[Membroj] Lojban & folk functionalism

[Ralph Dumain]

http://www.unish.org/unish/DOWN/PDF/Nick_Nicholas(133~167).pdf
Folk Functionalism in Artificial Languages: The Long Distance 
Reflexive vo'a in Lojban
Nick Nicholas
University of Melbourne, Australia

Journal of Universal Language 3
March 2002, 133-167

Abstract
A notion which underlies much functionalist thinking on language is 
that language is a system whose structure is engineered to solve
problems in communication. Artificial languages are of particular 
interest in this regard, because such problem solving can be undertaken
consciously on the part of both language planners and (to the extent 
that the language community allows it) language users, enabling the
linguistic structure to adapt to their communicative needs. Such 
language users are applying lay intuitions about what linguistic features
will be more effective in communication what might be characterised 
as 'folk functionalism'. An instance of such adaptation is considered 
here: the Lojban pronoun vo'a, intended as a generic reflexive, has 
become a long distance reflexive in order to align with Lojban's 
idiosyncratic pronominal system. In fact, this seems to have beendone 
independently by the language planner and the language community. 
That the solution yielded is typologically unusual demonstrates that 
communicative and paradigmatic pressures can trump natural language 
habit, and even typological universals in a 'perturbed'grammatical system.


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Note: Esperanto and to a lesser extent its rivals play a role in this 
paper as well. Esperanto is seen as a successful linguistic system.
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