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'''BBC Radio 4 (UK)'''. Michael Rosen's Word of Mouth series "took a journey into the world of words, language and the way we speak '. The January 05, 2010 episode focused on constructed languages. Lojban was featured along with Esperanto, Láadan and Klingon. To hear a recording, including an interview with veteran lojbanist Colin Fine, download [http://www.lojban.org/tiki/tiki-download_wiki_attachment.php?attId=677&page=Multimedia&download=y BBC program on constructed languages.]


For errata relating to the current edition of the CLL, see [[jbocre: CLL, aka Reference Grammar, Errata|CLL, aka Reference Grammar, Errata]].  For errata related to the 4th Baseline Grammar, see [[jbocre: CLL PEG Errata|CLL PEG Errata]].
'''Arika Okrent, Author of "In the Land of Invented Languages"''' (published March 24, 2009 by Spiegel & Grau) tells the fascinating and highly entertaining history of man’s enduring quest to build a better language. To research her book and better understand Lojban, the author attended the Lojban Conference in 2006, and claims to have read all 600+ pages of the "The Complete Lojban Language". There are many reviews of her book. One such is to be found in [http://hestia.typepad.com/flatlander/2009/08/arika-okrent-in-the-land-of-invented-languages.html Flatlander] (August 23, 2009), in which the writer refers to the 'remorseless precision' of Lojban.


== General considerations ==
In a later [http://schott.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/03/10/questions-answered-invented-languages/?pagemode=print interview] on the New York Times Schott's Vocab blog, Okrent identified Lojban as the conlang with the most complete grammar.


===  Terminology ===
'''Sven Moritz Hallberg, Karl Hans Janke Kollaborativ''', has written paper in November, 2005 entitled "Logical Language Lojban: A Hackers’ Spoken Language". As a justification for the title, he stated: "The very structure and design of Lojban display values quite well-known to us computer geeks. It is clean, simple, general, and, by the very virtue of all these, powerful". You can read online or download the [http://web.archive.org/web/20110811062800/http://events.ccc.de/congress/2005/fahrplan/attachments/555-sm2005lojban.pdf paper] and the [http://web.archive.org/web/20110811062840/http://events.ccc.de/congress/2005/fahrplan/attachments/694-slides_lobjan.pdf slides] of the presentation given at the 22nd Chaos Communication Congress in Berlin. There also is a [http://chaosradio.ccc.de/22c3_m4v_569.html recording] of the presentation that you can download or stream.


#Lojban terms are used for most parts of speech, except for quantifiers and descriptors. Needlessly inconsistent?
'''AI Expert Newsletter''' (March 2005) in article entitled [http://www.ainewsletter.com/newsletters/aix_0503.htm#loglan "The Logical Languages Loglan and Lojban"] looks at the history of Lojban and its predecessor Loglan, and discusses them from an AI perspective.  


**In particular (this list is not exhaustive),
'''J. Desquilbet, Staff, IBM, Software Group''' has written an article entitled [http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/rational/library/2740.html "Using UML to understand Lojban"] for the Feb 05, 2004 edition of IBM's e-magazine Rational Edge. Unified Modeling Language (UML) is a standardized general-purpose modeling language used in the field of software engineering.
***quantifier->something with {snicne}? (though personally I (zort) disagree with the veljvo of {snicne})


***quantified variable->something with {snicne}?
'''Geoffrey Sampson, School of Cognitive and Computing Sciences, University of Sussex''' reviews John Woldemar Cowan's "The Complete Lojban Language" in [http://www.grsampson.net/VLoj.html Journal of Linguistics 35.447–8, 1999]. He concludes: "In general, Lojban constitutes a strikingly thorough working-out of its creators’ goals, and its design is responsive to a rich, subtle understanding of linguistics and philosophical logic".
***descriptor->gadri


***description->gadri sumti (I haven't actually seen this used)
See also: [[Negative opinions of Lojban]]
***attitudinal->cnima'o
 
***terminator->fa'orma'o
***modal->sumti tcita
 
***vocative->jikma'o? rinsyma'o?
***evidential->veljivma'o?
 
**Using Lojban terms is probably confusing for beginners. They're appropriate for a reference manual but not for a (comprehensive) tutorial, and it is clear that CLL is trying to be both. Not trying to claim that it necessarily shouldn't be both, just clarifying the issue.
 
#A lot of this terminology is used without being defined.  We should formally define the terminology that is import to understanding the grammar and syntax of Lojban, preferably in a sidebar outside of the main text.
 
# The general idea of terminators and particularly elision is never discussed as such in the book.  Chapter 5.5 is the first mention of a elidable terminators, with the first use of the phrase elidable terminator occurring in Chapter 5.7.  I think the concept of terminators, cmavo opening grammatical constructs, and elision should be dealt with in it's own section.  At the very least, the construct should be defined.[http://groups.google.com/group/lojban-beginners/browse_frm/thread/51e61df572e4ccf0]
 
===  Teaching Material and Examples ===
 
#There should be more illustration and diagrams. For instance, with termsets, show with lines and/or colour coding how two sentences are equivalent. See [http://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/ロジバン he Japanese Wikipedia] for some other examples.
 
