On 15/10/2015 17:18, Gleki Arxokuna wrote:
> 2015-10-15 18:45 GMT+03:00 R A Brown:
>
[snip]
>> Let us accept for the sake of argument what And wrote,
>> namely: "Natural languages encode [predicate--argument
>> structure]s of limited complexity and do it
>> ambiguously."

>> and:

>> "A loglang ... is a language that unambiguously encodes
>> predicate--argument structure of unlimited
>> complexity."
>
> Any examples of this ambiguity for one group and
> unambiguity for the other?

I'll leave it to And to comment on his definitions if he
wishes. Ambiguity in natlangs occur all the time; loglangs
claim to give unambiguous utterances.

>>
>> If we accept this, what is your opinion of the
>> longlangitude of 'Plan B' and of Voksigid?
>>
>
> Protero's Plan B and Voksigid are simply underformalized.
> Where is the full description and the dictionary of
> Voksigid? The page
> http://viewsoflanguage.host56.com/voksigid/ says
> nothing.

Sure - but from what has been specified, should they be
regarded as loglangs? Their authors clearly thought they
should.

[snip]
>
> Of course, you decide what the term "loglang" means for
> you. But indeed it's better to formalize the term since
> even Wikipedia is affected.

Sure - and I want to be as _objective_ as possible.
==============================================================

On 15/10/2015 18:17, Logan Kearsley wrote:
> On 15 October 2015 at 09:45, R A Brown wrote:
[snip]
>
> Personally, while I like And's definition for it's
> simplicity and clarity, I think it a bit too narrow. I am
> uncertain just how much it can be broadened without
> losing all practical meaning, however.

;)

[snip]
> and if the finite set of referents is small enough, then
> most natlangs qualify, which seems wrong, but it still
> feels like there is a qualitative difference if the set
> of referents that can be unambiguously distinguished is,
> say, 50, rather than 3 or 4.

Agreed.

> Broadenings that I am more comfortable with would be to
> say that a loglang is a language which *can* encode
> arbitrary structure unambiguously (thus allowing that a
> loglang may also allow ambiguity if you want it, which is
> probably important for usability), and that a loglang is
> a language which is *intended* to encode arbitrary
> structure unambiguously.

I like _intended_; it reflects the intention of the
author(s). But I'm not so happy with _can_; I think if a
loglang allows permitted ambiguity, IMO it is compromising
its intention. If the only usable loglangs do permit
ambiguity then it seems to that this is telling us that a
'pure' loglang is not usable by humans for ordinary intercourse.

> Although, it may after all be a good idea to leave intent
> out of it and just refer to "failed loglangs"

I'd rather not do this. To start referring to "failed
loglangs" seems to me to be entering a similar minefield to
that of referring to "failed auxlangs." I've had enough of
the latter in my time and don't want to enter another
minefield ;)

==========================================================

On 16/10/2015 11:44, Alex Fink wrote:
> On Thu, 15 Oct 2015 19:18:23 +0300, Gleki Arxokuna
> wrote:
>
>> 2015-10-15 18:45 GMT+03:00 R A Brown:
>>
>>> If we accept this, what is your opinion of the
>>> longlangitude of 'Plan B' and of Voksigid?
>>
>> Protero's Plan B and Voksigid are simply
>> underformalized. Where is the full description and the
>> dictionary of Voksigid? The page
>> http://viewsoflanguage.host56.com/voksigid/ says
>> nothing.
>
> Plan B was explicitly a thought-experiment, wasn't it?

I think it was rather more than that:
http://www.carolandray.plus.com/Exp/a%20Near-optimal%20Loglan.pdf

It sets out to design and _implement_ a near-optimal loglang
syntax. Does the syntax a loglang syntax?

> I'm afraid I have to agree regarding Voksigid, though.
> Perhaps, for those of us who were around in 1991--92 and
> watched its development, it was a full loglang aborning.
> But that "us" excludes me.

It excludes me also :)

[snip]
>
> The sense I get from that documentation, for what that's
> worth, is one culturally more in line with auxlangs in
> the Esperanto tradition.

That's probably because Bruce Gilson was/is primarily
interested in auxlang - but he would not the reference to
Esperanto :-)

He was/is an ardent opponent of Esperanto and, indeed, was
one of the main contributors to that weekend in January 1996
that led to the Great Sundering.

But you are right; for all his hostility towards E-o, he did
like things such as POS marking. His version of Novial
wanted to take the language in a more Esperantine direction.

[snip]
> ... This gives me the impression that Gilson hadn't
> properly embraced the freedom to choose which sorts of
> morpheme boundaries should be elevated to word
> boundaries, but was at some level following a dictum like
> "if it's one word in SAE, it shall be one word in
> Voksigid".

Very probably.

[snip]
>
> Using a case grammar inspired approach, with explicit
> role markers, certainly doesn't disqualify a language
> from loglanghood, though. Canonical paaS more or less
> does the same ad absurdum.

Yep.
=======================================================

Following leads given by Gleki, I came across this
definition of loglang:
"... a language in which every utterance is traceable to a
unique representation in a suitable logic formalism, which
representation correctly gives the meaning of the utterance,
and is reached from the linguistic form by automatic formal
rules (parsing)"

Thoughts?

--
Ray
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==================================
"Ein Kopf, der auf seine eigenen Kosten denkt,
wird immer Eingriffe in die Sprache thun."
[J.G. Hamann, 1760]
"A mind that thinks at its own expense
will always interfere with language".