted. On the other hand, the ogham strokes affixed to the arcs seems a very natural way to 'qualify' or 'quantify' the meaning of the relations. I liked the echo between the top stick-figure and the lower left 'double caret' figure. Not knowing the intended ('literal') sense of the figure, I read it as "as above, so below" or "little, big" -- a sense of a sheltering mountain above a small tent, or a recursively nested series of selves-in-selves (or 'thinking about myself thinking about myself thinking ...') -- but in any case the upper 'stick-figure' glyph then gets a dual reading, as 'human' but also as 'above & below connected by a path', which I find a pleasing visual pun. Of course this is an idiosyncratic interpretation, and it overlooks the third glyph entirely. Also, I don't have a legend or code-book to tell me what the intended / correct meanings of the figures are. Ron -- what ARE the meanings of the glyphs, stroke by stroke? Would it be appropriate to raise the question of personal interpretation, and ambiguity, vis a vis the ambition of Lojban to provide a presumably unambiguous 'logical language'? (Marty, hi -- by way of introduction, I'm into philosophy, AI, semiotics -- I like math and some logic, I have a soft spot for hermeticism, I'm a fond friend of wicked old Uncle Al, I see taoism and pre-socratic philosophy and nonlinear dynamics as being all very much about the same thing. I'm not designing a bead game, I prefer the meta-game of thinking about games. A quote: -- "I'd rather write programs to help me write programs than write programs." (attributed to "the Unknown Metaprogrammer"). It'll doubtless all become apparent before very long.) That's probably enough for now. D. X-Sender: rwhe@apocalypse.org (Unverified) Mime-Version: 1.0 Date: Thu, 20 Nov 1997 20:48:28 -0800 To: Kennexions Distribution List:; From: Ronald Hale-Evans Subject: Admin: Welcome Karl Erixon to KENNEX All-- Please include Karl Erixon (setebos@wolfenet.com) on all future Kennex messages. Karl is a good friend and fellow member of the Bamboo Garden here in the Seattle area. He has a few ideas for a gameform of his own involving Synergetics. He says he may not be able to participate much unless he's COMPELLED TO -- so let's write some COMPELLING posts! Ron Ron Hale-Evans...The Not Ready For Apocalypse Players...rwhe@apocalypse.org I CHING MAILING LIST = http://www.apocalypse.org/~rwhe/hex8.html "KENNEXIONS" GLASS BEAD GAME = http://www.apocalypse.org/~rwhe/gbg.html RON'S INFO-CLOSET = http://www.apocalypse.org/~rwhe/ X-Sender: rwhe@apocalypse.org (Unverified) Mime-Version: 1.0 Date: Thu, 20 Nov 1997 21:24:17 -0800 To: Derek Robinson , Ronald Hale-Evans From: Ronald Hale-Evans Subject: Re: First attempt at glyphic Kennexions game Cc: "M. Hale-Evans" , scranmer@cfa.harvard.edu, Karl Erickson (NOTE TO KARL: The diagram we are discussing is at http://www.apocalypse.org/~rwhe/belltrinity.html I will send you earlier posts to Kennex under separate cover.) At 8:09 PM -0500 11/20/97, Derek Robinson wrote: >Okay, now we've got something to chew on. First impression -- not ugly, >maybe a bit swirly (but I like swirly, e.g. Celtic / Scythian / Oceanic >knotwork). Thanks. I do too. Really the lines were mostly functional. If I could have made it plainer, I would, and further drafts would probably be less complex looking. As Marty said, all those swirls tend to obfuscate. >If I had an objection it would be that the boxes [ = ] attached >to the 3 arcs seem redundant, at least as far as this figure goes. "Whatever >is universal can be ignored" I would agree, except that the [ = ]s represent mekso cmavo (mathematical-expression particles) that could just as well be [ > ] or [ < ]. Actually, "du" (which is the cmavo for "=") is a weird kind of cmavo (pronounced SHMAH-voe, BTW). It functions like a brivla, or "content word" (noun, verb, adjective, adverb -- all one part of speech in Lojban) -- that is, it has a place structure like "tavla," "talk" which I gave as an example earlier. Otherwise I would have represented it with Ogham. Generally brivla (content words) will be represented by Blissymbols inside rectangular cartouches and cmavo (particles) will be represented by Ogham on the connective lines. You can see the cmavo "na" as Ogham on some of the lines in the graphic -- five "fingers" pointing up (N) and a single dot (A): NA. "Na" is a Lojban negation cmavo, so [Ogham squiggles, =] represents "na du", or "does not equal." > -- I think George Spencer Brown said this (his >"Laws of Form" another stab at a bead game perhaps, though finally >incomprehensible, at least to me). I finally managed to get through it. Paradoxically, the hard part is the "simple" stuff at the beginning. It's quite brilliant, really -- the mathematical equivalent of "From the Tao came the one, from the one came the two, from the two came the three, and from the three came the Ten Thousand Things." > Here all 3 links are doing the same >thing, so I would question whether the directed arcs really require >annotation beyond the tail / head (source / sink) distinction. Also, not >knowing Blissymbolics or Lojban (and why do I always want to read that as >'logjam'? ;-), the [ = ] says "equals", which goes against the one-way-ness >of the relations depicted. Well, the arrows don't really show directional _relations_; they're meant to show syntax, i.e. the way the "sentence" is to be read. You follow the arrows. So "x1 du x2" means "x1 = x2", and while it is _mathematically_ true that this implies "x2 = x1", since equality is commutative or whatever, it is not a fact of Lojban _grammar_, which is what the arrows are showing. Is this a flaw? Sigh. It's true that I couldn't quite capture the elegance of the diagram in Latin, which looks like this, and has, one might say, NO grammatical direction: PATER -- NON EST -- FILIUS \ \_ _/ / \ EST EST / NON \ / NON EST DEUS EST \ | / \ EST / \ | / \ | / SPIRITUS SANCTUS See also ("The Trinitarian Game") at Charles's website, which was the inspiration for this little sally. >On the other hand, the ogham strokes affixed to the arcs seems a very >natural way to 'qualify' or 'quantify' the meaning of the relations. Thank you. I'm pretty proud of the idea. I was despairing over having to come up with hundreds of abstract hatch marks for the lines to represent all the different cmavo, and wondering if I could get the markings to bear any semantic weight, when I realised I had a ready-made system in Ogham. It completely fits in with the Kennexions philosophy of OOBOTS -- Out Of the Box, Off The Shelf. We are playing with "the total contents of culture", as Hesse said, so why reinvent the wheel? Grab objectivated elements from culture and adapt them to Kennexions. >I liked the echo between the top stick-figure and the lower left 'double >caret' figure. Not knowing the intended ('literal') sense of the figure, I >read it as "as above, so below" or "little, big" -- a sense of a sheltering >mountain above a small tent, or a recursively nested series of >selves-in-selves (or 'thinking about myself thinking about myself thinking >...') -- but in any case the upper 'stick-figure' glyph then gets a dual >reading, as 'human' but also as 'above & below connected by a path', which I >find a pleasing visual pun. Of course this is an idiosyncratic >interpretation, and it overlooks the third glyph entirely. Also, I don't >have a legend or code-book to tell me what the intended / correct meanings >of the figures are. > >Ron -- what ARE the meanings of the glyphs, stroke by stroke? OK. Here goes. Brivla counterclockwise from top (I've already gone over the cmavo): 1) Calling this a stick figure under a tent is pretty close to the mark. Actually it represents a man under a roof -- roughly, "domestic man": FATHER. This Blissymbol stands for the Lojban "patfu". 2) Two little legs under a roof: "domestic boy": SON. In Lojban: bersa. 3) This is a lujvo, or compound brivla. You see there are two smaller rectangular cartouches within a single enclosing cartouche. In the first sub-cartouche, we see a heart and a triangle. The heart means "feeling" in Bliss, and the triangle means "Nature" or "Creation". Bliss compounds are normally read from right to left (in BELL this only holds WITHIN a single cartouche), so heart-triangle means Nature/Creation-feeling, or what we feel when we regard the majesty of Nature: "awe". In the next sub-cartouche we see three stacked semicircles, open downwards. A semicircle of this sort is derived from the shape of the skull and means "brain," "mind", or "thought" -- something like that. Three stacked up mean "soul" or "spirit." So reading from left to right we have AWE-FULL SPIRIT, or HOLY SPIRIT. In Lojban: censa pruxi or "cesru'i" for short. 4) In the center we have a triangle with a dotted circle in the center. This is meant to be a simplified version of the "Illuminati" eye-in-the-triangle, as it appears, e.g. on the back of a US dollar bill. I use this to represent the Lojban "jegvo", or "Jehovist (Jewish/Christian/Muslim) God", or, generally, a personal God. Clear? You were warm above when you were guessing about the meaning of the "patfu" glyph -- the Bliss is certainly easier to recognise and maybe remember than all those Lojban words. >Would it be appropriate to raise the question of personal interpretation, >and ambiguity, vis a vis the ambition of Lojban to provide a presumably >unambiguous 'logical language'? Yes. Actually, this would fall under the heading of "clinamen atomorum" in Oulipo theory, which I have largely adopted: the "swerving of the atoms" or allowable deviation in formal art such as the GBG. For example, in Kennexions, clinamen can enter through the fact that BELL does not translate into Lojban 1:1 -- word order can vary, some cmavo are optional, and so on. Emphasis can also be placed on words when pronouncing the Lojban in a liturgical presentation (and there is often more than one way to pronounce a Lojban sentence). BELLEs (BELL Expressions) can be drawn more or less calligraphically, etc. Non-Bliss symbols (alchemical or astrological ones, for example) can be used inside special cartouches at the scriptor's discretion. And so on. I really began to understand clinamen better when listening over and over to Glenn Gould's classic recording of the Goldberg Variations while working on Kennexions. Bach is so pure and formal, and when Gould plays the Variations, his clinamen does not consist of altering the _values_ (pitches or meanings) of the notes, but rather their _emphasis_ (speed and duration). Clinamen is among other things a matter of inflection, style, and tempo. Just so, a formal work like the GBG need not be formally flawed for a "human" element to enter in, just loose enough to let the sun shine through the kinks. That Sun is the Tao: what Christopher Alexander calls "the Quality Without A Name" or QWAN. More on this later. Ron p.s. You guys have given me a three-step process for the book: first mail out notes to you and respond to comments, then patch all the related messages into one long message and send it to Magister-L, then paste it into appropriate places in my manuscript and polish it. Before I only did the last two steps, and I never got any feedback. Without feedback, mammals do dumb things like walk down manholes. I am really grateful you guys are here to consult and work with! Ron Hale-Evans...The Not Ready For Apocalypse Players...rwhe@apocalypse.org I CHING MAILING LIST = http://www.apocalypse.org/~rwhe/hex8.html "KENNEXIONS" GLASS BEAD GAME = http://www.apocalypse.org/~rwhe/gbg.html RON'S INFO-CLOSET = http://www.apocalypse.org/~rwhe/ X-Sender: marty@apocalypse.org Date: Fri, 21 Nov 1997 10:21:59 -0800 To: rwhe@asylum.apocalypse.org, "drdee@interlog.com"@asylum.apocalypse.org, "scranmer@cfa.harvard.edu"@asylum.apocalypse.org, "setebos@wolfenet.com"@asylum.apocalypse.org From: "M. Hale-Evans" Subject: Re: First attempt at glyphic Kennexions game Mime-Version: 1.0 >>Okay, now we've got something to chew on. First impression -- not ugly, >>maybe a bit swirly (but I like swirly, e.g. Celtic / Scythian / Oceanic >>knotwork). > >Thanks. I do too. Really the lines were mostly functional. If I could have >made it plainer, I would, and further drafts would probably be less complex >looking. As Marty said, all those swirls tend to obfuscate. I do understand the reasons for it now, but am still having trouble *grokking* it, if you will. With some mental effort, I can translate and read it, but I don't like it as much as something I can get more intuitively (like a more natural language, or something that was more a piece of art than a diagram). (I told y'all I have an intuitive bias.) This is possibly a learning-curve problem, though. We also decided at home last night that the functional structure would be clearer if a) the drawing could be made in 3 dimensions or b) the drawing could be made without so much concern for the original triangular structure. >I would agree, except that the [ = ]s represent mekso cmavo >(mathematical-expression particles) that could just as well be [ > ] or [ < >]. Actually, "du" (which is the cmavo for "=") is a weird kind of cmavo >(pronounced SHMAH-voe, BTW). It functions like a brivla, or "content word" >(noun, verb, adjective, adverb -- all one part of speech in Lojban) -- that >is, it has a place structure like "tavla," "talk" which I gave as an >example earlier. Otherwise I would have represented it with Ogham. >Generally brivla (content words) will be represented by Blissymbols inside >rectangular cartouches and cmavo (particles) will be represented by Ogham >on the connective lines. You can see the cmavo "na" as Ogham on some of the >lines in the graphic -- five "fingers" pointing up (N) and a single dot >(A): NA. "Na" is a Lojban negation cmavo, so [Ogham squiggles, =] >represents "na du", or "does not equal." Am I the only one who might benefit from a primer in Logjam, er, Lojban? If so, I'll seek it out privately, but if not, maybe Ron could be convinced to help us understand the basics of this part of his design? >> Here all 3 links are doing the same >>thing, so I would question whether the directed arcs really require >>annotation beyond the tail / head (source / sink) distinction. Also, not >>knowing Blissymbolics or Lojban (and why do I always want to read that as >>'logjam'? ;-), the [ = ] says "equals", which goes against the one-way-ness >>of the relations depicted. > >Well, the arrows don't really show directional _relations_; they're meant >to show syntax, i.e. the way the "sentence" is to be read. You follow the >arrows. So "x1 du x2" means "x1 = x2", and while it is _mathematically_ >true that this implies "x2 = x1", since equality is commutative or >whatever, it is not a fact of Lojban _grammar_, which is what the arrows >are showing. Is this a flaw? Hmm, something rings a bell for me here. Maybe, again, if I knew more about Lojban it might be different, but I suspect one of the blocks I have against it is this seeming rigidity. Most natural language does have some variation in the way one chooses to express an idea via sentence structure. I think I remember that it's like that to remove ambiguity and make communication clearer, but where else does poetry reside but in ambiguity and resonance? We're back to the balance between form and function, Ron. :-> >>On the other hand, the ogham strokes affixed to the arcs seems a very >>natural way to 'qualify' or 'quantify' the meaning of the relations. > >Thank you. I'm pretty proud of the idea. I was despairing over having to >come up with hundreds of abstract hatch marks for the lines to represent >all the different cmavo, and wondering if I could get the markings to bear >any semantic weight, when I realised I had a ready-made system in Ogham. It >completely fits in with the Kennexions philosophy of OOBOTS -- Out Of the >Box, Off The Shelf. We are playing with "the total contents of culture", as >Hesse said, so why reinvent the wheel? Grab objectivated elements from >culture and adapt them to Kennexions. I like this too, but here's something that comes up for me: I wonder about the place of writing systems and language in a larger sense. Are all such choices simply subjective? Would the game be played at a higher level if the language barrier could be broken? I suspect that's the reason for the choice of Lojban -- it's a constructed language that is (theoretically) highly accessible to speakers of all other languages as well as computers. Is the GBG the domain of humans only? (OKay, maybe I'm getting silly. I'm just sitting here thinking of ways to try to put such a game into the cultural context of, say, dogs or ants...hey, Ron, maybe you could incorporate the Lotus sutra. ;-> This is probably not useful or constructive. I'll shut up now.) >3) This is a lujvo, or compound brivla. You see there are two smaller >rectangular cartouches within a single enclosing cartouche. In the first >sub-cartouche, we see a heart and a triangle. The heart means "feeling" in >Bliss, and the triangle means "Nature" or "Creation". Bliss compounds are >normally read from right to left (in BELL this only holds WITHIN a single >cartouche), so heart-triangle means Nature/Creation-feeling, or what we >feel when we regard the majesty of Nature: "awe". In the next sub-cartouche >we see three stacked semicircles, open downwards. A semicircle of this sort >is derived from the shape of the skull and means "brain," "mind", or >"thought" -- something like that. Three stacked up mean "soul" or "spirit." >So reading from left to right we have AWE-FULL SPIRIT, or HOLY SPIRIT. In >Lojban: censa pruxi or "cesru'i" for short. Okay, here's another place where my concerns about oversimplification crop up. Is "awe-ful" the same as "holy"? To my mind, there are minor, but significant, differences. (For the non-Ron among us: I have this ongoing idea that a badly-done GBG is no better than the composers of Newspeak in _1984_, simplifying a rich cultural matrix down to least common denominators and modifiers like un and plus. In fact, this is my main concern about any GBG at all.) >Yes. Actually, this would fall under the heading of "clinamen atomorum" in >Oulipo theory, which I have largely adopted: the "swerving of the atoms" or >allowable deviation in formal art such as the GBG. For example, in >Kennexions, clinamen can enter through the fact that BELL does not >translate into Lojban 1:1 -- word order can vary, some cmavo are optional, >and so on. Emphasis can also be placed on words when pronouncing the Lojban >in a liturgical presentation (and there is often more than one way to >pronounce a Lojban sentence). BELLEs (BELL Expressions) can be drawn more >or less calligraphically, etc. Non-Bliss symbols (alchemical or >astrological ones, for example) can be used inside special cartouches at >the scriptor's discretion. And so on. This begins to address the stuff I brought up above, but then I have to ask: why choose Lojban at all, if it will end up being non-standard through personal interpretation? What is the function of personal interpretation as opposed to rule structure? (This is not criticism; it's just trying to understand the basics, here.) Marty O ( @ ) O ( @ ) O ( @ ) O ( @ ) O ( @ ) O ( @ ) O ( @ ) O ( @ ) O ( @ Marty Hale-Evans marty@apocalypse.org Seattle, WA USA Dig me further at: http://www.apocalypse.org/~marty Book of the month: _Possessing the Secret of Joy_, by Alice Walker Mime-Version: 1.0 Date: Fri, 21 Nov 1997 14:41:16 -0800 To: "M. Hale-Evans" , rwhe@asylum.apocalypse.org, "drdee@interlog.com"@asylum.apocalypse.org, "scranmer@cfa.harvard.edu"@asylum.apocalypse.org, "setebos@wolfenet.com"@asylum.apocalypse.org From: Ronald Hale-Evans Subject: Re: First attempt at glyphic Kennexions game At 10:21 AM -0800 11/21/97, M. Hale-Evans wrote: >...why choose Lojban at all, if it will end up being non-standard through >personal interpretation? What is the function of personal interpretation >as opposed to rule structure? (This is not criticism; it's just trying to >understand the basics, here.) This is an excellent question, and one of the most slippery ones in Oulipian aesthetics, which IMHO provides a terrific foundation for GBGs. The constraint/potential concept is fairly straightforward, if unconventional, but the "clinamen" idea is hard to grasp, and I've heard that such non-Oulipians as Harold Bloom have devoted large hunks of text to the topic. You partly answered your own question, I think, when you asked earlier in the same message: >...Maybe, again, if I knew more >about Lojban it might be different, but I suspect one of the blocks I have >against it is this seeming rigidity. Most natural language does have some >variation in the way one chooses to express an idea via sentence structure. > I think I remember that it's like that to remove ambiguity and make >communication clearer, but where else does poetry reside but in ambiguity >and resonance? > >We're back to the balance between form and function, Ron. :-> That's the thing: Lojban (and BELL even more so) DOES provide a certain amount of flexibility in word order and so on, as I said in my last message: >>...clinamen can enter through the fact that BELL does not >>translate into Lojban 1:1 -- word order can vary, some cmavo are optional, >>and so on. Emphasis can also be placed on words when pronouncing the Lojban >>in a liturgical presentation (and there is often more than one way to >>pronounce a Lojban sentence). BELLEs (BELL Expressions) can be drawn more >>or less calligraphically, etc. Non-Bliss symbols (alchemical or >>astrological ones, for example) can be used inside special cartouches at >>the scriptor's discretion. And so on. As you said: "... where else does poetry reside but in ambiguity and resonance?" There is *no* language, even "pure" mathematics, I claim, that does not contain a certain amount of slack. Or Slack. Lojban has ambiguity; it has some of the same kinds of ambiguity and some different kinds of ambiguity than English. The claim that the Lojbanists make that Lojban is an unambiguous language refers to certain very specific kinds of syntactic ambiguity only -- for example, if you had a computer that could understand phonemes clearly, then you would have no problem getting a computer to punctuate and spell voice-input Lojban. The kind of ambiguity represented by the English phrases "pretty little girls school," or "Time flies like an arrow," which have a number of different meanings depending on syntactical interpretation, does not exist in Lojban. However, Lojban has other kinds of ambiguity. For example, "skami pilno" translates to "computer user" in English. But it is permanently undecided in Lojban whether this means a human who uses a computer, or a computer which is itself some kind of user, or something else. The same goes for all "tanru" or compounds of this sort. >Am I the only one who might benefit from a primer in Logjam, er, Lojban? >If so, I'll seek it out privately, but if not, maybe Ron could be convinced >to help us understand the basics of this part of his design? I certainly will do my best. It is a weird language that in many ways goes against the grain of human linguistic universals -- but that is one point of it: to test the Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis, whether language changes the way we think. There is a one-lesson "short course" in the basics of Logjam available from the Logical Language Group. Would y'all like me to dig it up and post it here? It's pretty easy to zip through, I find, and a good refresher even if you already know something about the language. When you ask "why choose Lojban at all?" I have a number of different answers. First, the GBG is supposed to use a language that can tie together mathematics, music, literature, and so on. Any passage in literature or philosophy or theology or whatever (e.g. FILIUS NON EST PATER) can be translated into Lojban, with the exception of certain kinds of Lewis Carrollian nonsense. Lojban can *also* -- and this is something a natlang like English *cannot* do -- translate any mathematical expression or equation into a Lojban phrase, a "mekso". So it has an enormous advantage when compared to competing languages here, since Hesse made it clear that many GBG instances had a quasi-mathematical structure. In fact, Loglan proper, the immediate precursor to Lojban, was originally based on propositional logic, and the same goes for Lojban -- in fact, one Lojbanist, Nick Nicholas, brilliant guy, wrote a parser that translates Lojban directly into the computer language Prolog. Now, I don't know whether anyone has tried to translate music into Lojban, but I will lay dollars to doughnuts (no Homer Simpson I) that it can be done, since music has at base a mathematical structure. This is one of the most fertile fields of development lying ahead in Kennexions, if anyone wants to homestead and plow it. Second, since kennexions (kenning expressions, or nested kennings) are fundamental to the way Kennexions works, as you all know, I wanted a language that could easily express kennexions at a basic level. In fact, this is exactly how Lojban forms new words and expressions! The Lojban "tanru" (its word for compounds like "skami pilno", computer user) translates into English as "metaphor." Any kennexion can be represented by a tanru, and often by a lujvo, which is a special kind of tanru that happens when you compress the root words in a tanru into a single word, for example, using "cesru'i" as a shorter form of "censa pruxi", Holy Spirit. (Mini-lesson: Lojban root words are called "gismu", and their short forms, as used in lujvo, are called "rafsi".) As an exciting bonus, I discovered that some tanru are more like Aztec difrasismo than Norse kennings. This helps me implement Charles's suggestion of nesting difrasismo as well as kennings. Refresher: a difrasismo is a kind of periphrasis used poetically in Aztec poetry. For example, the Nahuatl for "flower and song" is used as a stock phrase for "poetry", just as "whale road" is used as a stock phrase in Norse poetry for "ocean". As Kennexions uses the term "difrasismo", it extends to other languages, such as Malay, where "chicken [and] duck" means "poultry" and "table [and] chair" means "furniture." The great thing is that Lojban tanru often behave as much like difrasismo as kennings. For example, the Lojban for "worm [and] beetle" means simply "bug". And since I have found a way to derive difrasismo from the same analogies that drive kennings, this all ties together nicely. >I do understand the reasons for it now, but am still having trouble >*grokking* it, if you will. With some mental effort, I can translate and >read it, but I don't like it as much as something I can get more >intuitively (like a more natural language, or something that was more a >piece of art than a diagram). (I told y'all I have an intuitive bias.) >This is possibly a learning-curve problem, though. We also decided at home >last night that the functional structure would be clearer if a) the drawing >could be made in 3 dimensions or b) the drawing could be made without so >much concern for the original triangular structure. Yah. I actually spent a lot of time thinking about the criticisms you and Derek made of the BELLE, and came up with a second draft that is a lot clearer and simpler. I will try to post it later today. It gets rid of all those [ = ] boxes and uses only Ogham to represent "du" (=) and "na du" (!=) and comes a lot closer to translating the Latin original in a nice way. Thanks, you guys, for stopping me from walking down a manhole! >I like this too, but here's something that comes up for me: I wonder about >the place of writing systems and language in a larger sense. Are all such >choices simply subjective? Would the game be played at a higher level if >the language barrier could be broken? I suspect that's the reason for the >choice of Lojban -- it's a constructed language that is (theoretically) >highly accessible to speakers of all other languages as well as computers. Hmm. I *think* I understand what you're getting at here, but I'm not sure. Are you asking whether we can find a less arbitrary language? I have thought and thought about this, and the best answer I can come up with is that *any* language that we could use is bound to be arbitrary. We can't use (mythically speaking) the language that Adam spoke in the Garden, the language that the angels speak. Perhaps, as some linguists think, there is a deep structure to human language existing far down in the human mind and brain, but the best we can hope for is to approximate it to a greater or lesser degree. It exists in the Platonic heaven -- any instantiation is only a shadow of the real thing. You might even say that we are trying to embody the Logos with the GBG. I have an essay on this on my GBG Page. (For a fascinating exploration of the attempt through the millennia to attain the "Adamic" language, see Umberto Eco's _The Search for the Perfect Language_. My copy is in storage, but I have it out from the library if you want to look at it, Marty.) >Is the GBG the domain of humans only? (OKay, maybe I'm getting silly. I'm >just sitting here thinking of ways to try to put such a game into the >cultural context of, say, dogs or ants...hey, Ron, maybe you could >incorporate the Lotus sutra. ;-> This is probably not useful or >constructive. I'll shut up now.) No, it's interesting. Do dogs have a language or a "deep structure"? Our two dogs Gwenyth and Tia certainly seem to understand not only simple one-word stimuli like "Out!" or "Off!" or "Sit!" but to be able to parse two-word "sentences" like "Gwenyth, off!" or "No, sit!" And of course there is the question of whether there is a "dog language" e.g. of butt-sniffing and face-licking. And even ants may have a pheromonal language. In fact, the search for the Adamic language has often been framed as the search for "the language which Nature speaks." I have an interesting anecdote about the Lotus Sutra that Marty is partly alluding to. When I studied Asian religion in college, the professor was relating that it is said when the Lotus Sutra is read aloud, beings from all the Realms who desire enlightenment cluster near. Some are invisible, like gods, demigods, hungry ghosts, and hell beings, and some are visible, like humans, and yes, even animals. My teacher started reading us a passage from the Lotus Sutra. Just then, a little black dog trotted into the classroom, tongue lolling. "Ah, he's come to hear the Sutra," said the professor. >Okay, here's another place where my concerns about oversimplification crop >up. Is "awe-ful" the same as "holy"? To my mind, there are minor, but >significant, differences. (For the non-Ron among us: I have this ongoing >idea that a badly-done GBG is no better than the composers of Newspeak in >_1984_, simplifying a rich cultural matrix down to least common >denominators and modifiers like un and plus. In fact, this is my main >concern about any GBG at all.) Well, "awe-ful" is the best I could do in Bliss, given my somewhat limited knowledge of its "vocabulary" (one reason I invited Gail on board). The Lojban, "censa," translates "holy" or "sacred" quite nicely, though. In fact, there are two or three words in Lojban that are used to distinguish among the various meanings of "sacred" that we lump together in English without thinking about it. As for the general principle behind your Newspeak analogy: that's a toughie. In general, language almost always _abstracts_, which means it leaves out a lot of details and focuses on one or two "relevant" ones. General Semantics is founded almost wholly on this basic problem of human language, which might make it an interesting area of study as far as Kennexions goes. (Charles Bliss of Blissymbolics was also inspired by General Semantics, as you might guess from HIS name for the language: Semantography.) The question is, do the GBG and Kennexions in particular commit any worse a language crime than, say, art criticism, or just _talking about_ a play, symphony, or painting? Perhaps it depends on the game instance in question. We'll see. Ideas, anyone? When you said yesterday that conflating the "trinities" of different cultures with the Christian Trinity might not be such a hot idea, and might require further scholarship, my first thought was, "Oh PLEASE don't throw me into that briar patch!" My second thought is this: as someone rightly brought up recently on Arcana, the whole idea of doing comparative religion, say, by creating tables of correspondences is _itself_ a myth and as such is no more subject to criticism than the claim that Hermes and Mercury are the same god. Syncretism and the "theory of signatures" have been going on for millennia and there is a solid cultural basis for it. OTOH, there is a solid cultural basis for racism, so you raise an interesting question. Ron Ron Hale-Evans...The Not Ready For Apocalypse Players...rwhe@apocalypse.org I CHING MAILING LIST = http://www.apocalypse.org/~rwhe/hex8.html "KENNEXIONS" GLASS BEAD GAME = http://www.apocalypse.org/~rwhe/gbg.html RON'S INFO-CLOSET = http://www.apocalypse.org/~rwhe/ Mime-Version: 1.0 Date: Fri, 21 Nov 1997 16:53:17 -0800 To: Kennexions Distribution List:; From: Ronald Hale-Evans Subject: KENNEX: Lojban brochure Copyright, 1988-1991, by the Logical Language Group, Inc. 2904 Beau Lane, Fairfax VA 22031-1303 USA Phone (703) 385-0273 lojbab@grebyn.com All rights reserved. Permission to copy granted subject to your verification that this is the latest version of this document, that your distribution be for the promotion of Lojban, that there is no charge for the product, and that this copyright notice is included intact in the copy. What is Lojban? la lojban mo Lojban (/LOZH-bahn/) is a constructed language. Originally called "Loglan" by project founder Dr. James Cooke Brown, who started the lan- guage development in 1955, the goals for the language were first described in the article "Loglan" in Scientific American, June, 1960. Made well- known by that article and by occasional references in science fiction and computer publications, Loglan/Lojban has been built over three decades by dozens of workers and hundreds of supporters, led since 1987 by The Logi- cal Language Group, now incorporated as a non-profit scientific/educa- tional charity approved by the U.S. Government for tax-deductible dona- tions. There are many artificial languages, but Loglan/Lojban has been engi- neered to make it unique in several ways. The following are the main fea- tures of Lojban: o Lojban is designed to be used by people in communication with each other, and possibly in the future with computers. o Lojban is designed to be culturally neutral. o Lojban grammar is based on the principles of logic. o Lojban has an unambiguous grammar. o Lojban has phonetic spelling, and unambiguous resolution of sounds into words. o Lojban is simple compared to natural languages; it is easy to learn. o Lojban's 1300 root words can be easily combined to form a vocabulary of millions of words. o Lojban is regular; the rules of the language are without exception. o Lojban attempts to remove restrictions on creative and clear thought and communication. o Lojban has a variety of uses, ranging from the creative to the scien- tific, from the theoretical to the practical. The following sections examine each of these points, while answering the questions most often asked about Lojban. Why was Lojban developed? Lojban was originally designed for the purpose of supporting research on a concept known as the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis. Simply expressed, this hypothesis states that the structure of a language constrains the thinking of people using that language. Lojban allows the full expressive capabil- ity of a natural language, but differs in structure from other languages in major ways. This allows its use as a test vehicle for scientists studying the relationships between language, thought, and culture. Are there other uses for Lojban? Yes, several. Due to its unambiguous grammar and simple structure, it also can be easily parsed (broken down for analysis) by computers, mak- ing it possible for Lojban to be used in the future for computer-human interaction, and perhaps conversation. Lojban's structure is similar to existing artificial intelligence (AI) programming languages, and will likely be a most powerful tool in AI processing, especially in the storing and processing of data about the world and people's conceptions of it. There are also linguists interested in Lojban's potential as an intermedi- ate language in computer-aided translation of natural languages. Because Lojban was designed to be culturally neutral, and has a powerful vocabu- lary easily learned by people of different language origins, some are in- terested in Lojban's potential as an international language. These are only the beginnings of the Lojban applications that will be developed in the future. 2 Is Lojban a computer language? Lojban was designed as a human language, and not as a computer lan- guage. It is therefore intended for use in conversation, reading, writ- ing, and thinking. However, since Lojban can be processed by a computer much more easily than can a natural language, it is only a matter of time before Lojban-based computer applications are developed. Learning and us- ing Lojban doesn't require you to know anything about computers or to talk like one. How is Lojban written? How does it sound? Lojban uses letters of the Roman alphabet to represent its 6 vowels and 17 consonants; the Lojban character set uses only standard typewriter or computer keyboard keys; capitalization is rare - used to indicate un- usual stress in the pronunciation of names. Punctuation is spoken as words. The written language corresponds exactly to the sounds of the spo- ken language; spelling is phonetic and unambiguous, and the flowing sounds of the language break down uniquely into words. These features make com- puter speech recognition and transcription more practical. Learning to write and spell Lojban is trivial. Lojban has a smooth, rhythmic sound, somewhat like Italian. However, its consonants create a fullness and power found in Slavic languages like Russian, and the large number of vowel pairs impart a hint of Chinese, Polynesian, and other Oriental tongues, though without the tones that make those languages difficult for others to learn. Because there are no idioms to shorten expressions, Lojban often ap- pears longer than its corresponding colloquial English text. The unam- biguous structure that results is a major benefit that makes this worth- while. As an example of Lojban, Occam's Razor ("The simplest explanation is usually the best.") may be translated: roda poi velciksi ku'o so'eroi ke ganai sampyrai gi xagrai /roh-dah-poi-vehl-SHEEK-see-KOO-hoh, soh-heh-ROI-keh, GAH-nai-SAHM-puh- rai, gee, KHAH-grai/ All somethings-which-are-explanations mostly-are (if superlatively-simple then superlatively-good). The apostrophe is pronounced like a short, breathy 'h', and is used to clearly separate the two adjacent vowels for a listener, without re- quiring a pause between them. What kind of grammar does Lojban have? Lojban's grammar was not copied from any known language; rather, its predicate grammar was derived from that of formal logic. Philosophers and logicians have for many years realized that as language developed, nouns, verbs and adjectives were chosen rather arbitrarily to represent concepts. The logicians developed a notation and a science (predicate calculus) to represent those concepts more directly and simply. For example, "John hits Sam", "John is the uncle of Sam" and "John is taller than Sam" are all simple relationships between John and Sam. However, while English represents the major concepts with a noun, a verb and an adjective respec- tively, in formal logic notation they are all represented by 2-place pred- icates (the two places being occupied by John and Sam). Lojban similarly represents these concepts by grammatically identical words. What this means is that Lojban sentences are stated as sets of ideas (called "arguments") tied together by relations (called "predicates"). This is different from languages with which you may be familiar, but various logic systems and methods based on predicate structures have been the basis of intellectual thought since logic was invented by the ancient Greeks. 3 These predicate structures can be used to express 'non-logical' thought. Logicians are able to analyze all manner of verbal expressions by converting them into predicate notation. But while Lojban will already be expressed in a predicate-based system, allowing easy logical analysis, it also contains the wide variety of elements found in natural language for expression of attitudes, emotions, and rich metaphor. Thus, Lojban has none of the standard parts of speech with which you may be familiar. Lojban's 'predicate words' ("brivla") are all of the same part of speech. Each can serve as the equivalent of a noun, verb, adjective, or adverb. ("Cradle" is an example of an English word that acts somewhat in this way.) Thus, "blanu" ("blue") conveys an active verb sense (emitting blue light or absorbing other colors), as well as denoting "a blue thing". "blanu" can also modify other words to indicate blueness. "kurji" indicates the verb "take care of", but also can mean "caretaker", or "caring". Action and existence are equally accessible to a speaker; the distinction can be ignored, or can be explicitly expressed by associ- ating concepts in "tanru" metaphors with "gasnu" ("do"), "zasti" ("exist"), "zukte" ("act with purpose"), with a variety of 'operators' dealing with abstractions such as events, states, properties, amounts, ideas, experience, and truth, or with four pre-defined varieties of causality (others can be developed through metaphor). A major benefit of using a predicate grammar is that Lojban doesn't have mandatory inflections and declensions on nouns, verbs, and adjec- tives. Most natural languages have evolved such variations to reduce am- biguity as to how words are related in a sentence. Evolutionary develop- ment has made these inflections and declensions highly irregular and thus difficult to learn. Lojban uses the simple but flexible predicate rela- tionship to erase both the irregularity and the declensions. Tense and location markers (inflections), adverbs, and prepositions are combined into one part of speech. New preposition-like forms can be built at will from predicates; these allow the user to expand upon a sen- tence by attaching and relating clauses not normally implied in the mean- ing of a word. Numbers and quantifiers are conceptually expanded from natural lan- guages. "Many", "enough", "too much", "a few", and "at least" are among concepts that are expressed as numbers in Lojban. Thus "it costs $3.95" and "it costs too much" are grammatically identical, and one can talk of being "enoughth in line" for tickets to a sellout movie. Core concepts of logic, mathematics, and science are built into the root vocabulary. They enhance discussion of those topics, and are surprisingly useful in ordi- nary speech, too. Predicate logic can express a wide variety of human thought; Lojban adds in non-logical constructs that do not affect or obscure the logical structure, allowing communications that are not amenable to logical analy- sis. For example, Lojban has a full set of emotional indicators which al- low expression of intensity and denial. These are similar to such ejacu- lations in English as "Oh!", "Aha!", and "Wheee!", but each has a specific meaning. Similarly, Lojban has indicators of the speaker's relationship to what is said (Is it hearsay, direct observation, logical deduction, etc.?) similar to those found in some American Indian languages. Lojban supports metalinguistic discussion about the sentences being spoken while remaining unambiguous. ("This sentence is not true" need not be a paradox in Lojban.) Lojban also supports a variety of 'tense' logic that allows extreme specificity of time and space (and space-time) rela- tionships, even those implied by the concept of time travel. A sub- stantial portion of Lojban's grammar is designed to support unambiguous statement of mathematical expressions and relations in a manner compatible both with international usage and Lojban's non-mathematical grammar. Lojban 'parts of speech' are convertible from one to another by using short structure words (called "cmavo"). One can make numbers serve as nouns or verbs, or can invent new numbers and prepositions. Lojban re- moves many of the constraints on human thought while preserving tight con- trol on structural syntax. 