Lojban

The lojban is a built Langue with a grammar conceived on a model Logique. “Lojban” in lojban wants to say “logical language”.

Its construction was initiated in 1987 by the Logical Language Group (Logical Group of Language) in order to achieve the goals of the Loglan, to improve it and to make freely it available. After one long period of discussion and experiments, its foundations were established by the publication into 1998 of The Complete Lojban Language .

The name “lojban” results from contraction of the words logji and bangu meaning logical and language respectively in lojban. This etymology can lend to confusion on the goal of this language: it is not reserved for formal logic nor not intended to be only used in data processing, and is appropriate perfectly for a human use for the communications of the every day. Although making it possible to treat the logical concepts most abstract, its great flexibility remains unequalled. According to the degree of abstraction wanted by the speaker, the lojban can approach the natural language, a computer programming language or very other language known. It can in addition be poetic, ambiguous, precise or neutral.

The independent sources of the basic vocabulary were (at the origin) the six languages most spoken in the world: the English, the Arab , the Chinese, the Spanish , the Hindi and the Russian . This in order not to make the words basic too distant from a natural language. By its construction, the lojban has certain common features with other languages, like the Láadan, the Toki pona or the Esperanto.

History

The lojban is a recasting of the Loglan, itself created by the linguist James Cooke Brown in the Années 1960. JCB hoped to explore the Hypothèse Sapir-Whorf by the creation of a language structurally very different from the natural Langue S.

In 1987, some active loglanists separated from the project of Brown because of a dissension on the claims of this last as for a strict control of its royalty on the language and the material of training. Finally, lojban became much more important than the original project. There are currently in the world a few tens of active lojbanists, mainly on Internet. The Logical Language Group (LLG or the lojbangirz in lojban) is an association with nonlucrative goal which holds its annual general meeting on the channel IRC of the community.

Specificities

The word lojban comes from logical language , in lojban. Indeed, the grammar of the lojban is based on the principles of the Logique predicates. But the lojban has other characteristics:

the lojban is conceived to be used by people to communicate between them, and possibly, in the future, with computers;
the lojban is conceived to be culturally neutral;
the grammar of the lojban is not-ambiguous;
the pronunciation of the lojban and its orthography are directly dependant, without possible confusion;
the cutting of a text lojban in words can be done only in only one way;
the lojban simple, is compared with the natural languages, and easy to learn;
the 1350 root-words of the lojban can easily be combined, in order to form a vocabulary of million words;
the definition of the lojban is rigorous and does not comprise exceptions;
the lojban tries to raise the restrictions which can exist to express creative and clear ideas;
the lojban can be used in different, creative or scientific, theoretical or practical fields.

To summarize, the lojban has a grammar, a pronunciation, a way of forming the words which are not-ambiguous. In lojban, one can be very precise, or remain vague, intentionally. Your interlocutor will perhaps not include/understand what you want to say, but it will always include/understand what you known as.

Pronunciation

The alphabet lojban is the following, and almost always decides as in French (the differences are indicated):

' (/h/ expired), has , B , C (/ch/), D , E (/è/), F , G (always hard), I , J , K , L , m , N , O , p , R (can be marked as in French, as English, or swindled), S (always /ss/), T , U (/ou/), v , X (Arab /kh/ and /j/ Spanish - a “R” guttural), there (the Schwa , the neutral vowel near to /e/ dumb man), Z

the point (“. ”) mark an obligatory pause;
the comma (“,”) mark an obligatory separation, but without pause.

Note: no the capital letter in lojban, except marking the tonic accent on the proper names.

Diphthongs: have (/aïe/, I.E.(internal excitation) (large/eille/), oi (language d'/oïl/), with the (/ao/), ia (/ya/), IE (/yè/), II (/y-I), io (/yo/), iu (/you/), ua (/ouah/), ue (/ouais/), ui (/oui/), uo (/ou-O), uu (/wou/h-/wou/h), iy (/y-E), uy (/w-E).

Grammar

There is no in lojban grammatical distinction between a name, a verb, an adjective, an adverb… That gives a sufficiently special grammar to justify the use of special terms (and which is words lojban) to indicate the elements of this grammar. (And one never marks the plural of these terms with a S ).

The structure which represents the relation (that one calls Prédicat in Logique) is called bridi in lojban. The central part is called selbri and the arguments (elements of the speech which is connected by the selbri in the bridi ) are called sumti (to pronounce /soumti/).

There are three principal classes of words: the brivla (corresponding to the common nouns and the verbs (there is no really distinction between the verbs and the nouns)), the cmene (proper names) and the cmavo which are grammatical short notes playing of the various roles. There exist three categories for the brivla themselves: gismu (the words roots which is used to build the others brivla ), the lujvo (composition of brivla ) and the fu' ivla (of the words resulting from natural languages, lojbanized).

Example of text

the mumoi plini Cu mutce the ka will cizra .i py cmalu traji fo the romei .i the canlu Cu satci banzu naked the canlu the garna tergusni kujoi the tergusni cikygau .i the cmalu noltrube' has Na snada naked the jimpe the du' U makau prali bu' U lo pagbu Be the kensa re' O lo plini noi claxu lo' E zdani .e lo' E xabju ku' O fi lo' E garna tergusni .e lo' E tergusni cikygau

The fifth planet was very curious. It was smallest of all. There was just enough place to place a reverberator and a lamplighter. The small prince did not manage to be explained to what could be useful, some share in the sky, on a planet without house, nor population, a reverberator and a lamplighter.

Morphology

The gismu thus constitute the basic vocabulary. Their form is always CVCCV or CCVCV, where C is a consonant and V a vowel, and knowing that there are pairs of prohibited consonants.

Almost all the gismu of the lojban were built on the basis of pieces of words drawn from other languages, more specifically Chinese, the Hindi, English, Spanish, Russian and Arabic (six the most spoken natural languages). For a given concept, the corresponding words in these six languages were transposed in phonetics lojban. Then, the gismu was selected so as to maximize the facility which will have the speakers of the six languages to recognize it, by introducing weightings reflecting the number of speakers of each one of these six languages. The complete algorithm is not here detailed.

See too

Internal bonds

Linguistic
Dictionary of the languages
Languages by family
artificial Languages
Loglan

External bonds

www.lojban.org
Site of G. Dyke to FPSL

Zh-classical: 邏輯語

Random links: