Loglan prehistory

Seventeenth Century

1652

Francis Lodwick publishes The Groundwork or Foundation laid (or So Intended) for the Framing of a New Perfect Language and a Universal Common Writing, a follow-up to his 1647 book, A Common Writing, and one of the first elaborated proposals for an a priori or "philosophical" language. Lodwick's efforts influenced the work of fellow Royal Society member, John Wilkins.

1660

La Grammaire générale et raisonnée de Port-Royal ("The General and Rational Grammar of Port-Royal") is published by Antoine Arnauld and Claude Lancelot. It proposes a notion of universal grammar shared by all languages and determined by the nature of rational thought as exemplified by term logic. In 1662, it was followed by La Logique ou l'art de penser ("Logic, or the Art of Thinking") by Antoine Arnauld and Pierre Nicole.

1676

May: German philosopher Gottfried Leibniz proposes a "characteristica universalis", described as an "alphabet of human thought" that would span domains including science and metaphysics, the expressions of which could be evaluated like mathematical formulae.

Eighteenth Century

1798

An unfinished work by Étienne Bonnot, abbé de Condillac is published posthumously: La langue des calculs ("The language of calculus"), wherein the author proposes the design of a language, inspired by algebra, in order to recover the sciences from "the chaos into which the abuses and vices of language" had submerged them.

Nineteenth Century

1827

Botanist George Bentham coins the term "quantifier" in his Outline of a new system of logic. The use of that term in logic, along with "quantify" and "quantification" would later be clarified and popularized by Scottish philosopher William Hamilton and British mathematician Augustus De Morgan, who feuded over priority.

1854

English mathematician George Boole publishes The Laws of Thought, a follow-up to his Mathematical Analysis of Logic (1847), providing a mathematical basis for Aristotelian logic. This book introduced boolean algebra as well as the concept of the "universe of discourse", although the latter may have been independently formulated by Augustus De Morgan in 1846.

1860

British mathematician Augustus De Morgan's Syllabus of a Proposed System of Logic is published. Together with Formal Logic (1847), this book helped to define mathematical logic and introduced De Morgan's Laws. De Morgan also explored the distinction between distributive ("exemplar") and collective ("cumular") predicates.

1879

German philosopher and mathematician Gottlob Frege publishes Begriffsschrift ("Concept-script") , a book which expands on Leibniz's project to create a "lingua characterica", expressing "content through written signs in a more precise and clear way than it is possible to do through words."

, a book which expands on Leibniz's project to create a "lingua characterica", expressing "content through written signs in a more precise and clear way than it is possible to do through words." Johann Schleyer introduces Volapük, a constructed language which drew vocabulary and structure from German, French, and English. It attracted adherents for a decade before a schism broke out between Schleyer and Auguste Kerckhoffs, a popularizer of the language who headed the International Academy of Volapük and published a journal, Le Volapük. Schleyer's rejection of Kerckhoffs' reforms and desire to maintain control of the language culminated in the dismissal of the Academy. Volapük lost momentum, and speakers drifted to other international auxiliary languages, especially Esperanto.

1887

L. L. Zamenhof publishes Unua Libro, a description of the Esperanto language which explicitly places the language in the public domain. Zamenhof makes a case for the adoption of an international auxiliary language, emphasizing that it must be easy to learn.

1892

Frege publishes Sense and Reference, a paper introducing a conceptual distinction between what he called "sense" ("Sinn") and "reference" ("Bedeutung") in linguistic expression. Frege argued that a proposition refers to its truth value, and that a proposition with terms that have no reference (i.e. "empty names") cannot itself have a reference, i.e. cannot be considered true or false.