4 Lojban seems complex. How hard is it to learn? Lojban is actually much simpler than natural languages. Its grammar is comparable in complexity with the current generation of computer lan- guages (such as ADA). Lojban seems complex only because the varieties of human thought are complex, and Lojban is designed to minimize constraints on those thoughts. Lojban text appears longer and more complex due to its lack of idiom, its complete revelation of logical structure, and most im- portantly, its unfamiliarity. On the other hand, conversational speech uses less than half of the possible grammatical structures, leaving the rest for writing and for other circumstances when one is likely to take time to carefully formulate exact logical phrasings. Lojban's pronunciation, spelling, word formation, and grammar rules are fixed, and the language is free of exceptions to these rules. Rule exceptions are the bane of learning and correctly speaking natural lan- guages. Without the burden of ambiguity, Lojban users can be precise and specific more easily than in other languages. Because Lojban's grammar is simple, it is easier to learn than other languages. A working vocabulary including the complete set of 1300 root words takes about 8-12 weeks of study at 1 hour per day. In Lojban classes taught since 1989, the equivalent of a one semester of study (60 class-hours) allows conversational usage depending only on memorizing vo- cabulary, regular practice and communicative interaction with others. Natural languages, especially English, have been determined to take sev- eral years to learn to a comparable level of skill. The Lojban teaching materials are being designed so that you can learn the language without classroom instruction, and possibly without a close community of speakers. Communication practice with others is needed to achieve fluency, but you can start using the language as you achieve proficiency. If Lojban was invented in 1960, why aren't there more speakers now? The language, then called "Loglan", was first described in the 1950's, by Dr. James Cooke Brown. The 1960 Scientific American article "Loglan" was his call for assistance in developing the language. A revo- lution in linguistics was simultaneously taking place, resulting in a rapidly increasing knowledge of the nature of human language, thus chang- ing the requirements for the developing language. The first widely dis- tributed Loglan dictionary and language description did not appear until 1975; the incompleteness of this description and continued development work discouraged people from learning the language. Furthermore, comput- ers caught up with Loglan just then, making it possible to refine the grammar, eliminate ambiguity and mathematically prove its absence. For over 35 years, this work has been performed by volunteers, and without fi- nancial support. Now, after several versions of the language, people are learning and using the current version, which is the first called "Lojban" (from the roots "logical-language" in Lojban). This version is the first version with a stable vocabulary, and the first to have a stable and completely defined grammar (the grammar of mathemati- cal expressions, for example, was not developed until 1990). The basic Lojban vocabulary was baselined (stabilized against change) in the last half of 1988, and the grammar similarly stabilized in late-1990, after completion of the first Lojban courses, actual usage of the language, and several iterations of careful analysis. Thus, in an important sense, Loj- ban is a very new language. To ensure Lojban remains stable while people learn it, the language definition is being closely controlled. When the number of speakers has grown significantly, and a Lojban literature has developed, Lojban will be treated like a natural language and allowed to grow and flourish without constraint, as do other natural languages. 5 Those first speakers of Lojban have a unique opportunity. They are the history-makers who will shape the flavor of the first totally new lan- guage to achieve broad speakability. Their ideas will be most influential in setting the patterns of usage that others will learn from. Their experiences will teach things about language that have never before been learned - or learnable. What do you mean by unambiguous? Lojban has an unambiguous grammar (proven by computer analysis of a formal grammar), pronunciation, and morphology (word forms). In practice this means that the person who reads or hears a Lojban sentence is never in doubt as to what words it contains or what roles they play in the sen- tence. This is true even if the words are unfamiliar, so long as the spelling and grammar rules are known. Lojban has no words that sound alike but have different meanings (like "herd" and "heard"), that have multiple unrelated meanings ("set"), or that differ only in punctuation but not in sound (like the abominable "its" and "it's"). There is never any doubt about where words begin and end (if you hear "cargo shipment", do you hear 2, 3, or 4 words?). Most important, the function of each word is inescapably clear; there is nothing like the English sentence "Time flies like an arrow.", in which any of the first three words could be the verb. This precision in no way confines the meaning of a Lojban sentence. It is possible to be fanciful or ridiculous, to tell a lie, or to be misunderstood. You can be very specific, or you can be intentionally vague. Your hearer may not understand what you meant, but will always un- derstand what you said. Can poetry be written in a 'logical' language or an 'unambiguous' one? Original poetry has already been written in Lojban, and some has been translated into the language. Lojban's powerful metaphor structure allows you to build concepts into words easily, as you need them. A Lojban speaker doesn't need a dictionary to use and understand millions of words that can potentially exist in the language. The absence of cultural con- straints makes consideration of new ideas and relationships easier than in natural languages, spurring creativity. Lojban aids in communicating ab- stractions by identifying their nature explicitly. Lojban is a thus a very powerful language, not only for poetry, but for discussing such ab- stract fields as philosophy, physics, metaphysics, and religion. Lojban has an unambiguous grammar and its sounds and spelling are unambiguous. Lojban is NOT entirely unambiguous; human beings occasion- ally desire to be ambiguous in their expressions. In Lojban, this ambigu- ity is limited to semantics, metaphor, and intentional omission of infor- mation (ellipsis). Semantic ambiguity results because words in natural languages repre- sent families of concepts rather than individual meanings. These meanings often have only weak semantic relationships to each other (the English word "run" is an outstanding example). In addition, each individual's personal experiences provide emotional connotations to words. By provid- ing a fresh, culturally-neutral start, Lojban attempts to minimize the transference of these associations as people learn the language. (Most Lojban words do not much resemble corresponding words in other languages; the differences aid in making this fresh start possible. Lojban's powerful metaphor and word-building features make it easy to make fine distinctions between concepts. This discourages the tendency for individual words to acquire families of meanings. Lojban metaphors (called "tanru") are themselves ambiguous; they specify a relationship be- tween concepts, but not what the relationship is. That relationship can be made explicit using unambiguous logical constructs if necessary, or can 6 be left vague as the speaker (usually) desires. Similarly, portions of the logical structure of a Lojban expression can be omitted, greatly sim- plifying the expression while causing some ambiguity. Unlike in the natu- ral languages, though, this ambiguity is readily identified by a reader or listener. Thus all ambiguity in Lojban is constrained and recognizable, and can be clarified as necessary by further interaction. Lojban poets are already experimenting with new (and old) forms of poetry that seem especially well suited to the rhythm, sound, and flow of the language. Not since the Middle Ages have poets had such an opportu- nity to affect the development of a new language, as they now can with Lojban. Lojban's rich and powerful tanru have been used to create color- ful images and to convey moving emotions. Unhindered by grammatical ambi- guity that can obscure desired meanings, Lojban unleashes the full poten- tial of poetic expression to communicate both concrete and abstract ideas. Can you make jokes in an unambiguous language? Most humor arises from situation and character and is as funny in Lojban as in any language. Humor based on word play, of course, is lan- guage-dependent. Lojban has no homonyms, and hence no simple puns; puns derived from similar sounds are still possible. Since Lojban will almost always be a second language, bilingual puns and word play abound, often based on the relative ambiguity of the other languages involved. Humor based on internal grammatical ambiguity is of course impossible in Lojban, but humor based on nonsensical statements or on logical structures that would be difficult to clearly express in another language, become easier. As speakers become fluent, and conventional phrases come into use, Lojban will develop its own forms of spoonerisms and subtle puns. Unique forms of Lojban word-play have already turned up; they exploit the way small variations in Lojban grammar create unexpected variations in mean- ing, and the capability to simply express rather mind-boggling relation- ships. Like all word-play, these lose zest when translated into other languages. Related to humor is the aphorism: the pithy saying that gains pun- gency or poignancy from terse, elegant phrasing. Lojban seems as capable of aphorisms as any language, perhaps more than most; however, because the language is so young, such aphorisms are still rare. What is the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis? The Sapir-Whorf hypothesis states that the structure of a language constrains thought in that language, and constrains and influences the culture that uses it. In other words, if concepts or structural patterns are difficult to express in a language, the society and culture using the language will tend to avoid them. Individuals might overcome this bar- rier, but the society as a whole will not. The Sapir-Whorf hypothesis is important, and controversial; it can be used as a sociological argument to justify or to oppose racism and sexism (and a variety of other 'isms'). For example, the assertion that since genderless expressions in English use 'masculine' forms, English is 'sexist', presumes the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis is true. Understanding the potential for Sapir-Whorf effects could lead to better inter-cultural understanding, promoting communication and peace. It is known that people's ideas and thought change somewhat when they learn a foreign language. It is not known whether this change is due to exposure to a different culture or even just getting outside of ones own culture. It is also not known how much (if any) of the change is due to the nature of the language, as opposed to the cultural associations. The Sapir-Whorf hypothesis was important in linguistics in the 1950's, but interest fell off partially because properly testing it was so difficult. Lojban is a new approach to such testing. Obviously, if a 7 culture-independent language could be taught to groups of people, the ef- fects of language could more easily be separated from those of culture. Unique features of Lojban remove constraints on language in the areas of logic, ambiguity, and expressive power, opening up areas of thought that have not been easily accessible by human language before. Meanwhile, the formal rigidity of the language definition allows speakers to care- fully control their expressions (and perhaps therefore their thought pro- cesses). This gives some measure of predictive power that can be used in designing and preparing for actual Sapir-Whorf experiments. One of the prerequisites of a Sapir-Whorf experiment is an interna- tional body of Lojban speakers. We need to be able to teach Lojban to subjects who know only their native (non-English) tongue, and we need to know in advance the difficulties that people from each language and cul- ture will have in learning Lojban. Thus, the Lojban community is actively reaching out to speakers of languages other than English. Lojban does not need to prove or disprove the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis in order to be successful. However, if evidence is produced supporting the Sapir-Whorf effect, Lojban will likely be perceived as an outstanding tool of analytical and creative thought. How else might Lojban be used by scientists studying language? An artificial language (AL) is a simple model of a natural language. It is used for communication like natural languages, simpler, more regu- lar, and relatively uncontaminated by culture effects. Unlike most natu- ral languages, an AL has not evolved through naturally processes of inter- nal change or contact with other languages. In addition, to the extent to which details of an AL is pre-defined, the internal structure of the lan- guage is far better known than that of any natural language. Such a pre-definition, a language 'prescription', makes an AL a unique tool for studying the nature of language. As people learn the lan- guage, the way they 'acquire' understanding of that prescription can tell scientists how 'natural' the prescribed forms are. Actual usage of the language can be compared to the prescription providing quantitative data on specific patterns of usage. As the language evolves from its rela- tively pristine initial state, it may start to deviate from its prescrip- tion. Any such deviations will better inform researchers as to the prop- erties of a 'natural' language. The process of language change itself will of course be open to investigation in a way never before possible. Finally, the existence of a relatively complete language prescription at the birth of the language means that a 'description' of actual usage after that initial state can be more simply created, maintained, and studied. Lojban is undoubtedly the most carefully designed and defined AL ever created. All aspects of its design have been carefully engineered by sev- eral people encompassing expertise in a variety of disciplines, including linguistics. The language prescription is similarly the most complete of any language. As such, it serves as a unique basis for the study of lan- guage usage and language change. A new language like Lojban, with no native speakers, is termed a 'pidgin'. As the language evolves, native speakers of other languages will learn it, and will bring into their Lojban usage the perspective and patterns of their native language. This interaction process, called 'creolization', affects all languages, and may be the principle cause of language change. As Lojban is learned by speakers of a variety of natural languages, this process can be studied directly in a way never before pos- sible, with the language prescription serving as a standard by which devi- ations associated with speaker origin, and evolution of usage, can be mea- sured and described in detail. An AL like Lojban has neither an associated 'native accent' nor a culture base. Being much simpler and more regular than a natural lan- guage, an adult speaker should acquire a fluency seldom achieved when studying a natural language, and in a relatively short time. Lojban thus 8 makes possible relatively short-term studies of language learning and lan- guage change. Processes that take generations in natural languages may be observed in a few years in Lojban speakers. With the learning of other languages acquiring critical importance in today's international economy, Lojban provides a tool for researching in language acquisition. Again, Lojban's simplicity allows the results of such research to be obtained more quickly than in similar studies of natu- ral language acquisition. No claim is made that studying Lojban will tell 'all' about language. Lojban, at least for several decades, will only be a 'model' of a lan- guage, whose 'naturalness' will be suspect. However, to the extent that Lojban serves the communicative and expressive functions of human lan- guage, any theory about the nature of human language must apply to Lojban. Language features and processes identified in studying Lojban can then be confirmed in natural languages. Similarly, theories of the nature of lan- guage can be tested and refined against this simpler model of a language before facing the more difficult and time-consuming testing and analysis involved in natural language research. Because Lojban is relatively culture-free, and because of its pre- scribed structure that is consistent with predicate logic, Lojban is an ideal medium for the analysis and description of other languages. Cur- rently, features in language must be compared against other natural lan- guages, and are usually described in scientific literature by glossed translation into English. Lojban is simple and regular enough to be ac- quired as a metalanguage for describing other languages; its structures allow clearer reflection of the patterns of the language being described, without interference from the competing patterns of English. Finally, Lojban's predicate grammar, makes it eminently suited for ongoing computer research into natural languages. Lojban can be used for parsing and analysis, as an internal medium of data storage, or as an in- termediate language for machine translation. Having a combination of log- ical and natural language structures, Lojban combines the best of both ma- jor structural approaches to language processing in computers. The exercise of trying to invent a language can teach us things about language that probably can't be learned in any other way. Even if Lojban should fail as a language, we will learn. However, to the extent Lojban succeeds, its potential as a basis for testing ideas about language, its structure, and usage, is unlimited. The invention of Lojban is the inven- tion of the science of experimental linguistics. Isn't Esperanto the 'international language'? There have been hundreds of international languages developed, of which Esperanto is the most successful and widely known. Esperanto, like most other such languages, was based on European languages in both grammar and vocabulary. The inherent cultural bias makes Esperanto unsuited for most of the purposes that Lojban was designed for. Lojban is culturally neutral. Its vocabulary was built algorithmi- cally using today's six most widely spoken languages: Chinese, English, Hindi, Russian, Spanish, and Arabic. Lojban's words thus show roots in three major families of languages spoken by most of the world's people. Lojban's grammar accommodates structures found in non-European languages, and uses sounds found in most of the world's languages. Coupled with the potential computer applications that will make Lojban a useful language to know, it is believed that Lojban's potential as an international language is more far-reaching than Esperanto's. Lojban was not designed primarily to be an international language, but rather as a linguistic tool for studying and understanding language. Linguistic and computer applications make Lojban unique among proposed international languages, in that Lojban can be successful without immedi- ately being accepted and adopted everywhere, and Lojban can be useful and 9 interesting even to those skeptical of or hostile towards the interna- tional language movement. Lojban also is not in direct competition with Esperanto, in that Loj- ban's potential success is not dependent on its immediate practical use as an international language. Lojban has proven attractive to Esperantists interested in acquiring a new perspective on their own international lan- guage', who feel less threatened because Lojban has different goals. Loj- ban's supporters recognize that it will take decades for Lojban to acquire both the number and variety of speakers and the extensive history of usage that marks Esperanto culture. Meanwhile, each language community has much to learn from each other; this process has started and is most active. How about English as an international language? English is commonly used as an 'international language' in the fields of science and technology, and is probably the most-widely spoken language in the world. American dominance of technology this century has caused massive borrowing from English into other languages that do not have words for all these new concepts. This dominance, and a heritage of colonialism and imperialism that built resentment towards American and European impo- sitions on native culture, has caused recent movements in other countries away from English. The rising influence of Japan and other countries on world economics, science, and technology makes further declines in En- glish's universality likely. In addition, most who know English as a second language speak it only minimally, though they may be able to read or understand many words. In fact, English is one of the most difficult languages to learn fluently. In countries where English is spoken along with other languages, it has been adapted into dialects which match the local culture and borrow words from the other local languages. Some of these dialects are as much as 70% unintelligible to American or British speakers, or to each other. As such, there is no single English language to call an 'international' one. Lojban is a single language, with design features to discourage dialectization. While it was developed primarily by Americans and sup- ports the full range of expression of English, Lojban's cultural neutral- ity gives equal priority to the structures and concepts of other languages and cultures. This cultural neutrality enhances Lojban's acceptability as an international language. Since it is as capable of generating or bor- rowing any words needed to support the concepts of science and technology as English, and has advantages for computer applications, Lojban is likely to spread worldwide through the technological community. Far more so than English, Lojban is simple and easy to learn for people of all cultures. Why should I learn Lojban? There are several reasons for learning the language now. Those who are working with the language now are actively consulted for their opin- ions on how to teach and spread the language. Within a few weeks of work learning the material already written and some of the vocabulary, you will be able to work with those who have already started. You will be a sig- nificant part of this small but rapidly growing community. You will re- ceive personalized attention to any problems you have with the language from those leading the effort. If you are truly ambitious and committed to the language, you are welcome to join in that leadership. Those with a computer background who learn the language now will be the leaders in developing the first meaningful computer applications for the language. Expertise in the language will no doubt be valuable as Loj- ban becomes recognized as a useful tool for computer applications by the computer industry. Meanwhile, computer-oriented Lojbanists can also aid in developing computer-aided instruction tools or converting existing software to run on new computers. 