What are the official goals of lojban?
Andrew Browne
The goals for the language were first described in the open literature in the article “Loglan”, published in Scientific American, June, 1960.
The following are the main features of Lojban:
Lojban is designed to be used by people in communication with each other, and possibly in the future with computers.
Lojban is designed to be neutral between cultures.
Lojban grammar is based on the principles of predicate logic.
Lojban has an unambiguous yet flexible grammar.
Lojban has phonetic spelling, and unambiguously resolves its sounds into words.
Lojban is simple compared to natural languages; it is easy to learn.
Lojban’s 1300 root words can be easily combined to form a vocabulary of millions of words.
Lojban is regular; the rules of the language are without exceptions.
Lojban attempts to remove restrictions on creative and clear thought and communication.
Lojban has a variety of uses, ranging from the creative to the scientific, from the theoretical to the practical.
Lojban has been demonstrated in translation and in original works of prose and poetry.
It was to supply an instrument for experimental investigation of the Leibniz-Whorf hypothesis that we undertook our work on Loglan in 1955.
Loglan was to be an artificial language, but one especially designed to test the thesis that the structure of language determines the forms of thought.
It was to have a small, easily learned vocabulary derived from the word stock of as many of the major natural languages as proved feasible (though it was not intended to be an auxiliary international language).
Its rules of grammar and syntax were to be as few and regular as possible.
It was to utilize a short list of speech sounds (phonemes) common to the natural languages [see table on opposite page], and it was to be phonetically spelled.
But most important, Loglan was to incorporate as many of the notational devices of modern logic and mathematics as could be adapted to its use.
Loglan is a language which was originally devised to test the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis
that the structure of language determines the boundaries of human thought.
The most promising way to create such a difference, it seemed to me, was to exaggerate some
natural function of human language, that is, to increase the functional adequacy of some complex
of linguistic structures in a way that would have a strong independent likelihood of enhancing
the measurable performance of its learners on some specified set of tasks. Besides, in its original
formulation the Whorf hypothesis is a negative one: language limits thought. One way of
disclosing such phenomena is to take the suspected limits off, more precisely, to push them
outward in some direction in which removing limits would have predictable effects. So it was
settled. The diminutive language should also be a functionally extreme one in some known or
presumable way: an extremely poetic one, say, or an extremely efficient one, or extremely
logical.
But the claim invested in this metaphor is in fact narrower than the wide
word 'logical' suggests. Loglan is logical only in the sense of purporting to facilitate certain
limited kinds of thought: namely those kinds which proceed by the transformation of sentences
into other sentences in such a way that if the first are true so also are the second. We might
also expect it to minimize, or help prevent, the errors that are usually made in performing such
deductive operations. But these are fairly modest senses of the word 'logical'. We might have
meant to convey by it the much stronger claim that Loglan is a deductive system, in the sense
that geometry and formal logic are. To support such a claim we would have had to show that
Loglan had a set of elementary notions and elementary operations from which all its complex
notions and complex operations had been rigorously derived. But we do not make this claim.
Apart from the thought-facilitating functions of Loglan, the language is also meant to be a
manageable laboratory instrument: teachable, measurable, controllable; its structure transparently
observable both at the moment of introduction into any experiment and in continuous change
But Loglan does seem to be easily learned,11 and on every formal parameter it is agreeably small.
The number of its grammar rules is an order of magnitude less than has come to be expected of natural grammars from recent work.
While the size of a language is not the only factor that determines the speed with which it is learned, it is
undoubtedly an important one; and all my early teaching trials have suggested that Loglan is indeed very rapidly learned.
Another feature of the language that reflects its intended use as a laboratory instrument is its cultural neutrality.
Loglan grammar is not only known but already written in a machine-parsable code. So it is itself the beginning of an AI program.
Besides, if the partial grammars now in hand are any indication,
when a complete grammar of a natural human language is finally written, it will be far too large
for programmatic manipulation in the AI lab. Natural languages are very large affairs.
Thus, more than anything else it is the small size, formal completeness and machine parsability
of Loglan grammar that seem to suit it for manipulation in the artificial intelligence laboratory.
...to make the machine-man interface truly comfortable for humans and yet continue to be instructive
for machines, we need a language in which the requirements of both humans and machines are met.
Loglan may be such a language. We have seen that it is utterly unequivocal grammatically. One
consequence is that we humans become aware of what we are actually saying when we talk
Loglan. So a Loglan-speaking human is much less likely to say one thing while meaning another,
thus misinforming his or her machine. Also, as we shall see in the next chapter, Loglan words
resolve uniquely from the speech-stream; no 'I scream'/'Ice cream' phenomena exist in it. So even
spoken instructions are unequivocal in Loglan. This is true of no other language. Being able to
speak freely composed instructions spontaneously would add immeasurably to the speed and
comfort of the interaction for humans, and yet, because it's Loglan, its being spoken would not
diminish its precision for machines.