Twentieth Century

1923

The Meaning of Meaning: A Study of the Influence of Language upon Thought and of the Science of Symbolism by C. K. Ogden and I. A. Richards is published, drawing the sustained attention of Prussian-American anthropologist and linguist Edward Sapir. JCB said that this book provided "one of the cornerstones on which to rest the structure of primitives in Loglan." More specifically, he attributes the separation of the "cognitive" and the "emotive" components of meaning facilitated by attitudinals to this work. The book included a supplemental essay by anthropologist Bronisław Malinowski, The Problem of Meaning in Primitive Languages, in which he discussed challenges of interpreting the language of the Trobrianders given the fusion of cultural assumptions and grammatical notions.

1932

C. K. Ogden publishes The Basic Words, an 850-entry dictionary for his auxlang, Basic English. JCB cited this book in the bibliography of Loglan 1 and it may have influenced the size of the set of original Loglan composite primitives, which is given as 860.

1934

German-American philosopher Rudolf Carnap publishes The Logical Syntax of Language, proposing a formalization of the rules which govern the syntax of language, setting aside the reference of the symbols which comprise language. He suggested that a syntactic approach to logical consequence could replace philosophy, at least in its metaphysical vein, with "the logical analysis of the concepts and sentences of the sciences." JCB wrote that "Carnap's view of the possibility of logical languages" shaped his own. Carnap, incidentally, was an enthusiastic proponent of Esperanto, having attended several World Congresses after learning to speak the language as a teenager.

1935

American linguist George Zipf publishes The Psychobiology of Language: An Introduction to Dynamic Philology, wherein he observed, "It seems reasonably clear that shorter words are distinctly more favoured in language than longer words." This observation evolved into what became known as "Zipf's Law".

1937

Analytic Syntax by Danish linguist Otto Jespersen introduces a formalism to represent the grammatical structures of natural language. This book convinced JCB that "a human grammar could be written in the predicate calculus." Brown writes that a 1956 specification of Loglan resulted from his efforts to render Jespersen's catalog of "grammatical curiosities" from that book into the predicate calculus. Jespersen was the creator of the auxlang Novial, which he had introduced nine years earlier in An International Language.

1938

American philosopher and semiotician Charles W. Morris publishes Foundations of the Theory of Signs, which introduced the analysis of the study of the use of symbols into syntactics ("relations of signs to one another"), semantics ("relations of signs to the objects to which the signs are applicable"), and pragmatics ("the relation of signs to interpreters"). This division would later take hold in linguistics and philosophy of language. JCB credited Morris' work as contributing to Loglan's semantics, especially in so far as it analyzed the language act into "predication" and "designation".

1940

Culminating more than ten years of work, Helen S. Eaton, Linguistic Research Associate at the International Auxiliary Language Association (IALA, founded in 1924 to conduct neutral research on auxiliary languages) publishes Semantic Frequency List for English, French, German and Spanish: A Correlation of the First Six Thousand Words in Four Single-Language Frequency Lists. In her time at the association, Eaton worked with Edward Sapir, who helped IALA co-founder Alice Vanderbilt Morris to develop a research program. Sapir served as director of the program from 1930-1931. Otto Jespersen sat on the advisory board.

1941

Language, culture and personality: Essays in memory of Edward Sapir is published, including an article written in 1939 by American linguist Benjamin Whorf, The Relation of Habitual Thought And Behavior to Language. Whorf, a student of Edward Sapir (who died in 1939), coined the term "Standard Average European" (SAE) to call attention to similarities in the structure of European languages, and proposed that linguistic habits implicit in the structures of these and other languages condition the understanding of concepts such as "space", "time," "matter", and "number", and influence the cultural and behavioral norms of the communities that speak them. Loglan 1 is dedicated to Whorf.

1947

Philosopher Hans Reichenbach publishes Elements of Symbolic Logic, a formalization of the logical structures of natural languages, drawing on the author's familiarity with German, English, French, and Turkish.

1951

American linguist Zellig Harris publishes Methods in Structural Linguistics , outlining a definitive approach to descriptive linguistics using the "distributional" methods advanced by Leonard Bloomfield (whom Harris had studied under) and Edward Sapir. JCB wrote that Harris' work provided "the descriptive machinery which was to serve as a test of the structural completeness of the language."