10 Those without a computer orientation will also find Lojban a valuable language. You may be interested in the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, and in the scientific tests to be planned and conducted, or in other language-related research. You may be interested in Lojban's potential as international language, and in the attempts to use the language to reach across cultural bounds. Regardless of your background, you will find learning Lojban to be a mind-expanding experience. Learning any language other than your native tongue broadens your perspectives and allows you to transcend the limited viewpoints of your native language culture. Lojban, being much simpler to learn than natural languages, provides this benefit much more quickly than does the study of other languages. Having learned Lojban, you will find it easier to learn other lan- guages and to communicate with people from other backgrounds, regardless of the language studied; the linguistic principles you learn while learn- ing Lojban are applicable to these languages and communication problems. It is believed that, for anyone planning to later learn other languages, the short time spent learning Lojban will be made up by the reduced time needed later to learn those others. Studies in the 1930's, for example, demonstrated that students could acquire greater skill in French through one semester of Esperanto followed by one semester of French, than they could by a full year course in French. Lojban offers similar benefits, less likely to be limited to Eu- ropean languages. For example, structures in Japanese that are difficult to explain in English because they are so unlike English usage are much easier to explain using Lojban patterns. The logical organization embedded in Lojban will aid you in organiz- ing and clarifying your thoughts. Having done so, your new perspective on language, ambiguity, and communication will allow you to express those thoughts more clearly, even when you use an ambiguous natural language. A short introductory course in Lojban for high school (or younger) students has been proposed. A relatively short study of Lojban would pro- vide the linguistic understanding that was once associated with studying Latin and other languages for much longer periods of time. Such study can be tied in with concepts of logic, and possibly with computer-related activities, helping to show the essential interrelated nature of language and other human endeavor. You needn't learn Lojban for any practical purpose, however. Many, if not most, of those who are learning Lojban are doing so because it is fun. Learning Lojban is intellectually stimulating, providing human in- teraction (a way to meet other people and get to know them) and mental challenge. Lojban has all the benefits of games designed for entertain- ment, with the added prospect of that entertainment possibly developing into a useful skill as a side benefit. Learning Lojban as an 'intellectual toy' means that you can get en- joyment from learning Lojban without nearly the effort needed to benefit from studying other languages. While becoming fluent in Lojban will prob- ably take hundreds of hours over several months, you can feel some sense of accomplishment in the language after just a couple of hours of study. You can use Lojban immediately for fun, while gaining skill with greater experience. How do I learn Lojban? If you received this brochure by mail, you probably also received an overview of the language design and structures, and possibly other materi- als such as an introductory lesson. If you obtained this brochure via computer transmission, these added materials are probably available via the same source. If you have not received these materials, you may write to The Logical Language Group, Inc. at the address found at the end of this brochure, and we will be happy to provide them. We request a contri- bution of $5 to cover the costs of these materials (listed on the Regis- tration form as "Package 0"). 11 (We ask that those obtaining our materials by computer register your interest with us by postal or computer mail, and that you consider con- tributing to The Logical Language Group to help offset our continuing costs in general support of the Lojban community. We currently spend an average of over $20 U.S. per year per known member of the community, sev- eral of whom cannot pay either due to finances or overseas currency ex- change difficulties; any amount you contribute will be helpful.) Once you have read these initial materials, there are several direc- tions you may proceed, depending on your time, location, and other circum- stances, and your goals for use of the language. Most people learning the language will work for some time on their own before working with others. We recommend where possible, that you identify at least one other person to study and interact with, either in person or by mail. The Logical Language Group maintains lists of Lojban students of various degrees of skill and activity levels. There is also at least one active computer mail exchange list accessible from Internet, Usenet, Compuserve, and possibly with some work from FIDOnet. Information will be found at the end of this brochure. Almost any use you wish to make of Lojban requires some degree of mastery of the basic vocabulary. You can learn enough Lojban grammar to support conversation in just a couple of hours, but you will need vocabu- lary in order to use that grammar. You can learn the Lojban vocabulary using flash cards; The Logical Language Group distributes a set of cards and we have developed flash card techniques that are extremely efficient in helping you learn the vocabu- lary. The flash card technique has been automated into computer-aided- teaching programs sold under the name "LogFlash", with MS-DOS and MacIn- tosh versions currently available. (Other computer-aided-instruction programs are available or under development, and a Lojban grammar-checking parser will be available in mid-1991 for several computer environments. At least one interactive game program using Lojban text and commands is under development in 1991.) You can learn the Lojban grammar in several ways, including study of examples in the quarterly journal ju'i lobypli or by inspection and analy- sis of the formal grammar description (written for use with the computer language tool "YACC" - this option is most practical for people who have studied computer languages using similar descriptions). A simplified ver- sion of the latter in 'E-BNF notation' is found in "Package 1" and the complete formal grammar is found in "Package 2", both available from The Logical Language Group. Draft lesson materials are distributed as "Package 3" by The Logical Language Group, and are the best materials available for self-study. The materials consist of 6 draft lessons totalling 283 pages, an additional non-lesson description of 'negation' grammar in Lojban, and an outline showing topics not addressed in the lessons and a suggested order of study that can be pursued using 'Package 1 and 2' materials. Lojban classes have been taught intermittently since early 1989. A Lojban textbook is being written to reflect what is learned from these first learning efforts. The textbook is being designed so that it can be used for self-instruction, classroom teaching, or group study. The Logi- cal Language Group will let you know of any planned study group activities in your area, and will announce the textbook when it is completed. A for- mal 'Lojban dictionary' will eventually replace most of the 'Package 1 and 2' word lists and language description materials, probably about a year after the textbook is completed, but those materials contain the equiva- lent of a basic dictionary right now. Approximately 6 months after the dictionary is published the Lojban language definition will be baselined (frozen) for 5 years, and Lojban will thereafter be solely controlled by speakers of the language. Other materials which may be available include language tapes and video tapes. At this writing a language tape coordinated with the draft lessons is available, and an unedited video tape of a teaching session is being considered for release. Consult an order form for current products. 12 Of course the only way to really learn a language is to USE it. The Logical Language Group will assist you in finding other Lojban students of comparable skill level and interests, either in your local area or reach- able by post or computer mail. The quarterly journal ju'i lobypli regu- larly contains Lojban text, some with detailed translations and some with- out translation, as well as discussions of language points by various mem- bers of the Lojban community. Of course the best way to use the language is to recruit friends and associates into studying and using the language with you. Even if they are not interested in the same language goals as you are, the 'hobbyist' aspect of the language will provide interesting and stimulating entertainment for all concerned. What is The Logical Language Group? The Logical Language Group, Inc. is a non-profit organization, the embodiment of the Loglan/Lojban community. We were founded to complete the language development process, to develop and publish teaching materi- als, to organize and teach the community, to promote applications of Loj- ban, and to initiate and lead research efforts in linguistics, language education, and other areas related to Lojban. Simply put, our purpose is to serve you in all manner of things Lojbanic. The Logical Language Group is not affiliated with The Loglan Institute, Inc., the organization founded by James Cooke Brown. The Logical Language Group is also called "la lojbangirz." (/lah- lozh-BAHN-geerz./), its Lojban name. It was founded informally in 1987, and incorporated in 1988. The U. S. Internal Revenue Service approved our status as a non-profit educational/scientific charity in 1989, making do- nations and grants to the organization deductible under U. S. tax law. Loglan/Lojban has been developed almost totally by volunteer labor and small donations of money. Lojban attracts people who are willing to devote a lot of time and effort to seeing their dreams become reality. Thus, our only income has been money derived from sales of our publica- tions, and donations from interested supporters. The Logical Language Group publishes and sells materials on a bal- ance/credit system. We distribute materials to people and ask that they contribute to cover the costs of those materials. All language definition information is considered in the public domain, and most Logical Language Group publications are distributed under a policy which allows not-for- charge copying and redistribution. Computer versions of many of our pub- lications are available. We ask that people who receive our materials un- der any of these alternate means to register your interest in Lojban with us so we may better serve that community, and donate liberally so that we may continue to serve you. We ask that you keep a positive account balance of up to a year or more of expected expenditures for orders, as indicated on our registration and order forms. Such balance money serves as our day-to-day operating funds. We will refund positive balance contributions within 6 weeks of your request. If you move without notifying us and we therefore cannot contact you, we will maintain your positive balance for a year before treating it as a donation. Most materials that we sell require either prior payment, an informal commitment to pay on your part, or your statement that you cannot afford to pay for materials (in which case our supplying these materials is at our discretion). We attempt to flexibly support Lojbanists with financial constraints, and will accept reasonable offers of reduced or delayed pay- ments subject to our financial condition, coupled with your commitment to actively maintain contact and involvement with the community through us. Obviously, the level of your prior and current activity and any commit- ments you make in learning the language or in volunteer work for la loj- bangirz. will be factored into our decision. 13 la lojbangirz. has a special commitment to support non-U. S. Lojban- ists, because so many of the language goals are dependent on building an international community of speakers, and because we recognize the diffi- culties caused by the international currency market and the relative wealth of nations. We can accept bank cheques in most currencies and in- ternational payment via Master Card and Visa. We also encourage groups to form and receive a single copy of our materials, copying or passing them to others so that the per-person costs remain low. We require a lower standard of contact and contribution from overseas Lojbanists when decid- ing on whether to continue sending our materials at reduced or no charge. We ask that all recipients of our materials voluntarily contribute what you can, and to maintain sufficient funds in your balance to cover our suggested prices. These will be deducted automatically when we send you materials. We will notify you requesting more money when your balance becomes negative. We reserve the right to refuse orders when your balance is not fully paid, but again will make every effort to support those who support Lojban through their time, commitment, and money. You have no legal obligation to pay for materials sent to you without your request, but such materials will be charged against your balance in the absence of any agreement otherwise, with adjustments made to that bal- ance per agreement. If we accept an offer of reduced payment from you, we will charge that amount to your balance. We ask all recipients of our materials to help us financially in any way you can. The Logical Language Group needs your gifts for support of the Loglan/Lojban project. Artificial languages are historically not financially lucrative, and have difficulty receiving outside support. The Logical Language Group, Inc. is prohibited by its bylaws from spending more than 10% of its expenses for administrative purposes, except by spe- cial agreement with a donor who agrees to cover such added costs in full. How does The Logical Language Group serve the community? We try to keep the community informed. Not everyone has the time available to participate in all of our activities. A quarterly newslet- ter, le lojbo karni, is sent to everyone in the community. A longer jour- nal, ju'i lobypli, is also published quarterly. It contains discussions of features of the language, debates on research issues and applications, letters from the community and responses, and a growing quantity of Lojban writings and translations. Our publications are free of advertisements (other than our own or- dering information, and occasional mention of individuals and organiza- tions who have contributed particular service to our efforts), and we do not sell our mailing list. Our publications are distributed as cheaply as possible to encourage new people to participate. In the interest of attracting the widest audience possible, we are committed to distributing as much material as possible using the 'Shareware' concept for computer software and a similar policy for printed publications. This policy re- tains our copyrights but allows you, with relatively little restriction, to copy our materials for your friends, as long as you don't charge for the copies. We also ask that recipients of copies register with us, so that we know who has our materials. Such registration does not require contribution. Certain materials that we publish contain information that we place in the public domain. All language definition information is considered to be public. You can participate in the Lojban community at several levels of ac- tivity, listed on the detachable registration form that accompanies this brochure. Contributor's costs can range from as little as $5-$10 per year to receive only le lojbo karni, to greater amounts for people actively learning the language. We automatically send you materials based on your indicated level of activity; this minimizes individual order processing and simplifies our paperwork, keeping our costs down. 14 If you are attempting to learn the language, we provide as much help as we can to assist in this process. We will put you in touch with Loj- banists who might be interested in studying or communicating with you in the language. You can also send your writings to us for review, or for indirect exchange with others. Grammatically correct writings may be se- lected for printing in our publications. We try to foster research and social interaction among those who are learning, or who have already learned the language. We aid such people in organizing, leading, and teaching formal classes and study groups, and will sponsor affiliated groups in local areas where non-profit sponsorship brings useful benefits. We also conduct an annual (late June) celebration of the language and com- munity, called "LogFest", in conjunction with our annual business meeting in the Washington DC area. We also expect to support other local meetings and gatherings as the community grows. We are seeking avenues to engage in larger research efforts and to actively work on applications for the language. Thus we are seeking grants and contracts, as well as financial and technical assistance from individuals, companies, and universities. These are a relatively low pri- ority now, but their importance is expected to grow as the teaching mate- rials are completed and the language stabilization is completed. Ideas and information in these areas are welcome. Of course, we also try to publicize the language. Our representa- tives attend meetings and give presentations on the language. We dis- tribute these brochures. Through our efforts, and with your help, the community of Lojbanists is rapidly growing. What can I do now? You can become involved in the Lojban project in a variety of ways, depending on your background and interests, and on your available time: - you can participate in completing the language development; - you can devise applications for Lojban in computers, education, lin- guistics, and other fields; - you can help in organizing Lojbanists in your area, and in recruiting new Lojbanists; - you can help in teaching the language to new people (even while learning yourself); - you can assist in spreading Lojban to non-English-speaking cultures by helping translate materials into other languages and by iden- tifying, recruiting, and communicating with contacts in other countries (international involvement is vital to ensuring that Lojban remains culturally neutral); - you can contribute financially to support our organization, its ac- tivities, and its publications; - you can use Lojban in composition, translation, and in conversation with other Lojbanists. For many of these activities, you need to learn the language first. However, even those who haven't time to learn the language at this point, or who live apart from other Lojbanists, can assist in recruiting and con- tributing ideas to the effort. Helping to publicize the language, of course, does not take a lot of time, or necessarily even knowing the language. Talk to friends, rela- tives and colleagues. We will gladly provide copies of this brochure upon your request. Lojban tends to sell itself; people who become informed tend to be interested to at least some degree. If you respond, we will send you materials appropriate to your de- sired level of activity, including (as a default - see the registration form) a package of introductory materials (that you may have received with this brochure), and the latest issue of le lojbo karni, which will bring you up-to-date on what is happening in the community. If you indicate a 15 higher activity level, you will receive more detailed materials, up to and including teaching materials. You can also order our computer products, specialized text materials, back issues of the newsletter and journal, and various specialty items. See our order form for details. Keep in touch with us. We want to know your ideas and opinions on the language, on our various activities, and on our products. We welcome open debate on the language design, and have even printed and made avail- able writings that are critical of various aspects of our efforts, when they are of sufficient general interest. Open debate aids in understand- ing and improves the overall quality of the language and of our presenta- tion of it to the world. We would rather hear criticism now within our friendly community and either correct our problems or prepare an adequate response, than to do so later when such issues are raised by outsiders. In short, Lojban is a product of ALL of the community, including YOU - if you choose. Of course, once you have started to learn the language, USE LOJBAN Lojban will not really achieve the status of 'language' until people use it. We need creative people to write Lojban prose, poetry, and dia- log. We need translations made from fiction, technical literature, from religious and philosophical writings, and from music. Only in this way will Lojban be proven practical, and gain the credibility it needs to suc- ceed. Who do I contact? Write or call Bob LeChevalier The Logical Language Group, Inc. 2904 Beau Lane Fairfax, VA 22031 (703) 385-0273 USENET, UUCP, and INTERNET mail can be sent to us at: lojbab@snark.thyrsus.com An active newsgroup/mail exchange is available on this network. To join, contact: lojban-list-request@snark.thyrsus.com and send mailings to all newsgroup members via: lojban-list@snark.thyrsus.com Compuserve members can join this group, or can contact us, by preceding any of the above addresses with "INTERNET:". Fidonet connects with the Internet via a variety of nodes - contact your SYSOP. If you have no network access, the AMRAD bulletin board (300/1200/2400 baud) in the Washington DC area has a conference dedicated to Lojban. It is accessible via PC Pursuit as well as through normal tele- phone access. Call (703) 734-1387, and follow the instructions given for the "Loglan Conference". Please leave a message addressed to "Bob LeChevalier" or the SYSOP. The conference is presently inactive, but we check occasionally for messages. 