What do we human partners in this high-powered interaction require? That we be permitted to
express our thoughts fully, freely and spontaneously without the risk of seriously misinforming
our machines. That we be able to understand most of the machine's word-choices and all its
utterance-forms immediately, and be able to clarify by interrogation whatever part of the
computer's responses to us we do not immediately understand.
Consider the problem. An original document, say a French article on galactic evolution, is to be
translated into a dozen other languages, from Chinese to Swahili. As this project would be
implemented now, it would turn into a dozen separate translation tasks, each performed by its
own bilingual expert, or team of experts, if as many as a dozen could be found. But with Loglan
as the translation medium, the project would be transformed into essentially one task: translation
of the French document into Loglan. Admittedly this would require human effort aided by
whatever computer algorithms the agency had developed for this purpose. But the resulting
Loglan document could then be more or less instantly retranslated into almost any number of
other natural tongues, and this second step could in principle be performed, and so eventually in
practice, by machines.
Another not quite so incidental by-product of using Loglan as a translation medium would be
that the Loglan texts so created would be well-adapted for the machine storage and retrieval of
the information they contained. For one of the same reasons that Loglan Is suitable at the
interface, namely that knowledge stored in the predicate notation is apparently usable by both
machines and humans, texts translated into Loglan and stored on some electronic medium could
later be searched and even studied by machines. The studying Machines would be computers
"trained", i.e., programmed in the AI style, in the human art of scholarly reading. Although key
words and Phrases can be searched for now, and in texts written in any language, natural
language texts cannot yet be understood by computers in this way.
Once again Loglan yields a special benefit because its grammar is transparent and its meanings
clear.
Although Loglan was not designed for this bright future, it may nevertheless have attributes that fit it for the job.
This is the perspective from which Loglan is seen by many individuals, not as a
research tool, not as contribution to the machine-man interface, not as a candidate for the
international auxiliary, but as a delightful and very human toy.
John E Clifford
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John E Clifford
Andrew Browne
Thanks, PC. Your blog post makes a convincing argument that being unambiguous, or what you are calling "monoparsing" (you are the only hit on google for this term, so I'll stick to the conventional terminology), is lojban's most distinguishing feature, but I do not think that it answers the question of goals.
To summarize your unofficial response, the goals are:
1) to be a usable language
2) to be unambiguous
3) to be able to be mapped to a symbolic logic expression
I think 1) and 2) are well stated goals. They are clear and simple, making it easy to see if they are being met or not.
Your goals 2) and 3) seem like instrumental goals, rather than terminal goals.
When I posted the question, I tried to gather references, but avoid posting any interpretation of them since my interpretation is not relevant to the question of the official stance.
Since the discussion is turning unofficial, I’ll offer my opinion. These are the bits in the references that I think/hope/expect best describe the goals:
"enhancing the measurable performance of its learners"
“language limits thought.“
“take the suspected limits off, more precisely, to push them outward in some direction"
“extremely logical.”
To state the goals in my own words:
The goal of lojban is to be a usable language which enhances thought.
- maximize facility for logical thought: clear, sound, consistent reasoning
- minimize limitations on thought
What do we mean by “logical”?:
- clarity is logical
- consistency and regularity is logical
- being systematic is logical
- being objective and unbiased is logical
What are limitations on thought?:
- relative difficulty expressing relatively simple concepts
- not allowing vagueness is a limitation; vagueness reduces limit of minimal precision
- ambiguity is a limitation on clarity
Note: The goal of lojban is not to test the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis. However this hypothesis inspired lojban’s goals and lojban should be ideal for testing it.
Note: Some people may advocate being “rational” over “logical”. The term “rational” is not used in the goal statement with the view that; logical thought is required to evaluate and choose rational actions.
Note: Ambiguousness is multiple possible distinct/unrelated meanings. Vagueness is a single meaning, expressed with less precision.
I think many of the instrumental goals and design features derive from these goals.
Stuff my goals (and notes) do not cover:
- Does “enhances thought” apply to learners, speakers, or thinkers? Is it still expected to apply when they are not speaking/thinking in lojban?
- Should the definition mention simplicity (or avoiding unnecessary complexity) as an aspect of being logical? is that part of clarity? “Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication."
- Stability and backwards compatibility; is this part of usability?
- The need?/goal? to specify/document much/all of the language.
Other interesting points for this definition:
- Viewing a team of people/computers as a single entity, communication within that entity is part of thought. Communication as language may even be necessary within one brain (that is my unsupported speculation).
Discussion aside, I still hope for an official answer to the question - and I think it is an important question deserving of one.
Officially, what are the goals of lojban?
Gleki Arxokuna
Andrew Browne
Hm, i can't see syntactic unambiguity in the list of your goals.