, outlining a definitive approach to descriptive linguistics using the "distributional" methods advanced by Leonard Bloomfield (whom Harris had studied under) and Edward Sapir. JCB wrote that Harris' work provided "the descriptive machinery which was to serve as a test of the structural completeness of the language." American mathematician Alonzo Church, who in a 1936 paper had invented lambda calculus, published A formulation of the logic of sense and denotation: A paper developing Frege's notion of "sense" into what Church called a "concept". Church's intensional calculus provided a basis for later developments intensional semantics.

1952

In Discourse Analysis (included in the L1 bibliography), Zellig Harris applied the mathematical notion of a transformation to linguistics, setting the stage for generative grammar as developed by his student, Noam Chomsky.

1953

March: Harry Hoijer, an American anthropologist and linguist who had been a friend of Whorf (who died in 1941) and a student of Sapir, coins the term "Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis" in a paper bearing that name and presented at Language in Culture: Conference on the Interrelations of Language and Other Aspects of Culture, a conference sponsored by the Department of Anthropology of the University of Chicago.

Loglan and related developments (1955-1987)

1955-1959: Before Scientific American

The details of the progression here are hazy, but this period most of the basic guidelines of the language were developed as well as some of the details: The shape of predicates, names, and little words, little word vocabulary and some predicate vocabulary were developed. Speech stream uniquely segmented into words, word stream uniquely parsed into sentences (from the language of logic). Metaphysically neutral (for the Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis). Grammatically simple, for easy learning (practical). Vocabulary derived from major languages for easy learning (practical) The technique for deriving predicates was also at least outlined and some predicates derived by hand.



1955

James Cooke Brown invented the board game Careers , which was marketed by Milton Bradley Co. and eventually provided Brown with a decent living, independent of the usual academic jobs.

, which was marketed by Milton Bradley Co. and eventually provided Brown with a decent living, independent of the usual academic jobs. Brown, Assistant Professor of Sociology at University of Florida, Gainesville, begins developing Loglan in order to test the Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis. Brown, a social psychologist with a degree from U/Minnesota, was well trained by second generation Logical Positivists (e.g. May Brodbeck) and so thought to use something like a logically perfect language, that is the First Order Predicate Logic, for the test.

1956

September: American linguist Noam Chomsky publishes Three models for the description of language , a paper which introduced the "Chomsky hierarchy" of formal grammars, including context-free grammars. Together with his book Sytactic Structures , completed in August 1956 but published in February 1957, Chomsky invented transformational generational grammar, drawing on Carnap's formalization of language in its purely syntactic aspect. Syntactic Structures introduced the syntactically-correct but semantically-impossible sentence, "Colorless green ideas sleep furiously."

, a paper which introduced the "Chomsky hierarchy" of formal grammars, including context-free grammars. Together with his book , completed in August 1956 but published in February 1957, Chomsky invented transformational generational grammar, drawing on Carnap's formalization of language in its purely syntactic aspect. introduced the syntactically-correct but semantically-impossible sentence, "Colorless green ideas sleep furiously." Arithmetical extensions of relational systems, a paper published by Alfred Tarski and Robert L. Vaught, develops Tarski's semantic theory of truth, which had been formulated in the 1930s, into model-theoretic semantics.

1958

Mathematician Hans Freudenthal introduces "Lincos", a language he had begun designing "for communication with rational beings who do not know any of the languages of our planet" in Lincos: Towards a Cosmic Language, an article published in the Summer 1958 issue of Delta – A Review of Arts, Life and Thought in the Netherlands. "Designing a cosmic language has been made much easier by the work of the modern logisticians," he wrote. "The skeleton of the structure–the syntax–is ready. It is now the task of the workmen to pour the concrete and to lay the bricks–that is to say to create a vocabulary."

