Láadan

Women-specific 'artlang', invented by Suzette Haden Elgin. Lojban's evidentials are inherited from it (although of course, Láadan in turn got them from Amerindian human languages.)

What does it mean for a language to have a gender? - la kreig.daniyl.

Check out http://www.interlog.com/~kms/Laadan/, and you tell me! :-)

Another "test of the Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis" language.

It has words for womanly things. That doesn't make it womanly, just gender-neutral. English may be "male" in some way, but laadan strikes me as neither.

Láadan is clearly feminine; see the pretty purple they used for the web page? It looks like a breast cancer site.

But is the vocabulary purple also? (The vocabulary is indeed worth examining; it has specific terms for things like "discord in the home", "anger, for good and not futile reasons", "pain or loss which comes as a relief by virtue of ending the anticipation of its coming", "contentment despite negative circumstances", "the female sexual act", and "the act of relinquishing a cherished/ comforting/ familiar perception".)

I despair of this ThreadMode discourse ever congealing into DocumentMode :-) , but the foundational assumption of Láadan is that women's perception of the word is fundamentally incommensurable with men's. So if purple meta-means what I think it meta-means, the answer is yes.

Grammar


Lojban got its evidentials from Láadan, but they are organized quite differently:
Most Láadan sentences contain three particles:

  1. The speech-act particle – this occurs at the beginning of the sentence and marks it as either a statement (bíi), a question (báa), et cetera; in connected speech or writing, this particle is often omitted. They are:
word translation Lojban equivalent
Bíi Indicates a declarative sentence (usually optional) ju'a
Báa Indicates a question xu
Bó Indicates a command; very rare, except to small children ko
Bóo Indicates a request; this is the usual imperative/"command" form .e'o
Bé Indicates a promise nu'e
Bée Indicates a warning .e'unai
  1. The grammatical tense particle.

This occurs second in the sentence and marks it as either

word translation Lojban equivalent
ril present tense ca ku
eril past tense pu ku
aril future tense ba ku
wil hypothetical da'i

Without the tense particle, the sentence is assumed to have the same tense as the previous sentence.

  1. The evidence particle – this occurs at the end of statements and indicates the trustworthiness of the statement. They are:
Láadan Evidence Act Morpheme translation Lojban equivalent
wa Known to speaker because perceived by speaker, externally or internally za'a/se'o/ju'a
wi Known to speaker because self-evident li'a
we Perceived by speaker in a dream se'o
wáa Assumed true by speaker because speaker trusts source .iati'e
waá Assumed false by speaker because speaker distrusts source; if evil intent by the source is also assumed, the form is "waálh" .ianaiti'e
wo Imagined or invented by speaker, hypothetical da'i/ru'a
wóo Used to indicate that the speaker states a total lack of knowledge as to the validity of the matter
waálh .ianaiti'e.iunaidai? (There must be a better word for malicious intent.)
wáo ju'ocu'i/pe'icu'i


This brings up an interesting question: What is the correct evidential in Lojban (assuming normal experiences) for a sentence like "mi xagji"? za'a? se'o?

Extract from a Wikipedia article

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Created by najrut. Last Modification: Tuesday 10 of June, 2014 03:04:52 GMT by mukti.