Talk:Lojban/Archive grammar

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[edit] Phonology

[edit] Why is there several sounds?

I had high hopes for lojban and am quite disappointed by the fact it does not enforce one sound per letter. .a'o may by both "aho" (like bowl) or "ahɔ" (like hot) and still refer to the same thing (hope).

Also, it is not context-free, at least for the letters i and u.

Even some traditional languages such as Serbian (and most Slavic languages come close to it) enjoy univalence between phonemes and graphemes. Such a thing appears to me as fundamental for an ambitious (and non-ambiguous) language.

Any reason for this?
David Latapie (✒ | @) 15:12, 27 November 2006 (UTC)

I do not understand the complain. Every language I know of has different pronunciations possible for many phonemes. If I understand lojban correctly, every letter has one corresponding sound and vice versa. The sound itself can be pronounced with different "accents" to accommodate speakers of widely different origins. 8 Jan 2007. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 195.212.29.75 (talk • contribs).

[edit] Usefulness of explicit glottal stop?

Also, wouldn't it be better to just decide there is no liaison in lojban? I am a French native speaker and we use the glottal stop exclusively to avoid liaison (like hérisson [leading glottal stop] vs. horreur [no leading glottal stop]). Consequently, I may misunderstand the function of the glottal stop; is it a sort of “syllable separator”? Please notify me of any other use for this “sound”.
David Latapie (✒ | @) 15:45, 27 November 2006 (UTC)

Sorry for saying so, but you seem to be confused on a few fronts. Firstly, you seem to misunderstand the purpose of a talk page, which is to discuss how to improve the article. Even if everyone here were to agree with you that Lojban had the problems you perceive, that wouldn't really affect the article. Secondly, you seem to misunderstand the meaning of the term phoneme; Lojban does indeed have a one-to-one grapheme-to-phoneme correspondence, [ɔ] and [o] being alternative realizations of the same phoneme. Thirdly, you seem to misunderstand the nature of the glottal stop; it is simply a consonant. In some languages, it can be inserted epenthetically; this is the case in French (well, most dialects), where it's inserted to produce hiatus when liaison is forbidden (especially before so-called h aspiré), as well as in English, where it appears phrase-initially if no other consonant is present. In other languages, it does not exist at all; I don't think Italian has glottal stops at all. And in yet others, it's simply a normal consonant. (As used in those languages, it might well sound like a "syllable separator" to a French or English speaker, but that's a consequence of how French and English use the sound, not something inherent in the sound.) —RuakhTALK 01:07, 4 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Pronouncing the comma

I've got the following from the on-line Reference Grammar, Chapter 3, Section 3, eighth paragraph:

"It is always legal to use the apostrophe (IPA [h]) sound in pronouncing a comma."

-- Dissident (Talk) 18:30, 5 January 2007 (UTC)

I discussed it with the author of that book, and he says it should probably be considered an erratum. I'll keep this talk page apprised on any further developments.—Nat Krause(Talk!·What have I done?) 00:11, 29 January 2007 (UTC)


[edit] Orthography

[edit] Punctuation?

Does Lojban have punctuation? -- Beland 16:57, 24 August 2006 (UTC)

Done. Short answer: no. arj 17:55, 24 August 2006 (UTC)

When a letter has multiple possible pronounciations, is there a rule to pick one in a given circumstance, or are people free to pick one randomly? -- Beland 16:57, 24 August 2006 (UTC)

Done. arj 17:45, 24 August 2006 (UTC)

Can anyone graph a Lojban sentence for us? -- Beland 16:57, 24 August 2006 (UTC)


[edit] Morphology

[edit] alga?

What's "alga"? I've never heard of this, or any other shorter-than-five-letters brivla.

I believe it means "alga". arj 18:53, 8 May 2005 (UTC)

[edit] brivla

"All brivla, except for a handful of borrowings such as alga, have at least five letters."
The five letter rule is about the subcategory of gismu, alga is clearly a fu'ivla.
Codegrinder 21:59, 22 May 2007 (UTC)


[edit] Syntax and semantics

[edit] Deliberate ambiguity, "poetic effects"?

As a neophyte in this area, I may be stepping unknowingly into a well-worn controversy, but the following struck me immediately as potentially POV:

... an artificial language like Lojban, that is capable of expressing all the nuance and subtlety of the natural languages we are familiar with ...

I imagine many natural-language poets would contest this statement, since many poetic effects are based on deliberate ambiguity. If Lojban truly does achieve the goal of having "mathematically inviolate grammar and spelling rules [that] remove all possible confusion about what a sentence is trying to say," then it would seem to be incapable of ambiguity. Original Lojban poetry would lack the ability to use ambiguity as a communicative device. And (considering this in the abstract, since I've never attempted it) I would expect that much natural-language poetry could not be satisfactorily translated into Lojban.

The premise seems to be that ambiguity is inherently bad. It is certainly bad in some contexts, but in others it is powerful and evocative. --Sharpner 20:21, 7 January 2006 (UTC)

I agree that it could be written in a more neutral way. We have to separate between grammatical (syntactical) unambiguity, as opposed to lexical/semantic vagueness. Lojban still has the latter, since it is not based on any rigiorous semantic framework. arj 22:37, 7 January 2006 (UTC)

Excellent point, and one well-worth inclusion or working in somehow while restoring the NPOV. - Not a registered user.

[edit] Context-free grammar?

The article Context-free_grammar states that Lojban's grammar is context-free. I would think that elidability of terminators possibly makes it context-sensitive. Icek 12:21, 1 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Abstract noun marker, nominalization

Anyone know if there's an abstract noun marker? Is nominalization possible in this language?

There are twelve abstractors. [1] arj 09:24, 15 May 2007 (UTC)

If by "nominalization" you mean "turning other parts of speech into a noun" the answer is "yes and no". There aren't really any nouns per se, but the gadri ("articles") do function to turn brivla into sumti arguments. Example: gerku means "...is a dog". "le gerku" = "the dog" 198.151.13.10 16:47, 29 May 2007 (UTC)

How do you say in Lojban, "Ron speaks fluent Lojban and he got laid last night" where "got laid" is in the dubiative mood?

"la ron certu le zu'o tavla fo lo lojbau kei gi'e pu selgle .iacu'i ca le nu prulamcte" (said without a trace of irony) 198.151.13.10 16:47, 29 May 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Other

[edit] Simple to learn?

"It is, nonetheless, simple to learn and use compared to many natural languages. " This is usually said about all constructed languages. However, how can you say that when there are so few fluent speakers? < 10 last time I heard...

Experience has shown that it takes a significantly shorter period of serious study to speak Lojban at a conversational level than other languages which are not closely related to one's native language, though there have never been any valid scientific studies of it.
WTF??? Only reading about it causes me a serious headache... I think even Japanese would be much easier if it hadn't kanji and honorifics, and I am an Italian speaker... Lobjan is more similar to any programming language than any two natural languages are... --Army1987 17:57, 19 May 2005 (UTC)