Lojban (pronounced “LOZH-bahn”) is a constructed language. Previous versions of the language were called “Loglan” by Dr. James Cooke Brown, who founded the Loglan Project and started the development of the language in 1955.
It would not make justice to Loglan/Lojban to summarize here in a few words their rich and interesting history, which spans more than 60 years across the two projects. To get an understanding of how they developed, growing from a research project to an incredibly sophisticated language suitable for real-life use, the interested reader is invited to peruse the trove of information available at the Lojban website (http://www.lojban.org).
Among thousands of artificial languages (of which Esperanto is the best-known), Loglan/Lojban stands out because it has features that make it unique in several ways:
Lojban is designed to be used by people in communication with each other, and possibly with computers.
Lojban is designed to be neutral between cultures.
Lojban grammar is based on the principles of predicate logic.
Lojban has an unambiguous yet flexible grammar.
Lojban has phonetic spelling, and unambiguously resolves its sounds into words.
Lojban is simple compared to natural languages; it is easy to learn.
Lojban's 1300 root words can be easily combined to form a vocabulary of millions of words.
Lojban is regular; the rules of the language are without exceptions.
Lojban attempts to remove restrictions on creative and clear thought and communication.
Lojban has a variety of uses, ranging from the creative to the scientific, from the theoretical to the practical.
Lojban has been demonstrated in translation and in original works of prose and poetry.
Relojban is a derivative of Lojban. Its goals are in line with those of Lojban, except that Relojban places particular emphasis on the following aspects:
Standardization. The Relojban project focuses on providing complete specifications of the language, suitable for unambiguos implementation through software parsers, and supporting an ecosystem of diverse software tools. It also makes an effort to provide and maintain reference implementations of the language specifications.
Stability, but with the possibility of future evolution. At the current stage the Relojban language is open to a certain level of experimentation, but the project highly values the idea of long term stability and of a careful, planned approach in response to future pressure for change. However, even in the long term, the Relojban project does not envisage to ever reach a "final", immutable state of the language. The objective is, on the contrary, to continuously allow refinements and adjustments, if warranted and justified, through well-defined processes.
Relojban is intended to be a community effort. The content of this book and of all other online resources related to Relojban are open for contributions by interested users, so that the language and its description can be continuously improved and refined.
This book is the “reference grammar” of the Relojban language. It is derived from The Complete Lojban Language by John Woldemar Cowan (the “CLL”, as it is colloquially known). In fact, for the most part the book is a copy of the CLL, as only the parts where the Relojban vision diverged from Lojban were adjusted or rewritten (the reader will readily recognize the rewritten parts by their poor style compared to Cowan's prose). In practice, only Chapter 3, Chapter 4, Chapter 14, Chapter 16 and Chapter 21 have been subject to a more extensive redrafting.
By intention, this book is complete in description but not in explanation. For every rule in the formal Relojban grammar (given in Chapter 21), there is a bit of explanation and an example somewhere in the book, and often a great deal more than a bit. In essence, Chapter 2 gives a brief overview of the language, Chapter 21 gives the formal structure of the language, and the chapters in between put semantic flesh on those formal bones.
Each chapter is broken into numbered sections; each section contains a mixture of expository text, numbered examples, and possibly tables.
The reader will notice a certain similarity in the examples used throughout the book. One chapter after another rings the changes on the self-same sentences:
will become wearisomely familiar before Chapter 21 is reached. This method is deliberate; the book uses simple and (eventually) familiar examples wherever possible, to avoid obscuring new grammatical points with new vocabulary. Of course, this is not the method of a textbook, but this book is not a textbook. Rather, it is intended both for self-learning and to serve as a reference in the usual sense, for looking up obscure points about the language.
It is useful to talk further about Example 1.1 for what it illustrates about examples in this book. Examples usually occupy three lines. The first of these is in Relojban (in italics), the second is a word-by-word literal translation of the Relojban into English (in boldface), and the third is in colloquial English. The second and third lines are sometimes called the “literal translation” and the “colloquial translation” respectively. Sometimes, when clarity is not sacrificed thereby, one or both are omitted. If there is more than one Relojban sentence, it generally means that they have the same meaning.
Words are sometimes surrounded by square brackets. In Relojban texts, these enclose optional grammatical particles that may (in the context of the particular example) be either omitted or included. In literal translations, they enclose words that are used as conventional translations of specific Relojban words, but don't have exactly the meanings or uses that the English word would suggest. In Chapter 3, square brackets surround phonetic representations in the International Phonetic Alphabet.
Many of the tables, especially those placed at the head of various sections, are in three columns. The first column contains Relojban words discussed in that section; the second column contains the grammatical category (represented by an UPPER CASE Relojban word) to which the word belongs, and the third column contains a brief English gloss, not necessarily or typically a full explanation. Other tables are explained in context.
A few Relojban words are used in this book as technical terms. All of these are explained in Chapter 2, except for a few used only in single chapters, which are explained in the introductory sections of those chapters.
As a derivative work of The Complete Lojban Language by John Woldemar Cowan, this book is subject to the copyright notice included therein, which is reproduced below in its entirety. All parts not explicitly covered by this notice are placed in the public domain.
Copyright © 1997 by The Logical Language Group, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
Permission is granted to make and distribute verbatim copies of this book, either in electronic or in printed form, provided the copyright notice and this permission notice are preserved on all copies.
Permission is granted to copy and distribute modified versions of this book, provided that the modifications are clearly marked as such, and provided that the entire resulting derived work is distributed under the terms of a permission notice identical to this one.
Permission is granted to copy and distribute translations of this book into another language, under the above conditions for modified versions, except that this permission notice may be stated in a translation that has been approved by the Logical Language Group, rather than in English.
The contents of Chapter 21 are in the public domain.
For information, contact: The Logical Language Group, 2904 Beau Lane, Fairfax VA 22031-1303 USA. Telephone: 703-385-0273. Email address: llg-board@lojban.org. Web Address: http://www.lojban.org.