The goal of lojban is to be a usable language which enhances thought.
- maximize facility for logical thought: clear, sound, consistent reasoning
- minimize limitations on thought
I did mention ambiguity as something to minimize:
- ambiguity is a limitation on clarity
Does this mean lojban aims not only for syntactic but for semantic unambiguity as well?
Does lojban have a goal of a semantic regularization and if yes then to what extent? I can see that e.g. the place structure of words for animals is more or less homogeneous.
- consistency and regularity is logical
Does Lojban aims for being a metalanguage in future machine translation applications?Does this eventually mean it is supposed to be an auxiliary language in that you write in Lojban, and your text is automatically translated into high quality texts in other languages?
John E Clifford
Gleki Arxokuna
I think this is the only semantic regularisation that is to be achieved.
Others are useless although i won't object to any of them.
Michael Turniansky
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Andrew Browne
I *would* insist on syntactic unambiguity (I think this is a more conventional term for "monoparsing", and more precise than my previous use of "unambiguous"). That would be an instrumental goal for minimizing ambiguity. One could argue it is also a terminal goal, I certainly think it is at least a very important instrumental goal (important because I expect syntactic unambiguity is necessary to maximize the utility function of the terminal goal I stated).
I haven’t elaborated all the instrumental goals for the terminal goal I stated.
I would not expect to achieve semantic unambiguity to the infinite precision you are suggesting. I think that is where the distinction between ambiguity and vagueness comes in. Striving to perfect precision of meaning is attempting to eliminate vagueness.
As I noted in a previous post, I'm using the terms "ambiguousness" and "vagueness"with this distinction: Ambiguousness is multiple possible distinct/unrelated meanings. Vagueness is a single meaning, expressed with less precision.
Everything short of perfectly precise meaning has some vagueness, I agree this is inevitable. That vagueness is not something I would attempt to minimize.
“Why does a language have to have "goals"?”
Thanks for raising this question, gejyspa. It is fundamental to my question and I have neglected to address it.
I don’t think “a language” has to have goals (as you note, you could perhaps argue the implicit goal is communication). Other than communication, I think it would be hard to argue that natural languages have goals, and I don’t know of any motivation for trying to explicitly specify goals of natural languages.
Constructed languages on the other hand, I think must have a goal from their creator(s). It may be a frivolous goal, like “to play with words” or “for my amusement” or “for art”. If a constructed language does not have goals; what will guide it’s creation? How will its design be chosen? What motivation brought it into existence?
Among conlangs, I expect Lojban to have well defined goals because it is “logical language”. Choices for the design/construction/specification/use of the language can be guided by having goals, which should make the language more coherent and consistent. I think having goals is logical.
The next question is: why does Lojban have to have explicitly defined goals?
So that the benefits of having goals mentioned above can continue consistently through time, and through multiple contributors/creators. Having explicit goals may also help to resolve future unanswered questions or arguments (and do so with an answer more consistent with all the rest of Lojban). And again, I expect lojban should have explicit goals because I think it is logical for lojban to have goals.
If lojban does not have explicit goals, surely it has unexplicit goals? Why not make them explicit?
Gleki Arxokuna
la gleki, what is the semantic regularization you are saying those words exhibit? regularized place structures? atomic concepts (kanpe vs pacna)?
Andrew Browne
Section 1. Purpose. The Logical Language Group, Inc. is established to promote the scientific study of the relationships between language, thought and human culture; to investigate the nature of language and to determine the requirements for an artificially-engineered natural language; to implement and experiment with such a language; to devise and promote applications for this language in fields including but not limited to linguistics, psychology, philosophy, logic, mathematics, computer science, anthropology, sociology, education, and human biology; to conduct and support experimental and scholarly research in these fields as they may bear upon the problems of artificial language development; to communicate with and to educate interested persons and organizations about these activities; to devise and develop means and instruments needed for these activities; and to accumulate and publish the results of such studies and developments.
If this review results in consensus agreement that certain changes are appropriate, to be consistent both with actual usage and the engineering goals of the language, they will be incorporated as part of the discontinuity between the existing provisional baselines and the actual design baseline covering the full language.
If usage has established a pattern clearly inconsistent with the existing documents, but consistent with the design goals for the language, the byfy reviewers will have the power to approve changes to the baseline to reflect that usage. A critical goal is to preserve the fundamental design goal that Lojban words have a unitary and self-consistent meaning.
Further, we (the Lojban community as a whole) should adopt a set of goals for the language (we don't currently have those at all, just a set of design decisions from back in the day, which isn't the same thing), with "respecting how people happened to use the language" and "making sure the meaning of past usage doesn't change" being much lower on the goal list than they are now, and get on with actually fixing the language based on those goals.
On Monday, June 9, 2014 11:54:43 PM UTC+10, Andrew Browne wrote:
What are the official goals of lojban?