16 If you have received a registration form and an order form with this brochure, you can provide us with useful information to aid us in serving you, and can order some of our materials. e'osai ko sarji la lojban. /eh-ho-sai, ko-SAHR-zhee, lah-LOZH-bahn./ Please support Lojban! LOJBAN REGISTRATION Name: ___________________________________________________________________ Street Address: _________________________________________________________ City, State, (Country), Zip: ____________________________________________ Home Phone: ______________________ Work Phone: __________________________ Computer Net Address (Indicate Network): ____________________________________________________________________ My primary interest(s) in Lojban are (check any that are applicable): ____ linguistics applications/theory _____ computer applications ____ foreign language/linguistics education _____'international' language ____ other:______________________________________________________________ Activity Level: _____ I am not interested in further involvement. Please remove me from your active lists. _____ (Level B) Observer - (default) _____ (Level C) Active Supporter _____ (Level D) Lojban Student _____ (Level E) Lojban Practitioner We offer the following packages of printed materials. We will keep records of materials that we know you have received to allow us to provide updates on request. (Default is Package 0) (Package 0) The initial package of brochure and introductory materials. (49 pg - Suggested price $4) (Package 1) Word lists and language description. (132 pg. - Suggested price $13.20) (Package 2) Language design information. (78 pg. - Suggested price $7.80) (Package 3) Draft teaching materials. (321 pg. Suggested price $32.10) The above materials are non-overlapping, but the contents of each may vary with time. Packages 0, 1, and 2 are available in computer media (MS-DOS, specify format) and on some networks. We request that you contribute some or all of the suggested price and tell us what materials you have obtained. I would like the following packages: _________________ I have received, or obtained electronically, the following and should not be sent them: _________________________________________________________________________ _____ Please send me updates to materials automatically. I will maintain a positive account balance (suggested $10-$20), and reimburse any shortfalls promptly. The Logical Language Group publishes two quarterly publications. Please indicate which, if any, you wish to subscribe to. JL contains all information in LK. (Default is subscription to LK.) Sample JL Issue $6. _____ No subscription please _____ (LK) le lojbo karni - newsletter for level B/package 0 (10 pg/issue, Suggested $5/yr or 4 issues) _____ (JL) ju'i lobypli - journal for level C/package 1 or above (60 pg/issue, Suggested $20/yr or 4 issues) _____ I am interested in communicating with others at my interests and level ____ in person ____ via post ____ for study, ____ for discussion of interest areas marked above, ____ via computer mailing list _____ I enclose ________ to establish/add to my account balance. (20% discount on prepaid orders over $20) _____ I would like to donate a gift of _______ to support Lojban ac- tivities, independent of my balance. _____ I can't pay full price for the materials I want, but request them anyway at your discretion, subject to my commitment to continued, regular interaction with LLG. I offer ______ towards the costs. VA residents add 4.5% sales tax, except on subscription prices. Visa/Master Card accepted with 6% service charge (Provide number, exp. date, signature). Non US/Canada add 20% surcharge for air mail bulk shipment (default), 30% for air mail. 20% discount on prepaid orders over $20. Send to: The Logical Language Group, Inc., 2904 Beau Lane, Fairfax VA USA 22031-1303 Phone Information: 703-385-0273 Ron Hale-Evans...The Not Ready For Apocalypse Players...rwhe@apocalypse.org I CHING MAILING LIST = http://www.apocalypse.org/~rwhe/hex8.html "KENNEXIONS" GLASS BEAD GAME = http://www.apocalypse.org/~rwhe/gbg.html RON'S INFO-CLOSET = http://www.apocalypse.org/~rwhe/ Mime-Version: 1.0 Date: Fri, 21 Nov 1997 16:54:21 -0800 To: Kennexions Distribution List:; From: Ronald Hale-Evans Subject: KENNEX: Lojban Mini-Lesson Copyright, 1991, by the Logical Language Group, Inc. 2904 Beau Lane, Fairfax VA 22031-1303 USA Phone (703) 385-0273 lojbab@access.digex.net All rights reserved. Permission to copy granted subject to your verification that this is the latest version of this document, that your distribution be for the promotion of Lojban, that there is no charge for the product, and that this copyright notice is included intact in the copy. This is the 16 September 1991 draft of the Lojban Mini-Lesson, an introduction to the language that is intended to give readers a basic idea as to how Lojban looks and sounds, and how it differs from English and other languages. For those familiar with it, this corresponds to the first of the Esperanto Postal Course lessons, except that thus far, this is the only lesson, and it covers a bit more of the language in one unit. This mini-lesson is expected to become a mainstay of our introductory package for Lojban. At this posting we already have people committed to translate this into Esperanto and Swedish, and other language versions are expected to follow. We are interested in comments on the readability and understandability of this material. We especially want people to go through it, and then to try the exercises at the end, so we can determine whether the lesson teaches the material and whether the exercises are appropriate and within the capability of the student. We want responses from both active Lojbanists and people who have not seen any of our material before. We are interested in more than just corrections of typos - we want to know what you understood, and what needs more explanation. LLG will commit to providing individual responses to all questions generated from this draft circulation, and will provide an commented answer key to anyone who returns a completed response (please allow a little time for these responses - we have no idea how much volume is to be generated). For our benefit, if you do the exercises. please let us know whether you did them as you went along, or after reading the entire lesson text, and also give us a rough idea how much time the entire lesson took. Of course this may cause reviewers to become more interested in learning Lojban, and we certainly would not object to that. Contact LLG at the address above for more information. A final draft is expected to be posted for circulation and electronic distribution before the end of the year. Primary repository for electronic distribution of Lojban materials is the Planned Languages Server, a Listserv file server at langserv@hebrew.cc.columbia.edu 2 An Introductory Lesson in Lojban (Note: There are exercises at the end of the lesson for each section. You may do these exercises as you go along, or wait until you complete the entire lesson.) 1. The concept of the predicate Let us consider John and Sam and three statements about them: (1) "John is the father of Sam" (2) "John hits Sam" and (3) "John is taller than Sam" These all describe relationships between John and Sam. However, in English, we use a noun to describe a static relationship (1), a verb to describe an active relationship (2) and an adjective to describe an at- tributive relationship (3). In Lojban we make no such grammatical distinctions; these three sentences, when expressed in Lojban, are grammatically identical. The same part of speech is used to represent the relationship. In formal logic this whole structure is called a predicate; in Lojban it is called a "bridi", and the central part of speech is the "selbri". Logicians refer to the things thus related as arguments, while Lojbanists call them "sumti". These Lojban terms will be used for the rest of the lesson. bridi (predicate) ______________|_______________ | | John is the uncle of Sam |____| |_______________| |___| | | | sumti selbri sumti (argument) 2. Place structures In a relationship, there are a definite number of things being related. In English, for example, "give" has three places: the donor, the recipient and the gift. For example: John gives Sam the book. and Sam gives John the book. mean two different things because the relative positions of "John" and "Sam" have been switched. Further, The book gives John Sam. seems strange to us merely because the places are being filled by unorthodox arguments. The relationship expressed by "give" has not changed. 3 In Lojban, a given selbri has a specified number of arguments. The simplest selbri consists of a single root word, called a "gismu", and the definition in a gismu word-list gives the place structure explicitly. The primary task of constructing a Lojban sentence, after choosing the relationship itself, is deciding what you will use to fill in the sumti places. 3. Pronunciation Lojban has six recognized vowels: "a", "e", "i", "o", "u" and "y". The first five are the pure Romance vowels: "a" as in "father", "e" as in "let", "i" as in "machine", "o" as in "dome" and "u" as in "flute". "y" is pronounced as the sound called 'schwa', that is, as the unstressed "a" as in "about" or "around". Twelve consonants in Lojban are pronounced more or less as their counterparts are in English: "b", "d", "f", "k", "l", "m", "n", "p", "r", "t", "v" and "z". The "c", on the other hand is pronounced as the "sh" in "hush", while "j" is its 'voiced' counterpart, the sound of the "s" in "pleasure". "g" is always hard as it is in "gift", never as in "giant". "s" is as in "sell", never as in "rose". The sound of "x" is not found in English; it is like 'breathing through' a "k". It is found as "ch" in Scottish "loch", as Spanish "j", and as "ch" in some dialects of German. It gets easier to say as you practice it. "r" can be trilled, but doesn't have to be. Lojban also has three 'semi-letters': the period, the comma and the apostrophe. The period represents a glottal stop or a pause; it is a required stoppage of the flow of air in the speech stream. The apostrophe sounds just like the English letter "h". Unlike a regular consonant, it is not found at the beginning or end of a word, nor is it found adjacent to a consonant; it is only found between two vowels. The comma has no sound associated with it, and is used to separate syllables that might ordinarily run together. It is only found inside names taken from other languages (it helps preserve the original sound of a name). Stress falls on the next to the last syllable of all words, except if that vowel is 'y', which is never stressed; in such words the third-to-last syllable is stressed. If a word only has one syllable, then that syllable is not stressed. 4. Single words that can act as sumti Some words can be used singly to fill in a sumti place. mi I, me, we, us, the speaker (and maybe others, unspecified) -- Lojban words (unless explicitly quantified, i.e. labeled with a number), do not distinguish between sin- gular and plural forms. do you, you all, thou, the person(s) addressed by the speaker ti this thing, this person, this place (usually indicated by a gesture) ta that thing, that person, that place tu that yonder thing, that yonder person, that yonder place zo'e something, it's not important that you know what ("zo'e" is used as a place filler) da something, I haven't determined what ("da" is the 'existential variable' of logic) ma what?, fill in this blank ("ma" is used for asking some kinds of questions) 4 Let's look at a simple Lojban bridi. The place structure of the gismu "tavla" is __s1__ talks to __s2__ about __s3__ in language __s4__ This bridi will then have the form __s1__ tavla __s2__ __s3__ __s4__ For example: mi tavla do zo'e zo'e means I talk to you about something in some language. do tavla mi ta zo'e means You talk to me about that thing in a language. mi tavla zo'e tu ti means I talk to someone about that thing yonder in this language. ta tavla ma mi zo'e means That person talks to who(?) about me in some language. or Who is that person talking to about me? 5. Ellipsis There are many words in Lojban that do not need to be written or spoken aloud for them to operate. For example, when "zo'e" is left off of the end of the bridi, it is understood that the sumti place still exists, and is filled with some unstated sumti. This process is called ellipsis. Trailing "zo'e"s are almost always ellipsized. mi tavla do means I talk to you. do tavla mi means You talk to me. da tavla ta means Someone talks to that person. do tavla zo'e mi means You are talking about me. zo'e tavla mi do means Someone talks to me about you. 6. Variant forms of the bridi Thus far you have seen one sumti before the selbri with any remaining sumti coming afterward. In fact, the selbri may come after any number of the sumti without changing the meaning of the bridi (but not before all of them). So: mi tavla do ti I talk to you about this. mi do tavla ti I, to you, talk about this. and mi do ti tavla I, to you, about this, talk. all represent the same relationship. The important thing is that the order of the sumti has not changed. These variations similarly apply to selbri with different numbers of sumti. 5 7. sumti switching For one reason or another you may want to change the order, placing one particular sumti at the front of the bridi. The operator "se", placed before the last word of the selbri, will switch the meanings of the first and second sumti places. So mi tavla do ti I talk to you about this. has the same meaning as do se tavla mi ti You are talked to by me about this. The operator "te", used in the same place, switches the meanings of the first and the third sumti places. mi tavla do ti I talk to you about this. has the same meaning as ti te tavla do mi This is talked about to you by me. Note that only the first and third sumti have switched places; the second sumti has remained in the second place. The operators "ve" and "xe" switch the first and fourth sumti places, and the first and fifth sumti places, respectively. More than one of these operators may be used on a given selbri at one time, and in such a case they are evaluated from left to right. However, in practice they are used one at a time, as there are better tools for complex manipulation of the sumti places. 8. selbri modification When two gismu are adjacent the first one modifies the second, and the selbri takes its place structure from the rightmost word. For example, "sutra" means "__s1__ is fast at doing __s2__"; "sutra tavla" means "__s1__ talks fast to __s2__ about __s3__ in language __s4__". Specifically, the meaning of the first place of the first word is what modifies the next word: "sutra tavla" means "__s1__ is a fast-thing type of talker to __s2__ about __s3__ in language __s4__". When three or more gismu are in a row, the first modifies the second, and that combined meaning modifies the third, and that combined meaning modifies the fourth, and so on. For example, "sutra tavla cutci" means "__s1__ is a fast-talker type of shoe (for __s2__ of material __s3__)". That is, it is a shoe that is worn by a fast talker rather than a shoe that is fast and is also worn by a talker. 9. Converting a selbri to a sumti Often we wish to talk about things other than the speaker, the listener and things we can point to. Let's say I want to talk about a talker other than "mi". What I want to talk about would naturally fit into the first place of "tavla". Lojban, it turns out, has an operator that pulls this first place out of a selbri and converts it to a sumti. "le tavla" refers to "the talker", and may be used as a sumti. (Note that the double underline in examples marks the selbri, while each single underline marks a sumti. This notation is only for clarifying the sentence structure and is not a part of the language.) 6 mi tavla do le tavla -- ===== -- -------- means I talk to you about the talker Similarly "le sutra tavla" is "the fast talker", and "le sutra te tavla" is "the fast subject of talk" or "the subject of fast talk". (Which of these related meanings is understood will depend on the context in which the expression is used. The most plausible interpretation within the context will generally be assumed by a listener to be the intended one.) 10. Marking the selbri There is a problem when we want to say "the fast one is talking"; "le sutra tavla" means "the fast talker", not "the fast one is talking". To solve this problem we mark the selbri with the word "cu". The word "cu" has no meaning, and stands only to mark the beginning of the selbri within the bridi, separating it from a previous sumti. It comes before any other operator, such as "se" or "te". So: le sutra tavla means the fast talker -------------- le sutra cu tavla means The fast one is talking. -------- ===== le sutra se tavla means The fast talked-to one. ----------------- le sutra cu se tavla means The fast one is talked to. -------- ======== "cu" is always assumed to be in front of the selbri. It may be elided (left out) if this will not alter the grammar of the sentence, as in "mi cu tavla do". 11. Names All words in Lojban end in vowels except for names. Names end in a consonant followed by a pause or glottal stop, either of which is represented by a period. Note that all grammatical punctuation in Lojban is spoken and represented by words rather than symbols. Names are 'Lojbanized' by conforming them to Lojban spelling and providing a final consonant if there isn't one; this consonant is typically "s" or "n" for English names, but any Lojban consonant may be used. Remember that a comma without spaces around it in the middle of a name can be used to separate syllables that would ordinarily be run together in Lojban. To convert a Lojbanized name into a sumti, use the article "la". "la djan." is "the one called John". For obvious reasons, the letter sequence "la" may not occur inside any name. Likewise, "doi" may not appear in a name, for reasons that will be obvious in the following section. (If a name would use either of these two sound patterns, it must be changed, perhaps to use "ly" or "le", "do'i" or "dei" instead.) 7 12. Vocatives and imperatives You may call someone's attention to the fact that you are addressing them by using "doi" followed by their name. The phrase "doi djan." means "Oh, John, I'm talking to you". It also has the effect of setting the value of "do"; "do" now refers to "John" until it is changed in some way in the conversation. If you say "do tavla", it means "you are talking". For the imperative in Lojban, the word "ko" is substituted for "do". The phrase "ko tavla" instructs the listener to do whatever is necessary to make "do tavla" true. For example: ko tavla means Talk. -- ===== ko sutra means Be fast. -- ===== mi tavla ko means Be talked to by me. -- ===== -- or Let me talk to you. "ko" can fill any appropriate sumti place, and can be used as often as is appropriate for the selbri: "ko kurji ko" and "ko ko kurji" both mean "You take care of you" and "Be taken care of by you", or to put it colloquially, "Take care of yourself". 13. Greetings In all natural languages, greeting words are idiomatic. In Lojban "coi" means "hello" and "co'o" means "good-bye". Either word may stand alone, they may follow one another, or either may be followed by a pause and a name. coi. djan. means Hello, John. co'o. djan. means Good-bye, John. 14. Attitudinals Different cultures express emotions and attitudes with a variety of intonations and gestures that are not included in the written language. Some of these are available in some languages as ejaculations (i.e. Aha!, Oh no!, Ouch!, Aahh!, etc.), but they vary greatly from culture to culture. Lojban has a part of speech known as an 'attitudinal' which specifically covers this type of commentary on spoken statements. They are both written and spoken, but require no specific intonation or gestures. Grammatically they are very simple: one or more attitudinals at the beginning of a bridi apply to the entire bridi; anywhere else in the bridi they apply to the word immediately to the left. 8 Some attitudinals are: Lojban English attitude Ejaculations and other English used to express these attitudes ______ ________________ _______________________________ .a'o hope hopefully, I hope .e'o request, petition, please!, get it done! command (with rank) .iu love, endearment, affection .oi complaint, discomfort Oy!, Ouch! .ua discovery Eureka! .ui happy, cheerful Whee! .uu pity, compassion Aww! Attitudinals represent scales of emotion, and there are some indicators available to show where on the scale you are: cai intense or absolute .iucai intense love extreme feeling sai strong feeling .iusai strong love ru'e weak or mild feeling .iuru'e mild love cu'i indifference .iucu'i "no love lost" nai single word negator .iunai hate, enmity naicai intense opposite .iunaicai intense hate naisai strong opposite .iunaisai strong hatred nairu'e mild or weak opposite .iunairu'e mild hatred Intensity indicators may stand on their own, indicating intensity of emotion while leaving the emotion unspecified, or they may be used to modify another attitudinal, but they will only modify the word immediately to the left. Thus ".a'o.uu" expresses hope mixed with pity, but ".a'o.uucai" expresses "hope mixed with intense pity", not "intense hope mixed with intense pity". (Note that, unlike in a selbri, attitudinals do not modify each other in any strict order, but are mixed. If multiple emotions are indicated, the one that the speaker wants most to express usually comes first.) 15. Yes or no questions All yes or no questions in English may be reformulated to begin "Is it true that ...". In Lojban we have a word that asks precisely that question in precisely the same way. "xu" placed in front of a bridi asks whether that bridi is true as stated. "xu", however, is technically an attitudinal and can go almost anywhere in the bridi, in which case it asks the same question but emphasizes the word immediately to the left of it. So xu do tavla mi means Is it true that you are talking to me? -- ===== -- do xu tavla mi means Are you the one talking to me? -- ===== -- do tavla xu mi means Talking to me? Is that what you're doing? -- ===== -- do tavla mi xu means Is it me you are talking to? -- ===== -- 9 An affirmative answer may be given by simply restating the bridi. Lojban has a shorthand for doing this with the word "go'i". This word stands for the whole bridi and assumes the values represented by the sumti are unchanged unless you specifically replace them. Instead of a negative answer, the bridi may be restated in such a way as to make it true. If this can be done by substituting sumti, it may be done with "go'i" as well. question: xu do kanro Are you healthy? answer: mi kanro I am healthy. or: go'i I am healthy. ("do" to the questioner is "mi" to the respondent) or: le tavla cu kanro The talker is healthy. or: le tavla cu go'i The talker is healthy. A general negative answer may be given by "na go'i". "na" may be placed before any selbri (but after the "cu"). It is equivalent to stating "It is not true that ..." before the bridi. It does not imply that anything else is true or untrue, only that that specific bridi is not true. 16. Other terms All gismu have combining-forms associated with them which may be combined into compounds called "lujvo". All gismu have at least one combining-form associated with them and may have as many as four, not counting the full form of the word, which may only appear at the end of a lujvo. The short combining-forms or affixes are called "rafsi". A lujvo may act in any way like a gismu within a bridi. Any word that can behave in this way is called a "brivla"; that is, a brivla is any word that can stand alone in a selbri or can modify another brivla. When two or more brivla are strung together in a selbri or a sumti, the combination is called a "tanru". A tanru may also have "se"-type operators as well as brivla in it, as well as some other features not yet covered. The little words that are not brivla, and usually indicate grammatical structure are called "cmavo". The cmavo also include the attitudinals and short sumti like "mi" and "do". 10 * * * * * EXERCISES * * * * * In the following exercises, the numbers on the exercises refer to the section number where the key point of the exercise was explained. 1. a. Look at the example sentence in the diagram for Section 1. What part of speech are "John" and "Sam"? What part of speech is used to describe the relationship between them? b. In Lojban, what is the whole statement called? 2. Where can you find the place structure for a gismu given? 3. a. What English letter corresponds to the sound of the Lojban apostrophe? b. Which Lojban vowel is never stressed? Which syllable in the following words is stressed? c. cmalu d. brivla e. bardymau f. bardyma'i g. mai 4. Translate the following into English: a. mi tavla do ti ma b. do tavla mi ta tu c. do tavla zo'e ma zo'e d. do tavla ta zo'e ti e. mi tavla zo'e zo'e zo'e f. zo'e tavla zo'e mi zo'e g. mi tavla ta do ti 11 Translate the following into Lojban: h. Someone talks to me about you in some language. i. This person talks to that person about me in some language. j. Who is talking to you about me in this language? k. You talk to me about you in this language. l. Who is talking to whom about whom in what language? 