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From: mark@utzoo.UUCP (mark bloore)
Newsgroups: net.nlang
Subject: Re: Latin and Loglan
Message-ID: <3228@utzoo.UUCP>
Date: Mon, 3-Oct-83 20:51:33 EDT
Article-I.D.: utzoo.3228
Posted: Mon Oct  3 20:51:33 1983
Date-Received: Mon, 3-Oct-83 20:51:33 EDT
References: <1850@allegra.UUCP>
Organization: U of Toronto Zoology
Lines: 35

why create a new vocabulary for loglan, rather than using english words
with a new grammar?  (someone asked recently)

loglan's words were (and continue to be) constructed to meet certain criteria
which natural languages do not have:

different "parts of speech" have different patterns of stress and
vowel/consonant order.  these are arranged in such a way that a sentence
may be unambiguously divided into words by a listener (human or computer) who
does not understand what is being said.  a great help if you (or the speaker)
is not fluent.  
in english there are many phrases which are difficult to say distinctly, 
eg "i scream" vs "ice cream".  there have been cases where i couldn't parse
a (spoken) sentence because i didn't know what was being talked about, but
would have known the subject if i could have parsed the sentence!

loglan's basic "predicate" (noun/verb/qualifier) words are based on the
eight most widely spoken languages, so as to make them easy to learn
and recognize for a large part of the world's population.  no natural
language can do match this.

natural vocabularies have homonyms and words with many disparate meanings.
these are a source of confusion, and avoided in loglan.

the basic predicate set is chosen so as not to have words which sound too
much alike.  again, less confusion.


in short, i think using an existing vocabulary would
make a logical language immpossible.


				mARK bLOORE
				univ of toronto
				{allegra,ihnp4,linus,decvax}!utzoo!mark