Or if not exactly Lisp, at least a relative.
I found this in the sci.lang faq, Q14 "What About Artificial Languages?":
"The recent Loglan (1960) and Lojban (1988), based on **predicate logic**,
may represent a revival of a priori language construction."
Like Lisp, Loglan and Lojban are based on predicate calculus, but are
designed as languages for *humans* to use - just as Esperanto is. It's
interesting that Loglan was created at about the same time as Lisp. Lojban
seems to be a point release of Loglan. Unfortunately(?) the languages don't
seem to have many users.
One of the claims made by the Lojban people is that their language, being
much more logical than natural languages, will be useful for communication
with computers. I'm almost sure that Loglan was used for this role in the
Heinlein novel "The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress."
Other stuff that might be interesting to Lispers: Lobjan is parseable with
YACC and can be decribed in BNF. And, from the site listed below, several
ways in which Lojban seems to echo Lisp:
"Lojban grammar is based on the principles of logic.
Lojban has an unambiguous grammar.
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 exception.
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."
If anyone's interested, there's some information about Lojban on
http://www.animal.helsinki.fi/lojban/lojbroch.html
I'm not going to rush out and learn Lojban myself, but it's interesting to
imagine how the programming languages of several decades from now might have
more in common with Lojban than C...
Jonathan
In article <············@news8.svr.pol.co.uk>, "Jonathan Coupe"
<········@meanwhile.freeserve.co.uk> wrote:
> Or if not exactly Lisp, at least a relative.
>
> I found this in the sci.lang faq, Q14 "What About Artificial Languages?":
> "The recent Loglan (1960) and Lojban (1988), based on **predicate logic**,
> may represent a revival of a priori language construction."
>
> Like Lisp, Loglan and Lojban are based on predicate calculus,
Lisp is not based on predicate calculus (-> Prolog). Lisp
is more closely connected to the Lambda Calculus.
Rainer Joswig, ISION Internet AG, Harburger Schlossstra�e 1,
21079 Hamburg, Germany, Tel: +49 40 77175 226
Email: ·············@ision.de , WWW: http://www.ision.de/
"Jonathan Coupe" <········@meanwhile.freeserve.co.uk> writes:
> If anyone's interested, there's some information about Lojban on
> http://www.animal.helsinki.fi/lojban/lojbroch.html
A good page containing lots of information on lojban is:
http://www.pdmi.ras.ru/%7Esklyanin/lojban.html
Chris.