[lojban] Comparison to Ilaksh?

[Danny Piccirillo]

Just wondering how lojban compares to Ilaksh. 

There's been a request for a comparison on wikipedia for a long time http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Lojban#Comparison_to_Ilaksh

--
.danny

☮♥Ⓐ - http://www.google.com/profiles/danny.piccirillo
Every (in)decision matters.

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[Robert LeChevalier]

Danny Piccirillo wrote:
> Just wondering how lojban compares to Ilaksh.

I've even never heard of Ilaksh, and I don't think it has ever been
mentioned in any Lojban discussion (though I haven't read everything the
last few years).

From the Wiki entry for the language, and the link to the author's
description, I would say that there is almost nothing comparable about
the two languages. Indeed, I can't imagine a language much more
different from Lojban.

lojbab

[MorphemeAddict]

A similar comparison can be made between Ithkuil (the precursor of Ilaksh) and Lojban. They are still very different from each other.

 

stevo

[Danny Piccirillo]

Wikipedia has a section of comparisons to other languages. It lists Voksigid which seems to be fairly different. I thought someone who was familiar woth both lojban and Ilaksh could add a section

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lojban#Comparison_with_other_logical_languages

--
.danny

☮♥Ⓐ - http://www.google.com/profiles/danny.piccirillo
Every (in)decision matters.

[Robert LeChevalier]

Danny Piccirillo wrote:
> Wikipedia has a section of comparisons to other languages. It
> lists Voksigid which seems to be fairly different.

Voksigid actually started out as an effort to invent a language that
didn't have certain "flaws" in Lojban perceived by the guy who proposed
it. Likewise gua-spi is historically tied to Lojban and thus warrants
some comparison on that basis.

I myself with Athelstan did a comparison with Esperanto, because of
certain oft-repeated claims about that language that related to Lojban's
claims.

But Ilaksh's inventor seems to make no claims at all related to Lojban,
and I have no reason to believe he ever heard of Lojban.

> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lojban#Comparison_with_other_logical_languages

Where is there a claim that Ilaksh is a "logical language"?

The word "rational" is used somewhere in the description, but the way it
is used, it seems merely to mean "designed" and tries to follow rules,
not that it has anything to do with "logic" per se. Most artificial
languages are "rational" in that sense, but relatively few are claimed
to be "logical".

[And Rosta]

Robert LeChevalier, On 06/05/2010 04:37:

> But Ilaksh's inventor seems to make no claims at all related to Lojban,
> and I have no reason to believe he ever heard of Lojban.

He has heard of Lojban. Lojban is well-known, as is his widely-admired Ithkuil/Ilaksh.

>> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lojban#Comparison_with_other_logical_languages
>>
>
> Where is there a claim that Ilaksh is a "logical language"?
>
> The word "rational" is used somewhere in the description, but the way it
> is used, it seems merely to mean "designed" and tries to follow rules,
> not that it has anything to do with "logic" per se. Most artificial
> languages are "rational" in that sense, but relatively few are claimed
> to be "logical".

What Lojban and Ithkuil/Ilaksh have in common is that they are the two most fully elaborated/documented/specified published engelangs, so two of the most impressive achievements in the world of invented languages.

As for how they differ:

* Lojban was developed piecemeal, by committee, and generally satisfied itself with the rule of thumb that "barely good enough is good enough (because then you can get on with building the user-community)", whereas Ilaksh had a single inventor and a single overarching integrated design and aimed for optimal solutions to its design goals.

* Considered as pure language designs, Ithkuil/Ilaksh is more impressive than Lojban. Lojban makes virtually everybody who encounters it feel they could improve on it, whereas nobody thinks that with Ithkuil/Ilaksh, which simply inspires awe. However, Lojban stands out as a virtually unique example of a language invented by a large team of very thoughtful people; and after Esperanto, it probably has easily the largest community of active supporters, setting aside languages like Klingon and Na'vi that draw on a larger fanbase and are commercially promoted.

* Lojban aimed to be human-speakable and to acquire a speech community. Ithkuil did not aim to be usable by humans in real-time. Ilaksh is less phonetically daunting than Ithkuil, but still does not aim to be usable by humans in real-time. Neither Ithkuil nor Ilaksh was designed with the aim of acquiring a speech community, though their excellence has nevertheless attracted to Ilaksh a user/learner-community, I believe.

* Lojban aimed to be able to be logically unambiguous, and to some extent tried to be culturally neutral and minimalist in the semantic categories it imposes on the world-view of its users. Ithkuil/Ilaksh was designed from a Cognitive Linguistics perspective, which doesn't make much of a song and dance about predicate logic; and absolutely fundamental to its design are immensely elaborate and highly specified multiple semantic taxonomies it imposes on the world-view of its speakers. By encoding these taxonomies morphologically in ingeniously concise ways, Ithkuil/Ilaksh allows for the expression of extraordinarily rich meanings in extraordinarily compressed forms.

--And.

[terrible and majestic]

I already did some (amateurish) comparison between Ithkuil/Ilaksh and
lojban and will post it here a little later, if it is appropriate. For
now, a very short summary: Ithkuil and Ilaksh are very similar, more
so than loglan and lojban. Essentially they are two different phonetic
and graphic realization of same grammar. So, for sake of this
comparison, I'll treat them as one language. Ithkuil and lojban are
very different in some respects, but very similar in others. It is
possible to map the sizable part of one's grammar to another's. Lojban
has better, more clear design, an Ithkuil has more rich grammatical
categories (yet lojban has more rich and systematic attitudinal
system). Ithkuil have very little structure on syntctic level and
above, especially compared to lojban; and it totally lacks any mekso-
analogue. Lojban has lesser structure in organization of its
vocabulary. Ithkuil is more difficult to learn and use, mostly because
of combination of (sometimes excess) complexity with irregularities in
design. Most importantly, in spite of Ithkuil and lojban having
comparable numbers of good ideas in their bases, lojban is a creation
of community, so it is much better tested and 'debugged'.

