158 lines
8.2 KiB
Plaintext
158 lines
8.2 KiB
Plaintext
[Poster's note: This file is a copy of the descriptive text contained
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in a brochure which The Loglan Institute sends out in response to an
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initial request for information, plus brief descriptions of some of
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the materials available for purchase. For a printed copy of the bro-
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chure or any other information, write to The Institute at the address
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given here, or send CompuServe MAIL to Kirk Sattley 76010,1363.]
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THE LOGLAN INSTITUTE, INC.
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A Non-Profit Research Corporation
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3009 Peters Way
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San Diego, CA 92117
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What Is Loglan?
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Loglan* is a speakable, human language originally designed to
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serve as a test of the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis that the structure of
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local human languages places local constraints on the development of
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human thought, and hence, on human cultures. If this hypothesis is
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correct, a language which "lifted" those constraints -- that is to
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say, which reduced them to some formal minimum -- should in a certain
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sense "release" the human mind from these ancient linguistic bonds
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and, in any case, have notable effects on both individual thinking and
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on the development of a global human culture.
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Since its original development in the late 1950's and 1960's
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Loglan has acquired certain other properties that make it interesting
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to computer science, principally (1) its total freedom from syntactic
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ambiguity. This feature of the language, together with (2) its audio-
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visual "isomorphism" (which means that the Loglan speechstream breaks
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up automatically into fully punctuated strings of separate words) and
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(3) its borrowing algorithm (by which the International Scientific
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Vocabulary goes into Loglan virtually ad libitum) makes it an ideal
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medium for three uses: (i) for international information storage and
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retrieval, (ii) for machine-aided translation between natural lan-
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guages, and (iii) for spontaneous interaction between computer-users
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and their machines. Finally, Loglan is (4) culturally and politically
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neutral in the sense that its basic predicate vocabulary has been
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engineered to be maximally memorable to speakers of the eight most
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widely spoken human languages: English, Chinese,Hindi, Russian,
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Spanish, French, Japanese and German.
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All these features taken together have suggested to many loglan-
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ists that their adopted language is ideally suited to become a second
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language for the world. For others, conducting a scientific test of
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the Whorf hypothesis with Loglan has the highest priority. For still
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others, its use at the human/machine interface is the most challenging
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role for Loglan in the years ahead.
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Going Public Again
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Your inquiry reaches The Institute at a most interesting time.
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Loglan is in the midst of "going public again". This is the third
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and, we trust, final time. The first time we went public was in 1960,
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when James Cooke Brown's article on "Loglan" was published in the
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Scientific American for June of that year. (Reprints of this article
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are still available.) The second time was in 1975, when two of our
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books, Loglan 1, a grammar, and Loglan 4 & 5, a dictionary, were pub-
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lished in paperback for the first time. The 15-year interval between
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the 1st and 2nd "goings public" was mainly occupied by three activi-
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ties: (a) the development of Loglan grammar on computers, (b) the
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construction of its internationally-based lexicon, and (c) the prepa-
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ration of the several earlier editions of the 1975 volumes. The
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similar interval between the 2nd and 3rd "goings public" was mainly
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occupied by engineering three final design features into the language.
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One of these was the formal discovery and demonstration of the syntac-
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tically unambiguous grammar mentioned above. This feature had long
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been planned but had had to wait for the development of mathematical
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tools powerful enough to install it; these became available in 1975.
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Another engineering challenge was to build a set of decipherable word-
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parts from which all the complex predicates of the language could be
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recognizably constructed. Still a third engineering task was to build
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its "borrowing algorithm", the procedure by which natural language
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words, but especially the International Scientific Vocabulary, may now
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be freely incoroporated into Loglan. These last two features together
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implement yet another long-planned function of the language, namely
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that it should be capable of rapid, spontaneous, and yet continuously
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intelligible growth.
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In short, modern Loglan is now ready for its many uses. Here are
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the publications and services which The Institute has prepared to let
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you examine this extraordinary language and decide whether and how you
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wish to use it.
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_________________________
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*`Loglan' is a registered trademark of The Loglan Institute, Inc.
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+ + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + +
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[Poster's note: The following is a much abbreviated extract from four
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pages of descriptions of materials available. I have chosen the ones
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I thought most likely to interest an inquiring language-lover,
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especially one who uses a personal computer.]
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BOOKS
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Loglan 1: A Logical Language
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by James Cooke Brown, 4th Edition, 1989;
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599pp. A general introduction and complete description of the Loglan
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language. Has detailed explanation of the language's syntax and word-
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construction, as well as pronunciation guides, historical notes,
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specimen translations, word-lists, and a chapter on testing the Whorf
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hypothesis. [$21.50]
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Loglan 4 & 5: A Loglan-English/English-Loglan Dictionary,
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collated by
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JCB, 2nd Edition 1975; 510pp. [New edition in preparation, old one
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still useful as word-source when checked against new Loglan 1.]
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[Paperback $10.00; Hardback $15.00]
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SOFTWARE [All available for both PC-DOS machines and Macintoshes]
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MacTeach* 1: Forming Loglan Utterances,
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MacTeach 2: Learning Loglan Words,
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MacTeach 3: Learning Loglan Affixes,
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by Robert A. McIvor, Evelyn R.
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Anderson, and JCB, 1st Edition 1989. All of these use the "learning
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ladder" technique developed at The Institute to teach both utterance
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formation and vocabulary acquisition. The technique helps the learner
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master long lists of items with minimum overlearning and error-making.
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MacTeach 1 comes with an input file of about 400 utterances, covering
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about 75% of the grammar. MacTeach 2 has an input list of more than
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900 primitive words. MacTeach 3 has the complete set of combining
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affixes used for forming complex predicates.
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[$20.00 each, all three on one disk $50.00]
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LIP*, The Loglan Interactive Parser*,
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by RAM, Scott L. Burson, JCB,
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and other workers on the Machine Grammar Project. LIP will produce a
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parse-tree or sentence-diagram syntactic analysis of any grammatical
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sentence that is submitted to it, as well as pointing out where an
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ungrammatical sentence went wrong. LIP can also parse a text file,
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either utterance-by-utterance or all at once, and allows individual
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utterances to be modified interactively until they are correct. It is
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thus a useful tool for an aspiring Loglan writer as well as a
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practically indispensable one for a teacher or editor. [$50.00]
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AUDIO RECORDINGS
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Cassette 1: Readings from Loglan 1, Chaps 2-4,
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Cassette 2: Readings from Loglan 1, Chaps 5,6.
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On these two
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cassettes, all the Loglan sentences in Chapters 2 through 6 of Loglan
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1 are plainly pronounced by competent readers, so the learner will
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learn to speak the entire grammatical range of Loglan utterance forms
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correctly. [$10.00 for each cassette]
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MEMBERSHIP
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Ordinary membership is $50 per two-year period. Several classes of
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membership at lower and higher dues are available. Members receive a
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quarterly newletter "Lognet" as well as a 40% discount on purchases
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of all Institute materials.
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_________________________
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*`MacTeach', `LIP', and `The Loglan Interactive Parser' are trademarks
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of The Loglan Institute.
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