# Minimum 2 sentence explanation for every cmavo (excluding ones that are part of a pattern like {fo'i}, of course). Chapter 13 is particularly guilty of the length of the explanation of a cmavo seemingly being inversely proportional to the number of cmavo explained in the section; some just get two gloss words worth of explanation, and it's rather opaque.
 
===  Pedagogy ===
 
# Chapter 4 needs to go somewhere else, ideally near the end.  It's crazy to give all that crap to newbies.
 
**''It is a specification, not a tutorial. It makes sense to start with orthography, follow with morphology, and then the continue with the rest of the language.'' mi'e.djeims.
 
# Maybe the fact that denpabu are optional in writing should be reinforced, since people seem to forget that. Right now it's only mentioned once, early in the book, in a little paragraph in chapter 3. It would not be out of place in chapters 4 and 19.
 
==  Topic Suggestions ==
 
Each of these topics is important to the CLL, but not strictly contained to a single chapter or Section.  Ideally, each of these topics would be reviewed for consistency throughout the text.
 
===  Lujvo ===
 
====  Chapter 4 ====
 
=====  Section 5 =====
 
It seems like the writers of the CLL originally did really just think of lujvo as being shortened forms of tanru who have been given an explicit meaning instead of the vague meaning that tanru have.
 
===  Cultural Neutrality ===
 
Chapter 3, Section 12 is titled "Oddball Orthographies."  "Oddball" is value judgment, rather than a factual statement.  In the spirit of cultural neutrality we should find statements with implied value judgments and translate them to factual statements.  In this case, "Alternate Orthographies" is a much clearer statement about the contents of that section.
 
* An obvious objection to this is that a neutral tone of writing is relatively boring. "Oddball" is more fun than "Alternate". By the way, do you advocate changing the chapter title "Relative Clauses, Which Make sumti Even More Complicated"?
 
== Typographical ==
 
*It would be better if numbered were not only chapters and sections, but also sentences like in the Bible.
***''Exactly what would be the benefit of adding "verse" numbers? We can easily cite specific sentences without the need to do this. For example, citing from the online refgram: 9.3.7.2 (Chapter 9, section 3, paragraph 7, sentence 2): "Therefore, it is perfectly all right to scramble...." Or for examples: 9.3-3.3 (Chapter 9, section 3, example 3.3): "''3.3)  klama fa mi fi la .atlantas.'' ...."'' mi'e.aionys.
 
*The brush-stroke placeholders for logical connectives should be written in "blackboard bold" instead, to make it look more form
**''I remember this section being confusing to me because of the brushstroke letters. Suddenly the book became much more formal (in the mathematical sense) and I didn't know what that signified. Writing them as of "-a -e -i -o" might be better, since the hyphen indicates they are not themselves words, without introducing a strange new typographical convention. The book already uses hyphens to show that rafsi are not words, so this would be consistent. Or since "a e i o" actually are words,  perhaps they could be used directly.'' mi'e.paldanyli.
 
*The header or footer of each page should include the chapter number along with the title, to make fully referencing examples easier.  (i.e., when you see example 1.7, you can look at that page and know that it is example 5.1.7, without having to scroll back to the table of contents to find the name of the chapter.)
 
== Chapter Suggestions ==
 
=== Chapter 3 ===
 
==== Section 6 ====
 
#Section 6, restriction no. 2 already forbids 8 of the 12 consonant pairs that are forbidden by restriction no. 3; perhaps it's better to just explicitly forbid the pairs "cs", "jz", "sc" and "zj" like in the last restriction.
 
**''I kind of like that the explanation for those pairs being forbidden is given, even if it includes things already forbidden. I would like it slightly better if the word "sibilant" were used. Perhaps for consistency the reason could be given for the last restriction instead of listing seemingly-random pairs.'' .imi'e .skaryzgik.
***''Agreed'' mi'e.aionys.
 
==== Section 9 ====
 
#A bit after example 9.5, the explanation of how to stress words is ambiguous. A possible incorrect interpretation:{CODE()}set stressed_syllable = penultimate_syllable;
 
while (stressed_syllable contains "l|m|n|r|y"
 
&& stressed_syllable != first_syllable) {
 
stressed_syllable = syllable_before(stressed_syllable);
 
}{CODE}None of the examples demonstrate that only syllables containing "l|m|n|r" as syllables on their own are to be skipped, nor that skipped syllables are to be ignored ''before'' you start counting as opposed to skipped while you're counting. The following examples would make it clearer: {djanatyn} is pronounced {DJAnatyn} (not {djaNAtyn}), and {patrica} is pronounced {paTRIca} (not {PAtrica}).
 
==== Section 12 ====
 
*The tengwar table should use actual tengwar in addition to their names, since we now have Unicode (CSUR) and good fonts.
*The Cyrillic letters given map to 'abcdefgijklmnoprstuvxyz'? That doesn't seem totally obvious. mi'e.djeims.
 
=== Chapter 4 ===
 
==== Section 7 ====
 
*In the procedure for making a non-Lojban word into a valid Stage 3 fu'ivla, double consonants are to be eliminated before the sounds are to be converted to their closest Lojban equivalents, but it is possible that consecutive consonants have different sounds (like in 'eccentric'). So these actions should swap places. The same goes for section 8, in the procedure for Lojbanizing a name.
 
=== Chapter 5 ===
 
==== Section 14 ====
 
*The three letter language abbreviations were probably used to save space, but now that we have actual tables we can safely write the full names of the languages.
 
=== Chapter 10 ===
 
*It would be nice if there was a template for compound tenses around the end of the chapter, like the template for compound cnima'o in chapter 13 section 8.
 
=== Chapter 11 ===
 
==== Section 12 ====
 
*The phrase {le ka la frank ciska} is glossed as "The quality-of Frank's writing". {ka} glosses to the word "property", and the Lojban doesn't talk at all about quality (as in jezyprane), so I believe the word "quality" was accidentally put there, having bled into the interlinear gloss from the author's intended natural English translation. That said, I (Zort) believe the gloss should be "The property-that Frank writes".
*''That'' said, I (still Zort) have a humble suggestion for a demonstration of this section's grammatical feature, a cynical little observation, that has occured in my Lojban speech "in the wild", and perhaps therefore proves at least some usefulness of this grammatical feature: {le'e prenu cu djica lo mu'e jenai za'i gunka}.
 
=== Chapter 13 ===
 
==== Section 15 ====
 
*Couldn't the {se'u}s be elided since their sumti are before their selbri?
 
=== Chapter 16 ===
 
==== Section 9 ====
 
*It says "for no x" (noda) is the same as "it is false for some x" (naku su'oda). I (mi'e zort) interpret "it is false for some x" as "there is an x such that it is false" (su'oda naku), not "it is false that for some x it is true" (naku su'oda), so it should be changed to "it is false '''that''' for some x".
 
=== Chapter 18 ===
 
==== Section 19 ====
 
This section is very similar to Chapter 19 Section 7.  I believe the information in these sections should be consolidated into a single section.
 
=== Chapter 19 ===
 
==== Section 7 ====
 
This section is very similar to Chapter 18 Section 19.  I believe the information in these sections should be consolidated into a single section.
 
=== Chapter 21 ===
 
==== Section 2 ====
 
Rule 6 in the introductory remarks on EBNF syntax should clarify that "A & B" means "A | B | A B", but does not permit "B A".  Further, explain that "A & B & C & D" permits one or more of A, B, C, and/or D, but ONLY in that order.

Latest revision as of 14:23, 19 January 2015

BBC Radio 4 (UK). Michael Rosen's Word of Mouth series "took a journey into the world of words, language and the way we speak '. The January 05, 2010 episode focused on constructed languages. Lojban was featured along with Esperanto, Láadan and Klingon. To hear a recording, including an interview with veteran lojbanist Colin Fine, download BBC program on constructed languages.

Arika Okrent, Author of "In the Land of Invented Languages" (published March 24, 2009 by Spiegel & Grau) tells the fascinating and highly entertaining history of man’s enduring quest to build a better language. To research her book and better understand Lojban, the author attended the Lojban Conference in 2006, and claims to have read all 600+ pages of the "The Complete Lojban Language". There are many reviews of her book. One such is to be found in Flatlander (August 23, 2009), in which the writer refers to the 'remorseless precision' of Lojban.

In a later interview on the New York Times Schott's Vocab blog, Okrent identified Lojban as the conlang with the most complete grammar.

Sven Moritz Hallberg, Karl Hans Janke Kollaborativ, has written paper in November, 2005 entitled "Logical Language Lojban: A Hackers’ Spoken Language". As a justification for the title, he stated: "The very structure and design of Lojban display values quite well-known to us computer geeks. It is clean, simple, general, and, by the very virtue of all these, powerful". You can read online or download the paper and the slides of the presentation given at the 22nd Chaos Communication Congress in Berlin. There also is a recording of the presentation that you can download or stream.

AI Expert Newsletter (March 2005) in article entitled "The Logical Languages Loglan and Lojban" looks at the history of Lojban and its predecessor Loglan, and discusses them from an AI perspective.

J. Desquilbet, Staff, IBM, Software Group has written an article entitled "Using UML to understand Lojban" for the Feb 05, 2004 edition of IBM's e-magazine Rational Edge. Unified Modeling Language (UML) is a standardized general-purpose modeling language used in the field of software engineering.

Geoffrey Sampson, School of Cognitive and Computing Sciences, University of Sussex reviews John Woldemar Cowan's "The Complete Lojban Language" in Journal of Linguistics 35.447–8, 1999. He concludes: "In general, Lojban constitutes a strikingly thorough working-out of its creators’ goals, and its design is responsive to a rich, subtle understanding of linguistics and philosophical logic".

See also: Negative opinions of Lojban

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