[Robert LeChevalier]

And Rosta wrote:
> * Lojban aimed to be human-speakable and to acquire a speech community.
> Ithkuil did not aim to be usable by humans in real-time. Ilaksh is less
> phonetically daunting than Ithkuil, but still does not aim to be usable
> by humans in real-time.

I guess this is something I'll never understand. To me, if it isn't
usable as a language, then it isn't a language. It might be a
language-related art project, as many artlangs seem to be, but I won't
pretend to understand or appreciate art for its own sake.

To each, their own.

lojbab

[And Rosta]

Robert LeChevalier, On 06/05/2010 15:08:

> And Rosta wrote:
>> * Lojban aimed to be human-speakable and to acquire a speech
>> community. Ithkuil did not aim to be usable by humans in real-time.
>> Ilaksh is less phonetically daunting than Ithkuil, but still does not
>> aim to be usable by humans in real-time.
>
> I guess this is something I'll never understand. To me, if it isn't
> usable as a language, then it isn't a language. It might be a
> language-related art project, as many artlangs seem to be, but I won't
> pretend to understand or appreciate art for its own sake.
>
> To each, their own.

As we know, we disagree about whether being used is criterial for languagehood. You see language as fundamentally a kind of human behaviour, stuff that *happens*, whereas I see language as a tool, and an unused tool is still a tool.

But setting that definitional difference aside, I wonder if you would be similarly baffled by architects designing buildings that are never going to be built, NASA scientists designing spaceships that will forever remain blueprints? The building may be beautiful, and may in its conception and elaboration elevate the spirit, even if it remains unbuilt. The spaceship design may advance science even if it remains a blueprint. Similarly, Ithkuil has both aesthetic and scientific value by virtue simply of its design.

To my own thinking, the actual use of an invented language by a speech community is especially valuable only if the design of the language is an improvement on other (natural or invented) languages' designs. Hence my attraction to the overall Logban project with its goal of creating and bringing into use a viable logical language, and my comparative disdain for the design of Lojban itself and the issue of whether it acquires a speech community. (When I speak of "comparative disdain", I don't disdain the importance Lojban has to others such as you; you have invested enormous effort into the project, and because I wish you well, I wish your endeavours and projects well too.)

--And.

[Robert LeChevalier]

And Rosta wrote:
> But setting that definitional difference aside, I wonder if you would be
> similarly baffled by architects designing buildings that are never going
> to be built,

They aren't buildings, but pictures/drawings of buildings. They may
have value as art or concept, but I recognize a difference between an
idea, a plan, and a real thing.

> NASA scientists designing spaceships that will forever
> remain blueprints? The building may be beautiful, and may in its
> conception and elaboration elevate the spirit, even if it remains
> unbuilt.

They aren't spaceships, but spaceship designs.

And unicorns in fantasy novels are still fantasy creatures and not real
creatures, no matter how skilled the writing.

I didn't question the value of Ilaksh; I merely am not sure it is proper
to call it a "language" as opposed to a "language design".

lojbab

[John E Clifford]

I used to be of Lojbab's mind on this, but a few years with the Language Creation Society has loosened me up quite a bit. The requirement, that a language needs to be human-usable in real time, now seems to me to be too limited in several ways -- besides being hard to test. I know a handful of people who claim (and I am not going to get into trying to test them) to have used Ithkuil for communication, although I don't know how real-time it was (but then, I don't know many people who do Lojban in real time either -- more than formerly, to be sure). And, of course, I see no reason to deny language to critters other than humans, provided certain formal constraints are met (so, maybe no terrestrial cases, but ets are open), even if they are not languages a human could use (colored patches on the skin, say, or tentacle semaphore, to cite two cases from the last LCC). Even the structural requirements may go by, at least insofar as our knowledge goes. I
was willing to believe that Klingon was a language even before Okrand came along and gave it structure and I do the same for Prawn even though there does not seem to be any information about it. Maybe that is because I see humanoids using it obviously effectively for communication with others, including humans. In this way, many "languages" from books and movies get in even though their structures are virtually unknown, some being represented by only a couple of (unexplained) expressions or even just by names (Cthulh -- that's from memory and seems too simple, Tlo"n, whatever it was that Gulliver got called in Liliputian). But in this they are not that different from some natural languages, e.g., Etruscan, which we are still willing to call languages. We can go further with this sort of analogy, to cases of "languages" where all we have are unreadable texts (Phaistos disk, frinstance), so why not allow things like the "Chinese book" that contains
many character-like items but no real characters -- and has no translation. That is, the analogies with our knowledge of actual languages allows us to let into the fold of conlangs a large number of items that are deficient or deviant in various ways. And given that, it seems harsh to exclude a "language" with a fully specified grammar, phonology, and semantics, just because we can't imagine anyone using it in real time. Most artlangs are at least capable of being put into some sort of context where they make perfect sense as languages and that may be enough to count, even if that context is not (even cannot be) realized. Them damned thousand flowers again.