1959

June: Computer scientist John Backus presents The Syntax and Semantics of the Proposed International Algebraic Language of Zürich ACM-GAMM Conference at the International Conference on Information Processing, UNESCO. Backus, who served on the committee that created the programming language ALGOL 58, developed a notation, Backus-Naur Form (BNF) for context-free grammars to describe the syntax of the language.

1960-1961: Scientific American and NIMH grant

There was apparently a group of people around Brown who worked on the language: learning it, using it, discussing it and revisions. It is not clear who all was involved, though some names have turned up in various contexts. For them, at some time, was written the first draft of Loglan 1 (L1), the general description of the language. Also during this time or shortly thereafter a longer version of L1, the only finished versions of L2, the explanation of the language, and L3 a (very restricted) primer were written and “published” by University Microfilms.

1960

1961

JCB gets small grant for developing Loglan materials from the United States National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH grant M-4980), which then funded linguistics research. The grant covered the computer time to develop the primitive predicates according to his algorithm (with some handwork at the end). This resulted in the first edition of Loglan 4 & 5, the dictionaries between Loglan and English, work done with his wife Lujoye Fuller Brown.

1962-1975: Loglan 1, editions 1-3

A dark period. Brown’s (second?) marriage ended in divorce and he fled with his infant daughter (?) to Europe, first England and eventually Ibiza. Apparently various people managed to track him down in these places and discuss Loglan with him. He worked on it some, eventually producing the (third edition of) L1 and getting it published just prior to his return to the US.

In the US before his return (exact date unclear) some friends of Brown set up an organization, The Loglan Institute, to deal with Loglan related matters. This was not a non-profit organization and was, in fact, a DBA for Brown, though his friends were listed as officers of the organization. (I am unsure whether the organization was even incorporated at that time.)

1963

The first Loglan dictionaries are compiled, evaluating the established set of primitives against Helen S. Eaton's 1940 "English-French-German-Spanish Word Frequency Dictionary" and compiling new "compound primitives" and "complex predicates" as needed. The resulting expanded word list was referred to as the "Eaton Interface".

American philosopher Saul Kripke publishes several papers on modal logic, drawing on Tarski to develop a model-theoretic approach to possible world semantics which became known as Kripke semantics. Kripke's work is a milestone in the formalization of intensional semantics.

1964

Loglan is mentioned by name in Robert Heinlein's The Moon is a Harsh Mistress but there are no samples, indeed no evidence that Heinlein knew anything about it other than the name.

1965

Date of First Edition of Loglan 3: Speaking Loglan, subtitled "Programmed textbook on the phonology, basic vocabulary, and grammar of the simple Loglan sentence".

1966

First Edition of Loglan 1 is published as a "preprint" edition for limited circulation among reviewers.

1968

1969

June: Linguist Arnold M. Zwicky reviews Loglan 1 in Language Volume 45, Number 2.

in Volume 45, Number 2. Second Edition of Loglan 1 is published in microfilm.

1970

Loglan 2: Methods of Construction is published.

is published. Date of Second Edition of Loglan 3 .

. JCB publishes The Troika Incident, which Lyman Sargeant called the best utopian novel of the period. In it Loglan is talked about under the name Panlan, but the samples, e.g. ai mi betgo, are recognizable as the Loglan of the period. The novel also contains a description of another of JCB’s projects, the Jobs Market (seen by some as a practical application of Careers), on which he worked for many years.

1972

Spring: The first Loglan users group ("Loglan Sogrun") meets at JCB's lake house in Gainesville Florida. Members include Vivian Adkins, James A. Bush, Rush Elkins, J. Michael Gilmer, Tad Hanna, Carolyn Marshall, Michael Pique, Stephen Simmons, Frances Stein and G. Thomas Wells.

1973

Richard Montague's The Proper Treatment of Quantification in Ordinary English (PTQ) is postthumously published. PTQ builds on papers published in 1970 to provide a formalization of English semantics using a possible-worlds model-theoretic approach which builds on the work of Tarski and Kripke. A notable passage from PTQ describes the ambiguity of "John seeks a unicorn" as consisting of a de dicto ("nonreferential") and de re ("referential") reading. This would be raised twenty years later in discussions of sisku and opacity on the lojban mailing list, and also popularize the philosophical sport of "unicorn hunting".