5. Rewrite the Lojban sentences given in section 4, as well as the ones you wrote for section 4, ellipsizing as many "zo'e"s as you can without changing the meaning of the sentences. (Reminder: only trailing "zo'e"s may be dropped in this way.) a. b. c. d. e. f. g. h. i. j. k. l. 6. a. Rewrite the sentence "mi tavla da ti ma" in four different forms by changing the position of the selbri. - - - - b. According to the principles given in section 6, how many different forms can the sentence "mi tavla do" have? Do not count any variations made by adding "zo'e"s to the end of the sentence. 12 c. How many forms can "mi klama ta ti ma do" have? The selbri here is "klama". 7. Show the "se" forms of the following bridi. Examples: mi tavla do ti answer: do se tavla mi ti do klama ma ti zo'e answer: ma se klama do ti zo'e a. do tavla mi b. ti tavla do ma c. da klama ti ta zo'e mi d. mi tavla mi e. do catlu tu Show the "te" forms of the following bridi. Examples: mi klama ta ti answer: ti te klama ta mi do tavla mi ma zo'e answer: ma te tavla mi do zo'e do mi ma zo'e tavla answer: ma mi do zo'e te tavla (Don't be frightened by this one. The selbri is in a different position, which does not affect the order of the sumti. The "te" simply switches the first and third sumti. f. do klama mi ta zo'e g. ti ta tu zo'e tavla h. mi tavla zo'e do ti i. da klama tu zo'e zo'e j. mi tu klama ta zo'e do 8. Give a translation of the following selbri. Examples: sutra cutci _s1_ is a fast shoe cutra se tavla _s1_ is a fast talked-to person/thing, talked to by _s2_ about subject _s3_ in language _s4_ a. cutci tavla 13 b. cutci te tavla c. se tavla cutci d. sutra cutci ve tavla Definition: blanu _s1_ is blue/is a blue thing. e. blanu cutci f. sutra blanu g. tavla blanu 9. Translate the following sumti. Examples: le cutci the shoe le ve tavla the language (someone talks in) le sutra tavla the fast shoe a. le te tavla b. le se tavla c. le sutra d. le cutci tavla e. le blanu te tavla f. le sutra cutci 10. In which of the following can the "cu" be dropped without changing the meaning: a. le sutra cutci cu tavla b. mi cu sutra c. mi do le cutci cu tavla d. mi le cutci do cu tavla e. mi do cu tavla le cutci 11. Translate the following common English names from Lojban to English. 14 a. normen. b. meris. c. kar,l. d. tcarlis. e. ker,l. Transcribe these names into Lojban: f. Tom g. Ray h. Sylvia i. Marilyn Which of the following are legal Lojban names? Suggest a possible change for each invalid name that would make it legal. j. ralf. k. alan. l. lora. m. mark. n. niks,n. o. konendoil. Lojbanize the following names (these are more challenging) p. Carla q. Herblock r. Lana s. Billy t. D'Oyly Carte u. Poindexter 12. Translate the following sentences: a. ko cutci b. doi bab. ko kurji mi 15 c. ko se tavla mi d. ko tavla ko le cutci la lojban. e. ko kurji ti f. mi ko do tavla g. ko kurji mi h. mi kurji ko i. ko sutra kurji le cutci 13. (No exercises) 14. Give the meanings of the following attitudinals: a. .iusai b. .a'ocai c. .uinai d. .e'oru'e e. .oicu'i f. .a'o g. .oi h. .ua.oiru'e i. .uinairu'e j. .a'onaicai k. .a'onai.uucai Translate the following sentences: Examples: .e'o ko sutra Please, be fast! .uasai mi cutci Aha! I'm a shoe! .a'o do mi tavla le cutci .iu (I hope) you are talking to me about the shoe (I love the shoe!) l. .ui do tavla mi 16 m. .uacai le cutci cu tavla mi n. ko .uu se tavla mi o. .e'o ko sutra tavla mi le cutci p. .e'ocai ko mi .uu kurji 15. Please answer in Lojban: Examples: xu do tavla mi tavla xu do kanro go'i xu do cutci mi na cutci a. xu do tavla mi b. do le cutci xu cu kurji c. xu le cutci cu sutra d. xu mi sutra e. do mi tavla le sutra cutci xu f. xu do tavla mi la lojban. la lojban. g. xu zo'e zo'e do te tavla la lojban. Send your answers for checking; we will respond with corrections. A stamped, self-addressed envelope is desirable, but not mandatory. In any event, make sure that we have your name and mailing address, if you want a response. Send to: The Logical Language Group, Inc. 2904 Beau Lane, Fairfax VA 22031-1303 USA Those with electronic access to Internet or Usenet may send electronically to: lojbab@access.digex.net Compuserve subscribers may send to: >INTERNET:lojbab@access.digex.net If you are not registered with us, and wish to receive our quarterly newsletter or journal or other Lojban materials, please so indicate. Ron Hale-Evans...The Not Ready For Apocalypse Players...rwhe@apocalypse.org I CHING MAILING LIST = http://www.apocalypse.org/~rwhe/hex8.html "KENNEXIONS" GLASS BEAD GAME = http://www.apocalypse.org/~rwhe/gbg.html RON'S INFO-CLOSET = http://www.apocalypse.org/~rwhe/ Mime-Version: 1.0 Date: Fri, 21 Nov 1997 16:55:18 -0800 To: Kennexions Distribution List:; From: Ronald Hale-Evans Subject: KENNEX: Lojban FAQ Lojban List FAQ Dec 7, 1995 ============================== TECHNICAL 1a. Why do some texts use instead of <'>? 1b. Could I take a text with s and do a search & replace with <'> and end up with "standard" lojban? 1c. Why is one better than the other? 2. How do you borrow words from other languages? 3. Isn't it confusing that some rafsi are identical to cmavo? 4. What are those lojban word that you are using even in English text? What's all the other jargon and acronyms you use? =============================== RESOURCES 5. What's the best way to start learning Lojban? 6. How can I look up gismu, lujvo, and cmavo when I am translating from lojban? 7. Sources of text to read? 8. What messages are appropriate for the Lojban List? 9. What are the abbreviations used on the list's subject lines? 10. Are there archives? WWW site? ftp site? 11. What's available in languages other than English? 12. What software's available? =============================== GENERAL 13. Who is everybody? Who's in charge? 14. How many people are there in the Lojban community? How many can use Lojban, and how well? 15. What is LogFest? =============================== PROJECT STATUS 15. What parts of the language are well worked out, and which parts are in flux? 16. What are the most current revisions of each part of the language descriptions? 17. What projects are being worked on? When will they be done? 18. What can I do to help? ============================= HISTORICAL 19. How was the default place order of sumti in a selbri determined? (There does not appear to be any rhyme or reason for the order of sumti in many gismu.) 20. How did the gismu get made: discussion, etymology examples 21. What's the diff between Loglan, Lojban? How is Loglan-82 related? (it's not!) 22. Why does it have a special meaning when the verb comes first? 23. Why are there so many words for AND? Why not just let {.e} connect two sumti, bridi, bridi-tails, or anything else? ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ TECHNICAL 1a. Why do some texts use instead of <'>? Aesthetic reasons. And Rosta in particular thinks looks better in print than and uses it the hopes that he can influence the Lojban community to accept this other spelling convention. This is purely a difference in spelling; they are pronounced the same, and should be considered different ways of writing the same "letter". This alternate spelling also is somewhat closer to the spelling of TLI Loglan (see #@ below). There is another similar spelling system, which has never been used, designed to make Lojban look more familiar to potential converts from TLI. 1b. Could I take a text with s and do a search & replace with <'> and end up with "standard" lojban? Probably not, because And uses a number of non-standard spelling conventions: <'> is omitted altogether where the vowels couldn't possibly be stuck together; for example he'd write for , since is not a legal combination. He uses <.> as in English, to end a sentence, rather than as a pause. He capitalizes the first word of the sentence. 1c. Why is one better than the other? The standard usage is better because each letter corresponds to one sound and each sound corresponds to one letter. And's usage is better because <.> and <'> are ugly in the middle of words, and sentences ought to start with a capital letter to better conform to Roman alphabet spelling conventions. 2. How do you borrow words from other languages? There are four ways to borrow words. Only the most common method is covered here; see the web or ftp sites for more detail. Borrowed words are called {fu'ivla}, meaning approximately "copied words" (after all, "borrowing" implies we're going to give them back someday!) A fu'ivla consists of three parts: - the classifier - the glue - the borrowed part The quintessential example is {djarspageti}, meaning "spaghetti". {dja} is the classifier: it's the short form (rafsi) for {cidja}, meaning "food". {r} is the glue: its necessary to keep the word from falling into two parts. {spageti} is the Lojbanized version of "spaghetti". The classifier is glued on the front for two reasons: it helps identify strange borrowings, and it prevents borrowings that happen to coincide with things that are already Lojban words. For example if you borrowed the word "spageti" directly, it could lead to ambiguity in a phrase like *{ko bevri re spageti palta} which could mean "Bring two plates of spaghetti" or something like "Be a carrying reptile and a plate made of this" *{ko bevri respa ge ti palta}. In a natural language there would be no doubt which of the two was meant, but Lojban is constructed so that you shouldn't need to understand the sentence to know where one word ends and the next begins. 3. Isn't it confusing that some rafsi are identical to cmavo? Yes, it isn't. In theory you can tell completely from the neighboring syllables whether something is a cmavo or a rafsi. This is how the computer is able to parse Lojban without understanding its meaning. For example the {dei} in {bavlamdei} ("tomorrow") is a rafsi for "day", not the cmavo {dei}, a special pronoun meaning "this sentence". We know which is which because Lojban words can't end in a consonant, so {dei} *must* be a part of {bavlamdei}; {bavlam} can't be a whole word. (No, it can't be a name, either. Names end with a consonant followed by a pause, written as a ".") In practice you can also use your knowledge of the meanings of the words to help with this; it's possible to think up a sentence like {la .bavlam. dei cusku}, "Bavlam says this sentence.", but it's not likely in practice if you don't know anyone named "Bavlam"! 4. What are those lojban word that you are using even in English text? What's all the other jargon and acronyms you use? Here are APPROXIMATE definitions. Words in ALL CAPS on the Lojban list often refer to Lojban parts of speech. When this convention is used, the capitalization of {'} is {h}, so the capitalization of {la'e} would be {LAhE} attitudinal - A lojban interjection (Wow! Eeek!) audiovisual isomorphism - Spoken and written Lojban should be the same BAI - Lojban prepositions bridi - Lojban sentence - a "predicate" brivla - any word that can act like a verb in Lojban - a "predicate word" cmavo - a "little word" showing structure rather than carrying meaning evidential - Special word indicating how the speaker got their information fu'ivla - borrowed word gadri - Lojban article or determiner - signals the start of a sumti GEK GIhEk gismu - basic 5-letter lojban root word GUhEk JCB - James Cooke Brown, the inventor of Loglan JL - ju'i lobypli ju'i lobypli - an old Lojban newsletter le'avla - the old word for fu'ivla lo??an - lojban and loglan lujvo - compound word pe'i - in my opinion rafsi - building block(s) of compound words tanru - a phrase formed of two or more Lojban brivla selbri - the verb-like part of a sentence selma'o - part of speech slinku'i - a hypothetical borrowed word, which is not a legal only because it could be interpred as parts of other words TLI - The Loglan Institute =============================== RESOURCES 5. What's the best way to start learning Lojban? I would recommend: Work through the mini-lesson: http://xiron.pc.helsinki.fi/lojban/minilsn.html 1. Work through the Diagrammed Summary 2. Read through the Reference Grammar -- reading for concepts, not detail 3. Create a cheat sheet with lists of cmavo you're likely to need 4. Read and write Lojban text using the Ref Grammar and your cheat sheets for reference 5. If you get serious about it, use Logflash to bone up on your vocabulary 6. How can I look up gismu, lujvo, and cmavo when I am translating from lojban? Use one of these: - print yourself out some word lists - Keep the dictionary online and use a text editor with searching capability to find stuff in it - In UNIX, make an alias with the "grep" command. 7. Sources of text to read? o The FTP site has some things; an index is here: ftp://ftp.access.digex.net/pub/access/lojbab/roadmap.html#texts o The Lojban list will have discussion in Lojban from time to time o The web site has a few texts: http://xiron.pc.helsinki.fi/lojban/lojban.html o Stuff on paper can be ordered from the Logical Language Group; however at this time Lojbab is concentrating on other things and it's much better if you can retrieve stuff off the net. 8. What messages are appropriate for the Lojban List? Beginners are very encouraged to post. Anything's appropriate as long as the title approximately reflects the content, and you're not selling magazine subscriptions or mail-order brides (exeption: it's OK if it's in Lojban!) You can post on any subject in Lojban, or about Lojban in any language. You can post in any language you think people will understand. Postings in Lojban warm the cockles of Lojbab's heart. 9. What are the abbreviations used on the list's subject lines? A few different people are using different conventions for this purpose; you may see: TECH: technical discussion TEXT: lojban text JBO: or T: lojban text GEN: or G: grammar discussion PLI: or U: usage discussion LOJ: or L: logic discussion CLI: or B: beginner discussion RET: or Q: question to the experienced (not restricted to beginners) LIN: or W: whispers CPE: or R: request for translation SNU: or C: chat (bau la lojban. ju'o) VRC: or D: general discussion (anything that won't fit) (why doesn't vrici have a nice 3 zei lerfu rafsi .oi) TRO: or A: list administration and miscellanea 10. Are there archives? WWW site? ftp site? Web site: http://xiron.pc.helsinki.fi/lojban/lojban.html FTP site: ftp.access.digex.net in directory /pub/access/lojbab Archives: On the FTP site in /pub/access/lojbab/lojban-list 11. What's available in languages other than English? There is a brochure in Esperanto. Jorge and Jose have translated the gismu list into Spanish; it's available by ftp from ftp.access.digex.net in the file /pub/access/lojbab/gismu.spa There are also brochures in French, Spanish, and Russian. 12. What software's available? Parser - on the FTP site Logflash 1 - on the FTP site; teaches gismu Logflash 3 - on the FTP site; teaches cmavo Prolog Semantic Analyzer http://xiron.pc.helsinki.fi/lojban/analyser.html Random Sentence Generator - currently only available by mail. Lujvo program - soon to be available on the FTP site. =============================== GENERAL 13. Who is everybody? Who's in charge? [Wanna be on this list? Write a paragraph in Lojban about yourself and I'll include it.] Scott Brickner sjb@universe.digex.net coi mi'e skat. .i mi se cnino la lojban. gi'e troci .o'nai lo penydjuxa'a .i mi nanca li cire gi'e speni .i mi se jibri le sampla di'o la ibubymym . sedi'o la ostyn. teksas. seka'i la merlyn. grup. .i mi ctuca mi fo la lojban. lenu samci'etid .i.o'acu'i mi xamgu birjyzbasu .i mi ca birjyzbasu lo ke kerfu bo grute bo vrusi ke'e ke galtu bo fusra birje .i mi sutra je zmadu tcidu .ije le cumymu'efi'a ralju James Cooke Brown The inventor of Loglan - not associated with Lojban now John Clifford aka pc pcliffje@CRL.COM A logician, specializing in tense logic, who's been involved with the project for a long time John Cowan cowan@LOCKE.CCIL.ORG Reference Grammar author Jose Ramon Gallo Vazquez gallo%galileo.fie@CS.US.ES coi mi'e. xoses. .i mi spano .i mi xabju la sevi,ias. ne le sangu'e .i mi ca nanca lireci .i mi se ctuca fo lo samske di'o le diklo ckule ni'o mi nelci le bangu .e le kulnu .e le lijda vu'o poi su'anai tcesau gi'a stuna gi'a cizra .iji'a mi nelci le nu tcidu loi cukta gi'e ciska .i mi tcenei tu'a la stanislav. lem. joi la tolki,en. joi la borxes. joi la robrt. greivz. joi so'i lo drata .i mi nelci lo drata noi nuncusku nandu mi bau la lojban. .i mi tcenei la lojban. ni'o be'ucu'i .i .a'o di'u na malspano vau zo'o .i co'o mi'e. xoses. Lojbab aka Bob LeChevalier lojbab@ACCESS.DIGEX.NET Head of the Logical Language Group. Cyril Slobin slobin@FEAST.FE.MSK.RU mi'e kir. .i lu ki,RIL. ar,KAD,ie,vitc. ZLO,bin. li'u mulno cmene mi .i mi jbena fi li pabi pi'e so pi'e pasoxaze .i mi rusko .i mi xabju la moskvas. .i mi skami certu .i la xelen. speni mi .i la serges. bersa mi .i la dinax. me le mi mlatu .i zo'o lo lojbo cmene cu cizra mi .i mi na ca kakne lenu zmadu cusku .i ri'a bo la lojban. ca fange mi .i ku'i mi pacna lenu ri ba slabu mi Goran Topic topic@STUDENT.MATH.HR mi'e goran. .i mi caki nanca lirepapisu'o .i le kerfa .e le kanla vu'o po'e mi manbu'e .i mi mitre lipazeji'imu gi'e ki'ogra lixaji'imu ni'o mi ba'o .uu mlicre lo xumske gi'e ku'i certu lo samske gi'ebo tadni lo banske .i mi pu tadni ca'o lo nanca remei lo cmacyske .iku'i mi steba gi'esemu'ibo sisti ca lenu mi co'a jimpe ledu'u mi selzdi lenu cilre le vrici bangu noi so'ecu'o tcefange gi'ebazibo co'a tadni lo banske ni'o mi pu jivna fi lenu dansu loi spano joi xispo joi merko gi'e pu remoi loi za'e remei pe le mi gugde .i ku'i le mi dansu kansa co'a kansa na'ebo mi .ije mi steba dukse fi'o fanta lenu mi ctuca lo drata ni'oji'a mi tcenei lo xarfi'a gi'e cmima lo diklo xarfi'agri .i mi nunxeldraco kelci .i mi kelci lo selcpa karda po'u la djixad. .i mi kelci loi drata ji'a karda ni'osu'a mi te jinvi ledu'u cizra .ije la'edi'u pluka mi ni'o pe'i dei banzu vau pei co'o mi'e. goran. 14. How many people are there in the Lojban community? How many can use Lojban, and how well? There are about 600 people on the hard-copy mailing list, most of whom have a rather low-level interest: they get the hard-copy newsletter "le lojbo karni", which hopefully will have a new issue in January. There are generally about 90 people on Lojban List. Maybe 15 people post regularly. 15. What is LogFest? LogFest is the annual gathering of the Logical Language Group. We are required by law to have an annual meeting, and have used that excuse to hold a "convention", "party", "social event". for any and all in the community who are willing to come. LogFest is held here at my house in asuburb of Washington DC. We have typically had around 20 people come for part or all of the weekend, and these are usually among the more committed Lojbanists. Usually at least one person has travellled a substantial distance in order to attend, and that person is often treated thereby as a guest of honor of sorts, being a little more "equal" than the others in choosing what activities we focus on. Chris Bogart came from Colorado last summer, and was very intent on Lojban conversation, so we tried much more of this in the last LogFest that at any previous gathering. Other than this focus, LogFest is largely unstructured, in part because we don't know who or how many are coming until a couple of days before things start, and by that time Nora and I are fully involved in preparing the house for lots of company. AS such, some have criticized Logfest fro being illplanned, and I intend next year to get the community via Lojban List to do more planning for the gathering. Next year's LogFest will take place in August. I don't have the exact date at my fingertips. Because of the "officialness" of the gathering, and the fact thatw e actually do have a "meeting" when people vote to set policy for the group, some of the more major decisions tend to get made at or as a result of the meeting. It is at those meeting where I feel most accountable to the whole community, because some people come who are NOT actively part of the net community, and they usually have a different persepctive on priorities than those who have the chance to inundate themselves in Lojban daily on this list. (I will also note here that some of our more substantial financial contributors are not active on this list, and we are somewhat beholden to them,especially on issues that result in income or expenditure). =============================== PROJECT STATUS 15. What parts of the language are well worked out, and which parts are in flux? John Cowan: The phonology, orthography, and morphology have been essentially stable since 1988, except for a slight change in what counts as a legal fu'ivla. The gismu list has been stable since 1988, except that about 25 gismu have been added and 2 gismu changed. This includes the words themselves and the English keywords. The rafsi have been stable since 1993, when they were radically changed. Much existing text has not been updated, although a program to do so has been written by LLG. The place structures have not been formally baselined, and a few changes are still occurring, but the vast majority of them are stabilized by human inertia. The grammar has been basically stable since 1993. A few marginal changes, essentially expanding what can be said, are now being considered prior to publishing the reference grammar. jimc: The basic semantics are stable. There are still ongoing disputes about "how to say it best in Lojban"; we expect these to continue indefinitely. As a matter of policy, changes to Lojban that would require people to re-learn things are resisted vigorously. Extensions may be accepted if very important. Almost anything that practical people (i.e. beginners) would actually use is well worked out, debugged and stable. Points of controversy include highly technical philosophical issues such as whether empty sets are or are not excluded as the candidate referent set of a sumti, or whether current grammar is adequate to represent lambda calculus. The answers are very important (no joke), but people have been speaking natural languages for years without knowing the answers, so don't worry about Lojban. And you don't have to know what lambda calculus is. The major point of controversy that is significant to beginners is a feeling in some quarters that the policies used to design the place (argument, sumti) structures of gismu (basic predicate words) were not exactly optimal. Mainly the rarely used places are at issue. Most likely, we'll go with what we have to preserve the investment people have made in learning the language. 16. What are the most current revisions of each part of the language descriptions? 17. What projects are being worked on? When will they be done? Reference grammar - John Cowan has written a draft of this book and it is currently being reviewed by the online Lojban community. Textbook - a draft of the textbook is available online, but it is out of date and incomplete. No one is working on it right now; it's considered fairly low priority. Dictionary - A draft is online, compiled primarily by Lojbab. It needs to have lujvo added to it; Jorge Llambias and Nick Nicholas are working on this project. Web site - Veijo Vilva maintains the web site. FAQ - Chris Bogart (cbogart@quetzal.com) maintains the FAQ. 18. What can I do to help? A few possibilities: Write in Lojban on the list Post beginner questions and don't be intimidated Write something in Lojban Come to LogFest in July/August in Fairfax VA (near Washington, DC), U.S.A. Try expressing yourself in Lojban Send money to LLG Keep a diary in Lojban ============================= HISTORICAL 19. How was the default place order of sumti in a selbri determined? (There does not appear to be any rhyme or reason for the order of sumti in many gismu.) They went through a lot of revisions; it's something in between planning and evolution. Some people continue to lobby for reforms. 20. How did the gismu get made: discussion, etymology examples Lojbab replies: I have put the full set of etymologies up on my ftp site ftp.access.digex.net /pub/lojbab file "finprims.ety" 282K. There isn;t a lot of explanation, but the etymogies in 6 languages and the scoring for each language are given, in order Chinese/English/Hindi/ Spanish/Russian/Arabic - a 0 score means that the language made no contribution to the word, and thus its etymological keyword did not matter. 21. What's the diff between Loglan, Lojban? How is Loglan-82 related? (it's not!) James Cooke Brown came up with the idea of Loglan in around 1960. It's been evolving ever since. In 1985 or so there was a disagreement and the Loglan community split into two efforts, with Brown at the head of one, The Loglan Institute (TLI), and Bob LeChevalier at the head of the other, the Logical Language Group (LLG). The latter is Lojban, which LLG (backed up by a court decision) considers a subcategory of Loglan. Loglan-82 is a completely unrelated computer language. 22. Why does it have a special meaning when the verb comes first? In Loglan it used to be a command, but now we use either {ko} or attitudinals. In a {poi broda} phrase it's likely that you'll want x1 to be {ke'a} and to explicitly state x2. If V-initial weren't special, and if syntax within a poi were consistent with sentence-level syntax, then you'd have to explicitly use {fe} or {zo'e} or {ke'a} to get to the x2. For example, now we say {le nanmu poi prami mi} and the x1 of {prami} is elided, and we can assume it's {ke'a}, which here equals {le nanmu}. Without this special treatment of V-initial, we'd have to say {le nanmu poi prami ke'a mi} or {le nanmu poi ke'a prami mi} or {le nanmu poi ke'a mi prami}. So: it saves 2 syllables in what's arguably the most common way of using {poi}. May or may not be worth it, depending on how you value word order flexibility vs. brevity. In general it lets you easily get to x2 in sentences without an x1. 23. Why are there so many words for AND? Why not just let {.e} connect two sumti, bridi, bridi-tails, or anything else? Lojbab replies: We use different connectives for different scopes. Doing so helps the listener keep track of what exactly the speaker wants connected. This is MUCH more important in speech than in text, because in text you can reread and ponder. If you have a multipart nested sumti joined to another multipart nested sumti, having clear indicatoirs of scope may make the sentence understandable when otherwise it is not. It is therefore hoped that spoken Lojban and written Lojban can be similar in level of complexity. (You know, audiovisual isomorphism) Ron Hale-Evans...The Not Ready For Apocalypse Players...rwhe@apocalypse.org I CHING MAILING LIST = http://www.apocalypse.org/~rwhe/hex8.html "KENNEXIONS" GLASS BEAD GAME = http://www.apocalypse.org/~rwhe/gbg.html RON'S INFO-CLOSET = http://www.apocalypse.org/~rwhe/ Mime-Version: 1.0 Date: Fri, 21 Nov 1997 16:55:48 -0800 To: Kennexions Distribution List:; From: Ronald Hale-Evans Subject: KENNEX: Lojban intro material on the way I revisited the Lojban WWW site, available from my Planlingvoj Links Page if you ever lose this message. You can reach the site at http://xiron.pc.helsinki.fi/lojban/ I downloaded the three documents that will probably give you the best introduction to Lojban for the least brainsweat, including the mini-lesson I told you all about, and will be sending them in the three separate email messages following. Ron Ron Hale-Evans...The Not Ready For Apocalypse Players...rwhe@apocalypse.org I CHING MAILING LIST = http://www.apocalypse.org/~rwhe/hex8.html "KENNEXIONS" GLASS BEAD GAME = http://www.apocalypse.org/~rwhe/gbg.html RON'S INFO-CLOSET = http://www.apocalypse.org/~rwhe/ Mime-Version: 1.0 Date: Fri, 21 Nov 1997 20:53:19 -0800 To: Kennexions Distribution List:; From: Ronald Hale-Evans Subject: KENNEX: Shall we play? It occurred to me tonight after talking with Marty that it needs to be made clear that the "Trinity game" I have been sketching out is a _game instance_ of Kennexions, not an intrinsic part of Kennexions itself. You can play Kennexions using an infinite variety of kennings and BELL diagrams -- the Trinity diagram is only one possibility. We talked about learning styles tonight too. Marty prefers a structured, top-down presentation of material, whereas I tend to dip in and skim here and there in something I am trying to learn. This has led to my presenting Kennexions material so far in a very scattered way. This may not be to the liking of everyone on the list. (Also, Kennexions is like a half-built skyscraper; I can't give you a top-down tour when there are floors missing.) So barring a structured presentation of material, it seems like the best way to learn about Kennexions (and to develop it at the same time!) is to devise our own game instances. You've seen the one I'm working on at the moment. Marty told me tonight she's been thinking about doing a game based on LIFEHOUSE, an unfinished rock opera by Pete Townshend, who also wrote TOMMY. I thought this was interesting partly because Gail used TOMMY as a move in a Hipbone game on ML during the games festival a few months ago. Another possibility Marty and I came up with together is a Kennexions game based on MY FAIR LADY. For example, Henry Higgins Eliza Dolittle --------------- :: ------------------- Pygmalion Galatea is a perfectly good kenning analogy and could provide the basis for an interesting game instance. You don't need to know BELL to start playing the game. You can do a first approximation in English. What do you think? Do you have any ideas for game instances you can develop as part of the learning curve and development process? Ron p.s. Is anyone interested in copies of the manuscript of my book? I can email it in MS-Word 6 format to whoever wants it. Ron Hale-Evans...The Not Ready For Apocalypse Players...rwhe@apocalypse.org I CHING MAILING LIST = http://www.apocalypse.org/~rwhe/hex8.html "KENNEXIONS" GLASS BEAD GAME = http://www.apocalypse.org/~rwhe/gbg.html RON'S INFO-CLOSET = http://www.apocalypse.org/~rwhe/ Date: Sun, 23 Nov 1997 11:53:51 -0500 (EST) X-Sender: drdee@mail.interlog.com Mime-Version: 1.0 To: Ronald Hale-Evans From: Derek Robinson Subject: Re: First attempt at glyphic Kennexions game Cc: scranmer@cfa.harvard.edu, marty@apocalypse.org, setebos@wolfenet.com Marty, Ron -- a good round. I don't have much to say right now about the last exchange (I'll let it roll around in there a while), but I'll try to catch a couple of bits before they fly away. The Spencer-Brown tale -- fascinating! (Another of Ron's multi-facets comes to light :-) Prithee, how came you to be talking with GSB for an hour and a half? And what has the man been up to, lo these many post-LoF years? Actually, I was just reading some stuff about Peirce's existential graphs and was impressed by the neatness of CSP's GSB-like proof of modus ponens. You can imagine paired parentheses as representing a closed curve or circle. A circle around a variable means "not", e.g. "(A)" = "not-A", but it can also represent implication, since to assert "not-A, not-B" is as much as to say "if A then B" or "A implies B". In the 'Alpha' existential graph system, this would be drawn as "A (A(B))", representing a conjunction of the separate assertions "A" and "A implies B". Following application of syntactic reduction rules -- cancel any variable found on both sides of a circle, remove any even number of circles, e.g. "(( ))" = " " -- it reduces to simply "B", QED. (I came across the page on Peirce's e-graphs at the online Stanford Dictionary of Philosophy --> http://plato.stanford.edu/contents.html -- and I think Ron in particular might find the existential graphs an intriguing and possibly useful precursor of the glyphic Kennexions game.) Which raises a question: Ron, do you see Kennexions as having a 'calculus-like' or logic-like aspect, so that to draw a Kennexion graph could, via a series of syntactic transformations, reduce to another K-graph (in 'canonical' form), and so serve as the semantic equivalent of demonstration or 'proof'? (I got a sense of something like this from some of the earlier Kenning Game material.) *** STOP THE PRESSES *** Woh, just got that big pack o' Lojban, yikes ... Okay, I've read / scanned the material, especially the discursive Q & A about its philosophy, history, etc., and I find much to quarrel with about Lojban's basic premises. I'll try to summarize briefly -- no doubt we'll be going over these issues in greater depth as the symposium unfolds. Lojban is evidently modelled on computer languages and formal logic, by way of Chomskian structural linguistics. That is to say, Lojban buys into an enormous amount of 60s vintage American linguistics which, IMHO, is finally, thankfully, being retired. At the time it no doubt seemed very progressive, since AI was a very glamorous field and very much a Lisp / lambda calculus enclave. Ever since Chomsky's development of the formal language hierarchy c. 1955, progressivists in linguistics were intent on defining rules for a 'universal grammar' modeled after formal logic, and had no interest in "merely performative" issues such as how people actually talk. Nor for any kind of (non a priorist, non rule-based) inductive, statistical, empirical approach to language usage. Connectionism in AI was part of a pendulum swing back towards empiricism in the mid 80s. At the same time there was renewed interest in how people categorize and carve up conceptual spaces -- recognizing that logic might not be the most appropriate model for human cognition or intelligence or language after all. Metaphor and analogy loomed large. (Philosophy of science had had a number of dissenting voices since 1960 or so -- Thomas Kuhn, Mary Hesse, Norwood Hanson, Imre Lakatos.) And in the late 70s early results were starting to trickle in from 'large corpora' research (using databases of millions of words of text) showing that a purely statistical approach could correctly parse raw English sentences with 98% accuracy, vs. the best hand-hewn Chomskian parsers clocking in at maybe 30%. A similar story had emerged from speech recognition: symbolic AI's rule-based paradigm just didn't cut it. Not to mention that Chomskianity had pretty much outlawed any attempt to move beyond syntax into the tarpits of *meaning* (thus the steady stream of defectors from the Chomsky camp) ... Stepping back from all that, there is a very interesting issue about precision vs. ambiguity and the dynamic (im)balance between these (conflicting?) motives. I'm of the mind that natural language is not so unlike an error correcting code (as for example 'junk DNA' might be as well) which has, over long use and much intermarriage -- evolutionary trial and error learning, as it were -- struck a fairly optimal balance between the needs of redundancy and concision, or again between connotation (nuance, register, analogy, allusion) and denotation (i.e., stating or asserting propositions about things). Could map these dualities onto unconscious / conscious, intuition / logic, right-brain / left-brain etc. (Similar issues would I think be at work in any attempt to design an iconic or idiographic language, or a GBG.) > Evolutionary development has made ... inflections and > declensions highly irregular and thus difficult to learn. I dunno -- seems to me that 'irregularities' can actually make learning easier; we have an enormous capacity for remembering things, the myriad details ... and the more details there are to anchor knowledge in place, the easier it will be for us to remember it all. > Lojban has no words that sound alike but have different > meanings (like "herd" and "heard"), that have multiple > unrelated meanings ("set"), or that differ only in punctuation > but not in sound (like the abominable "its" and "it's"). Sounds rather like Jonathan Swift's scheme for a rational language: you'd just carry around one example of everything you'd ever want to talk about, and point to whatever you want to say. (Works up to a point, e.g. Blissymbols, but it's a pretty impoverished vehicle IMHO.) Which completely overlooks the *human* (as opposed to computer) sensitivity to CONTEXT; and context (this is where all the trouble lies) is to a great extent unconscious or pre-conscious. We basically are not, and to an extent cannot, be aware of all that we are "attending-from" in order to "attend-to" the sense of things. Figure and ground -- or if you like, proximal versus distal, focal vs. peripheral, serial processing vs. parallelism. I'm thinking here of Christopher Alexander's "pattern languages" -- patterns made of patterns made of patterns, at multiple scales, and anything one might perceive as a fixed 'object' turns out, on closer examination, to be just more patterns made of patterns ... a very 'Gestalt' conception of form perception, which I'd say is distinguished from the logical viewpoint by the role of the surrounding context in determining the sense of the constituent parts, versus the logical idea that wholes are wholly determined by their parts -- atomism, reductionism. E.g., the linguistic "ambiguity" and polysemy that Lojban would outlaw -- how the sense of a sentence is given by the senses of the words of which it is composed. Sounds sensible, but it runs into a brick wall when you realize that each word could mean several different things, so "logically" it shouldn't be possible to understand sentences at all. Precisely the situation that Lojban, with its emphasis on computer parsing, was designed to rectify. (Aside -- teleology I think plays a big role here. Meaning is teleological, of purposes, intentions, future goals. You have something you want to impart, and saying it will further some purpose or aim you have in mind, so a sentence is composed to conform to this purpose -- the purpose ("the whole") has to come *first*, prior to the elements you assemble in order to achieve the goal. So we can equate wholes with the future -- "emergence", or "closure" -- even though logically it seems that the component elements *must* come first. Analogous to the whole perplex of the emergence of life from non-life -- Aristotle's "whole greater than the sum of its parts", or Samuel Butler saying "Life is two plus two making five." :-) However it overlooks the fact that people by and large *don't* have a problem with polysemy in natural language! And this is, from one way of looking, very much a coding / information theoretic matter. Homonymy and polysemy (likewise the peculiarities of say, English spelling) by allowing a single thing to take multiple roles or serve multiple purposes, realize an economy over conventions where each sign can only have a single meaning. This is the difference between "distributed" vs. "grandmother cell" representations in neural networks; the latter would require a special neuron to fire whenever you see or think about your grandmother, which is biologically pretty implausible. Another example of the same logical "vicious circle": a colour patch gets its sense (the colour perceived) from its surrounding colours, but each of these colour patches owes its interpretation to the colour patches that surround it, including the problematic patch with which we began. Logically, therefore, we shouldn't be able to perceive any colours at all. And yet we do. This homely example is, I'd say, the Great Barrier Reef upon which AI (likewise, Chomskian linguistics) ran aground and couldn't figure out how to get around. And I think it's close to the heart of Christopher Alexander's "mysticism" -- the "quality without a name", the source of our native sense of good fit, harmony, beauty, proportion. In the case of colour perception, the impasse can be resolved by a process of "iterative relaxation" or mutual accommodation (a.k.a. "successive approximation") -- what the economists calls "tatonnement", or "groping", the mechanism of the "Invisible Hand" (ditto, evolution's "Blind Watchmaker") -- as demonstrated by Edwin Land in a series of brilliant experiments / simulations, culminating in his "retinex" theory of colour vision (which might be wrong in its details, but overall feels pretty right). If I can make that more specific -- the analogy would be to the way that words in a sentence each have an aura of associations and possible meanings (but as Peirce said, the meaning of a word is the totality of its possible contexts!), so "decoding" a sentence would involve all these 'meaning fragments' tumbling around together, trying to find the "best fit" with one another, a great big iterative, mutual "constraints satisfaction problem" -- which is solved for us "at the speed of thought", with no conscious effort at all. We are completely unaware of the process -- we "just know" the meaning. And the harder we try to figure out how exactly we figure out the meanings, the more snarled up we get with rules and grammars and elaborate exception handling mechanisms ... ending up with something not unlike the last four decades of linguistics and AI. Lojban, in short, seems to have been designed for the benefit of computers (as the capabilities of computers were understood c. 1960 -- overlooking early work on self-organization, neural nets, cybernetics). I appreciate the humanitarian ideals that motivate artificial language projects like Lojban, Esperanto, etc., or similar efforts to reform English orthography -- to undo / repair the "curse of Babel" -- but I think it's based on an unrealistic idea of how languages do what they do, how human intelligence operates, the interaction of language and thought, and it subscribes to a pretty naive conception of mechanical, formal, rule-following behavior, viz. not recognizing multiple causation, the dancing landscape of iterative dynamical systems. (The Gestaltist Wolfgang Kohler had some apt words about coming to a more sophisticated "machine concept", getting away from the old Newtonian / Babylonian picture of cosmic "clockwork".) Which is to say, Lojban represents one extreme of a spectrum of strategies that might be undertaken to resolve the "vicious circle" in the meaning of meaning, i.e. by trying to make everything completely unambiguous. I think it throws out the baby with the bathwater, personally. The opposite approach would be to try to fathom how we as natural epistemologists / ontologizers / semiotic subjects are able to handle ambiguity in natural language in particular and the inherent ambiguity of interpreting natural signs in general. Which to my way of thinking is a far more interesting and useful approach -- and now that the computational linguists are paying more attention to the raw data of language (and less to a priori theorizing, a la Chomsky) I expect we'll soon have that "Babel fish" to slip in our respective ears. It seems a lot more parsimonious a solution than asking everyone to become Lojban adepts, mm? (Not that undoing the Babel curse will usher in the promised golden age of universal enlightenment -- people will doubtless remain, inconveniently enough, people.) My apologies for taking off on a rant like that, as you can tell this is a bit of a hobby-horse with me. It's not that I don't see some merit in Lojban -- it could be a speedy way to get a grip on the enormous amount of stuff there is to learn about comparative linguistics, say. (A study which, fascinating though it must be, I've heretofore managed to avoid, simply by reason of that enormity.) And yes Ron, by all means send the MS-Word files of your manuscript. I want to see how you see all of these pieces fitting together. Ciao -- D. Date: Tue, 25 Nov 1997 16:27:22 -0500 From: scranmer@cfauvcs12.harvard.edu (Steven R. Cranmer) To: rwhe@apocalypse.org, drdee@interlog.com Subject: KENNEX: Misc comments Cc: scranmer@cfa.harvard.edu, marty@apocalypse.org, setebos@wolfenet.com X-Sun-Charset: US-ASCII Hi everyone, I don't think I've sent anything to KENNEX since Ron's big weekend-posts about the Bliss/Trinity iconography -- a lot is being talked about!! (Maybe too much for me to keep up on, since my primary Internet access is at work, and time is short these days. You guys might not know that the Spartan satellite that the shuttle has been grappling with since last week, was partially built by our group at CfA, and we've been doing lots of "PR overtime" trying to keep up with it all...) I like the visual look of the Bliss/Trinity diagram, and understand the need for the "wavyness" of the lines as a consequence of the Lojban grammar. I'll leave Derek and Marty to tilt at the windmills of the marriage of Lojban and Kennexions... My question about the Trinity diagram is: will actual KENNINGS be derived from it, and expressed in the same "visual language" as well? About the possibility of actually *playing* Kennexions, or at least coming up with "game instances," I do have some questions for Ron about what he envisions for... (1) the possible types of moves in Kennexions, (So far we've seen two main types, I think: (a) the establishment or definition of a kenning, and (b) the expansion of one fourth of a kenning with another nested kenning. But is anything else possible, structurally? Can one player counter or challenge the move of another? Can the ever-expanding "trees" of kennings be "pruned", or split into distinct parts by taking "cuttings"? Are tables-of-correspondences going to be built into this move-structure, or are they only for reference in creating individual kennings? (2) the "goal" of an individual game of Kennexions. (Aside from winning/losing, even Charles Cameron's most collaborative and non-competitive Hipbone games do have a goal: to fill up the board. Will there be some "empty" kenning-superstructures to choose from, along these lines? Or will the "goals" not be tied to any specific patterns of kennings? This issue of "goals" is probably not a critical one if games are to be constructed as art-forms, e.g., Terrence Macnamee's liturgies. But I think that having some constraints around (to keep the eyes on the prize, as it were) is useful to keep games from wandering off into la-la land... :) ) Whew! Sorry Ron, don't feel like you have to address all this at once -- or even at all!! :) I just wanted to throw out a few ideas that might be worth thinking about if we're getting close to constructing actual games of Kennexions. Talk to you soon, Steve scranmer@cfa.harvard.edu Mime-Version: 1.0 Date: Tue, 25 Nov 1997 17:57:19 -0800 To: scranmer@cfauvcs12.harvard.edu (Steven R. Cranmer), rwhe@apocalypse.org, drdee@interlog.com From: Ronald Hale-Evans Subject: Re: KENNEX: Misc comments Cc: scranmer@cfa.harvard.edu, marty@apocalypse.org, setebos@wolfenet.com At 4:27 PM -0500 11/25/97, Steven R. Cranmer wrote: >Hi everyone, > >I don't think I've sent anything to KENNEX since Ron's big weekend-posts >about the Bliss/Trinity iconography -- a lot is being talked about!! >(Maybe too much for me to keep up on, since my primary Internet access >is at work, and time is short these days. You guys might not know that >the Spartan satellite that the shuttle has been grappling with since >last week, was partially built by our group at CfA, and we've been doing >lots of "PR overtime" trying to keep up with it all...) Cool! (Whatever you can do, Steve.) >I like the visual look of the Bliss/Trinity diagram, and understand the >need for the "wavyness" of the lines as a consequence of the Lojban >grammar.... Thanks. Actually, I have a much-simplified Bliss/Trinity diagram that I have yet to scan and put up on the Web. It's not so wavy and crazy-looking. Actually, I can see now that a lot of the clinamen for a scriptor (someone who actually sketches out a game on paper or onscreen) has to do with getting the BELL diagram as clean and simple as possible, so it's easier to see what's what. >My question about the Trinity diagram >is: will actual KENNINGS be derived from it, and expressed in the same >"visual language" as well? Well, my intention is not that kennings will be derived FROM it, but grafted ONTO it. That is, FATHER might become MALE-MOTHER (e.g., off the top of my head), which might become.... who knows? There lies the potential. Plans are in progress to expand the Trinity diagram with other "trinities" like Maiden/Mother/Crone, Brahma/Vishnu/Shiva, and Potential/Constraint/Clinamen, but I am taking very seriously Marty's charge that I may be guilty of bad scholarship and co-opting/distorting the mythic structure of other cultures. >I do have some questions for Ron about >what he envisions for... > >(1) the possible types of moves in Kennexions, > > (So far we've seen two main types, I think: (a) the establishment > or definition of a kenning, and (b) the expansion of one fourth of > a kenning with another nested kenning. But is anything else possible, > structurally? Yes, indeed. As I see at at this point, each move in a game is sort of like a game in miniature, so that a game instance has a sort of fractal structure. *Elements* of a game move would include defining kennings, expanding kennexions, sketching out part of the BELL diagram, intoning/chanting a "path" through the kennexion graph (e.g. "patfu na du bersa") and translating it into the "vernacular" for the communicants (in this case, "the Father is not the Son"), programmed meditations upon the kennexion (inscriptio) in question or other relevant parts of the emblem (the pictura or subscriptio), dance, and who knows what else? There has never yet been a true Kennexions ceremony, so we don't know quite what we're in for. Since a game move is a pattern in the pattern language, and in a pattern language there are optional as well as mandatory elements, every move and every game can incorporate different elements (game objects) at the will of the auctor(s). > Can one player counter or challenge the move of another? This is not part of my vision of the game. I have never liked the competitive nature of Hipbone games. However, within the *social structure* of Kennexions, there is plenty of room for competition of a sort, as I see it: for example, politicking to get one's own favourite rules/patterns adopted in the rule set, as for example, in such other games as Nomic or the House of Representatives. :-) Also however, I can see a sort of move that might appear from a certain perspective to be competitive, but would be more along the lines of counterpoint in a fugue. > Can the ever-expanding "trees" of kennings be "pruned", or split into > distinct parts by taking "cuttings"? Are tables-of-correspondences > going to be built into this move-structure, or are they only for > reference in creating individual kennings? Brilliant questions, Steve. Why don't you try answering them? :-) Seriously, that's why I asked you on board, because after seeing your post way back last year that showed the tabular expansion of a kenning analogy (the "psychedelic = psychedelic" one), I knew that you would have all kinds of innovative approaches to possible game moves. I am definitely going to be chweing over your ideas of "pruning", "taking cuttings" (and what about the possibility of "grafting" cuttings on?!) and how tables-of-c can be *built into* the game as opposed to just providing KENNIN' FODDER (heh heh). Maybe you can too, and we can compare notes. It has been said that brainstorming works best when members of a group do it separately, then compare results. >(2) the "goal" of an individual game of Kennexions. > > (Aside from winning/losing, even Charles Cameron's most collaborative > and non-competitive Hipbone games do have a goal: to fill up the > board. Will there be some "empty" kenning-superstructures to choose > from, along these lines? Or will the "goals" not be tied to any > specific patterns of kennings? > > This issue of "goals" is probably not a critical one if games are > to be constructed as art-forms, e.g., Terrence Macnamee's liturgies. > But I think that having some constraints around (to keep the eyes on > the prize, as it were) is useful to keep games from wandering off > into la-la land... :) ) Another excellent question. As I see it, the goal of transfinite games like Nomic and Kennexions is simply to continue play and to grow (see Carse's _Finite and Infinite Games_). And I like Terrence's approach to liturgical games, and would like to do something similar in Kennexions. But! without constraint to prune the tree, as it were, unrestrained growth in Kennexions would probably result in something like what happens with unrestrained cellular growth: something ugly and cancerous. So I think you're right; we need some kind of _restraint_, some kind of _governor_ to keep the flywheel from spinning so fast it snaps off and kills bystanders. As I see it, the Glass Bead Game is not really a game, not really an artform, not really a spiritual or intellectual exercise, but something _sui generis_ that combines elements of all of these with its own unique patterns. So if it is not really a game, but has gamelike elements, the question is open as to whether a particular game has a finite goal or not. If Kennexions is a transfinite game, then I don't see how it can have a finite goal (how do you win it?) and remain a transfinite game. But it's worth thinking about.... And if we don't have goals, what kind of constraints can we have that will keep the game from spiralling out of control? Here's an idea: what if one of the main constraints is to produce LIVING, viable games, in the same way that C. Alexander's Pattern Language produces "living architecture"? I have in mind a "critic" or "judge" lusor role who/which comments on the game ("9, 9.5, 8! The judges liked that move!") and "measures" the degree of "illumination" or QWAN (Quality Without a Name, sort of a taoistic beauty) that the game instance lets shine through. The units of this cale of QWAN would be called, of course, _qwanta_. (I'm encouraging Marty to read _The Timeless Way of Building_, the "Pattern Language manifesto". Derek already has, I take it. Steve, I recommend you read it too, and tackle _A Pat Lang_ if you feel up to it. They're both beautiful books. Tonight I will provide URLs for a sort of patlang FAQ that tells you a lot of what you need to know about patlangs, if not QWAN, even if you decide not to read the books.) Derek, since you presumably know about QWAN, I anticipate your objections that one should not try to measure it. My response is this: Alexander talks about buildings that are "dead", "living", and partly alive. That in itself provides a simple scale of qwanta from 0 to 2, or say, 0%, 50%, and 100%. So a qwantum scale is possible in principle, though in practice, it may be hard to make fine distinctions. >Whew! Sorry Ron, don't feel like you have to address all this at once -- >or even at all!! :) I just wanted to throw out a few ideas that might >be worth thinking about if we're getting close to constructing actual games >of Kennexions. Hey, Steve and guys, never, never feel guilty that you're posting a lot to KENNEX. Right now I'm between programming contracts and have a lot of time, and anyway, this is my single main project. I guarantee that it will be very hard to overwhelm me with input. I'm grateful for every drop! If it ever does get overwhelming, we will assemble a Kennexions Council to take over many of the functions of the overwhelmed gamemaster, yours truly. I look forward to that day, because it will mean that Kennexions has achieved its own momentum of sorts, has its own goals and purposes, and is now a living thing that is no longer within my control. Ron p.s. Derek, still mulling over your objections to Lojba. Will reply soon. Ron Hale-Evans...The Not Ready For Apocalypse Players...rwhe@apocalypse.org I CHING MAILING LIST = http://www.apocalypse.org/~rwhe/hex8.html "KENNEXIONS" GLASS BEAD GAME = http://www.apocalypse.org/~rwhe/gbg.html RON'S INFO-CLOSET = http://www.apocalypse.org/~rwhe/ Mime-Version: 1.0 Date: Tue, 25 Nov 1997 19:54:46 -0800 To: Ronald Hale-Evans , scranmer@cfauvcs12.harvard.edu (Steven R. Cranmer), drdee@interlog.com From: Ronald Hale-Evans Subject: Re: KENNEX: Misc comments Cc: scranmer@cfa.harvard.edu, marty@apocalypse.org, setebos@wolfenet.com At 5:57 PM -0800 11/25/97, I wrote: >Hey, Steve and guys, never, never feel guilty that you're posting a lot to >KENNEX. Right now I'm between programming contracts and have a lot of time, >and anyway, this is my single main project. Conversely, I should say, I don't want to overload you all with my stuff. I know you're busy with your own concerns -- Steve has his CfA public-relations workload right now and we all have our jobs and the holidays coming up -- so just do what you can and don't stress out about trying to keep up with me. As I said, this is my full-time main project right now, and I can't expect you guys to make it yours. I throw out all of these resources (e.g. the Pattern Language FAQ) as resources, not assignments. There is no due date. I am not the boss of you. :-) Make your own unique contributions when and where you can and I trust it will be enough. Thanks. Ron Ron Hale-Evans...The Not Ready For Apocalypse Players...rwhe@apocalypse.org I CHING MAILING LIST = http://www.apocalypse.org/~rwhe/hex8.html "KENNEXIONS" GLASS BEAD GAME = http://www.apocalypse.org/~rwhe/gbg.html RON'S INFO-CLOSET = http://www.apocalypse.org/~rwhe/ Mime-Version: 1.0 Date: Tue, 25 Nov 1997 23:15:09 -0800 To: Kennexions Distribution List:; From: Ronald Hale-Evans Subject: KENNEX: Resources and admin All-- I mentioned earlier I would email you the URL for an introductory document on the concept of pattern languages. It is titled "Patterns and Software: Essential Concepts and Terminology". It is slanted toward software architecture, but then Alexander is slanted toward building architecture. It is still a pretty useful intro: http://www.enteract.com/~bradapp/docs/patterns-intro.html Another good page, with plenty of design patterns (though they are not called that there) is "I Have No Words & I Must Design" by Greg Costikyan, a game designer behind many RPGs and wargames we are all familiar with (e.g. TOON, Star Wars). The patterns here apply specifically to games per se, although they are widely applicable. Costikyan also has another good page about his attempt to merge Brechtean theatre with RPGs, accessible with some hunting from the URL I am giving you: http://204.217.246.195:80/~costik/nowords.html This is really an insightful essay. For those who are interested in patlangs and want to see more, I found a page which is a pattern language for designing pattern languages! I don't have the URL handy, but will post it if anyone is interested. I am particularly looking forward to discussing with y'all how to put together a patlang for Kennexions (I have some rudimentary notes). ADMIN: KENNEX is about to become a real list! By this time tomorrow we should have a Majordomo list up and running that will take the place of the clumsy CC'ing we are doing. I will subscribe you automatically and fill you in when I receive confirmation that the list is active. Ron Ron Hale-Evans...The Not Ready For Apocalypse Players...rwhe@apocalypse.org I CHING MAILING LIST = http://www.apocalypse.org/~rwhe/hex8.html "KENNEXIONS" GLASS BEAD GAME = http://www.apocalypse.org/~rwhe/gbg.html RON'S INFO-CLOSET = http://www.apocalypse.org/~rwhe/ Mime-Version: 1.0 Date: Wed, 26 Nov 1997 00:36:55 -0800 To: Kennexions Distribution List:; From: Ronald Hale-Evans Subject: KENNEX: Patlang for Patlangs Here's the pattern language for designing pattern languages: http://st-www.cs.uiuc.edu/patterns/Writing/pattern_index.html Ron Hale-Evans...The Not Ready For Apocalypse Players...rwhe@apocalypse.org I CHING MAILING LIST = http://www.apocalypse.org/~rwhe/hex8.html "KENNEXIONS" GLASS BEAD GAME = http://www.apocalypse.org/~rwhe/gbg.html RON'S INFO-CLOSET = http://www.apocalypse.org/~rwhe/ Date: Wed, 26 Nov 1997 14:17:56 -0500 (EST) X-Sender: drdee@mail.interlog.com Mime-Version: 1.0 To: Ronald Hale-Evans From: Derek Robinson Subject: Re: KENNEX: Misc comments Cc: scranmer@cfa.harvard.edu, marty@apocalypse.org, setebos@wolfenet.com Everyone -- Please feel free to ignore the diatribe that my last post turned into. The use made of Lojban in Kennexions has little enough to do with Lojban as a universal linguistic nostrum, so my remarks were not really pertinent to this forum. Ron, in particular, don't feel you have to answer my complaints or defend Lojban or argue linguistic philosophy if this will distract you from furthering the game and the book, okay? * I've been reading about 'Musikalisches Wurfelspiel' and 'Ars Combinatoriae' in the 18th century -- following up the Lullian lead, by way of Father Athanasius Kircher S.J. who wrote a big book ("Musurgia Universalis" 1650) on mathematical and musical permutations. The Wurfelspiel tradition is now remembered mostly as a musical "dice game" played by Mozart, but he was by no means the only player or inventor of such exercises in automated composition. I mention this because the real game of Wurfelspiel was not the game of musical dice invented by Mozart (or Haydn or Kirnberger or C.P.E. Bach), but rather the meta-game of designing a musical Pattern Language (a 'Counterpoint Construction Kit') of motifs, meters, movements, phrases, textures and transformation rules that would automatically produce innumerable pleasing, original compositions in a given style. Apparently, the examples which have come down to us were largely successful in their aim to generate a myriad of novel, listenable and danceable compositions. (We would expect no less of a Mozart, a Haydn or a Bach.) The 18th century authors of musical Wurfelspiel seem more akin to video-game or AI programmers, say, than to the cultural stereotype of the Composer. It was a separate artform, even though the end-product might well prove similar or even indistinguishable from an 'authentic' composition (this was after all the aim). Contemporary computer artists often face a charge similar to that levelled at Wurfelspiel -- that their work is too mechanical and technical, or too trivial and frivolous, to be considered 'real'. The *meta-gaming* ambition to discover and/or invent rules, patterns and parameters governing or defining a distinct space of potential forms (be these architectural, musical, literary or ludic) gives their efforts a rather a flavour of 'Nomic', yes? (BTW, Ron or Marty -- maybe you could post the rules of Nomic for us, or an URL pointing to such?) Contemporary authors of automated composition software haven't strayed too far from their 18th century predecessors, save only in the efforts by some (notably David Cope, whose "Experiments in Musical Intelligence" I've been dipping into) to develop routines which will automatically apprehend and extract the musical 'signatures' or 'patterns' (in a Christopher Alexander sense) characterizing a particular composer or style of composition, from representative examples, and turn these into the "glass beads", if you will, from which original and viable compositions in the style can be generated by combinatory and stochastic means. The buzz is that now, following 40 years of failed and unconvincing efforts to program computers to generate "good" ersatz Mozart, Ives or Beethoven, they are finally starting to produce music that's only a few 'qwanta' shy of the 'QWAN' to which people respond in authentic music written by inspired human composers. (I think it's significant that this has been achieved, not by any startling new breakthroughs in AI, but simply by chipping away at the same small handful of ideas that have been the stock in trade of contemporary Wurfelspiel since the 1950s or the late 1940s -- i.e. in Shannon and Weaver's "Statistical Theory of Communication".) * We are none of us privy to the internal 'blueprint' that dictates the aesthetic pleasure or spiritual gravity or emotional resonances we experience in specific works within an artistic medium or genre. There is a sense in which any work of art can be seen as an attempt to articulate certain aesthetic 'rules' perceived by the artist and applied more or less consciously or deliberately in creating their work. These 'rules' apply negatively as well, when the artist recognizes "what it is" about a prevailing artistic style or fashion that they find odious or wanting, and so proceed to break or bend the rules. The same applies to the artist vis a vis their own work -- continually exercising critical judgement in an attempt to find out for themselves, "what it is" about one piece as opposed to another piece that strikes them as 'interesting' or pleasing, or that feels jarring and out of place. What fits, and what don't. (Brief aside: the rules of grammar or 'good usage' are a useful example. We are taught that there are fixed rules, but learn to recognize that they can be bent or broken on a case-by-case basis, according to what "sounds right"; e.g., the use of "they" as a singular, non-sexist pronoun -- which *should* violate the rules of English grammar, but slides so easily and inoffensively off the tongue or onto the page that the mismatch between the plural pronoun and the singular subject and verb goes mostly unnoticed.) We can only guess at the 'rules' governing this 'Quality Without A Name', and the 'rightness' or 'wrongness' of our guesses can only be determined through an iterative process of critical reflection and articulation of 'rules', followed by application of the rules to a concrete product that can then be experienced and critiqued -- followed by another cycle of "generate and test", and another, and another, and another, indefinitely continued. And of course it's a 'moving target', since everything experienced will to a greater or lesser extent alter the shape and complexion of the interior 'organ' of percipience, by whose power we experience what we experience. A "dancing landscape", as the chaos-ologists say. (You can't step twice in the same river, since the experience of stepping in the river must irreversibly alter the 'you' who's doing the stepping.) And so the 'rule-sets' of cultural norms continue to slip and drift, following their own memetic version of 'natural selection'. And the critical / aesthetic intelligence is always playing at "tidy-up", after the fact. No sooner does it draw the noose on its elusive game than the nous (the spirit / force / pneuma) has slipped away again, leaping out of bounds, ahead of the hounds ... call it "the Spirit Mercurius" (and add the alchemical trinity salt/mercury/sulphur to your List of Threes). And yet, and yet -- there's an elusive sense that behind the surface 'pattern play' of the innumerable cultural forms (each implicitly if not explicitly a 'pattern language') within whose constraints people can exercise the "spirit of play" (or "play of spirit"), there exists some constant, universal 'rule-set', which we are bent, some of us, on uncovering. (But I'm quite sure the quest is endless, we'll never get to the bottom of it or decipher the Final Word of the Oracle.) A hard-core Platonism really -- e.g., Socrates' insistent pesterings after the *True Meanings* of concepts like "truth", "beauty", and "the good". Indeed, this is Christopher Alexander's main heresy, that there exists a core aesthetic "canon" (to use a highly suspect but nonetheless apt word) that is at some unconscious (for the most part) level shared and recognized by everyone -- a doctrine that flies in the face of the prevailing sentiment of contemporary architecture (the field C.A. has elected to tilt at, although the same spirit pervades all the arts touched by avant-gardism) that "anything goes", and that the more bizarre, outre or idiosyncratic a given work is, the better it is. (Aside: the meta-injunction of avant-gardism, to "break all rules", conceals a classic Epimenides-type paradox -- does it apply to itself? Or that grafitto I used to see spray-painted around town, commanding its readers: "Disobey".) I confess to being a fence-sitter on this -- I've found much that is good and inspiring in the man's musings, but I also find myself reacting badly when he claims (as he has, latterly) to have discovered the ultimate 'Pattern Language' governing Life, the Universe and Everything. ("Truth, Beauty and the Good", TM Reg'd.) Apparently his monster tome, "The One" a.k.a. "Geometry" (it has been circulating in samizdat form for the past two decades), is finally about to be published, in several volumes, so we'll soon be able to judge for ourselves. (Alexander's heresy is a version of the same 'innatist' heresy which made Noam Chomsky's reputation, and got him elected Sovereign Epopt of Linguistics. Thus again my ambivalence. Since as you've no doubt gathered, I feel that Chomsky's influence, on computational linguistics at any rate, has been baleful.) * As an example of what I'm driving at (maybe) -- Ron's 'Father/Son/Holy Ghost' trinity. Having noticed that the Maiden/Mother/Crone, Brahma/Vishnu/Shiva and Constraint/Potential/Clinamen trinities *might* be mapped onto the same figure (call this the 'intuition' or 'inspiration' or 'notion'), the challenge is to *justify* the conflation. Immediately we're into analogy -- "in what way" can the three terms of each trinity be lined up so that the attributes associated with 'Constraint', say, will sensibly apply to 'God-the-Father'? This is like discovering a "rule" relating the two terms; we can start to build a 'Table of Correspondences', with "implacability" or "stern justice" or "natural law" as attributes ('slot-fillers') common to both entities. And then we ask, what in the other trinities would correspond to the rule, "The Son is Not the Father"? Woops, sorry -- the thought (whatever it was) just got away from me, haven't a clue where I was headed with that ... Anyway, a good place to stop. Hope this has been at least vaguely useful. D.