1975

Loglan "goes public again" with the release of the Third Edition of Loglan 1 , as well as the Second Edition of Loglan 4 & 5 . These publications were announced with fanfare ("Loglan is FINALLY ready!") in ads that ran in the August 1975 issue of Scientific American and in a December issue of Computerworld . The addresses given for the orders was not quite correct and so there was some delay in shipping.

, as well as the Second Edition of . These publications were announced with fanfare ("Loglan is FINALLY ready!") in ads that ran in the August 1975 issue of and in a December issue of . The addresses given for the orders was not quite correct and so there was some delay in shipping. In the fall of 1975, Brown visited John Parks-Clifford in St. Louis (a letter had gotten through to him and he had replied, with a dialog ensuing). In the course of the visit or soon thereafter, John was asked to edit a journal of Loglan and accepted.

Stephen C. Johnson of Bell Labs publishes YACC: Yet Another Compiler-Compiler documenting his parser generator, YACC.

documenting his parser generator, YACC. Paul Grice introduces the "cooperative principle" in Logic and conversation, building upon the concept of "implicature" (developed in 1961) to describe how participants in a conversation negotiate meaning.

1976-1981: Loglan's "Years of Invention"

JCB referred to the period from 1976-1981 as the "Years of Invention".

Along with the discussion of the issues there developed of course people who held different opinions about how things should be done from those that were the official choice. For the most part this was confined to constantly raising the issues, though at least one regular discussant also set up his own alternate language (not directly in competition with Loglan, however).

Three larger issues had come in for discussion and had moved JCB into action during this period: unambiguous grammar, creating compound words, and the organization of The Institute. The grammar had always been said to be unambiguous, but that claimed had never been proven and the first few attempts to prove it showed it not to be true as matters stood. This was partly due to the fact that the grammar given was not well formalized beyond the pieces that were directly borrowed from the (demonstrably unambiguous) grammar of the language of logic. JCB, guided by Jeff Prothero and others, set about to write a formal grammar. The target was to get a parser by using YACC, since that would guarantee the language was LALR1 and so (from other considerations) unambiguous. This project continued for several years, with various successes being announced along the way but each failing to be a complete grammar.

The issue of compound predicates, built up from the primitive predicates of the language became pressing as more text was developed and new words were needed. Loglan 1 had left the method of forming such words up in the air and, as a result, several techniques had been used, mainly just ramming (what were taken to be significant or easily identifiable) parts of two (or more) primitives together in a way that seemed likely to be recognizable. So, in the example above, betgo for an English speaker in the context of use pretty clearly means, “go to bed” and is derived from betpu, “bed,” and gotso, “go.” Other cases – particularly those by speakers of languages other than English – were less clear to the usual audience. And some cases were just perverse: the Jenny method, for example. And people were also coining words from non-Loglan sources but also fitting as closely as possible into the CVCCV and CCVCV formats. JCB became convinced that this could not continue and so reworked the whole morphology of the predicates, giving many of them special reduced forms to be used in constructing compounds and insisting that all compounds be made using these forms where possible and full forms where not. This project took a while, being announced finally in 1983.

1976

August - The Loglanist first published. The first issue of bore the nominal date of 1976 (when the editing was mostly done) but actually appeared early the next year. The first issue was largely pc and Brown though there were already some reader- supplied pieces, with responses from JCB and pc. In The Loglanist there was a considerable amount of discussion of a sort (and indeed on topics) that are familiar from the Lojban List and wiki of the present. In some cases these convinced JCB to make changes in the language, mainly adding new words or, in one case, a new letter, h, and then reconstruct a few words as a result. There were also a number of translations of short passages. The changes were summed up in a special issue of The Loglanist in the fall of 1980.

1977

The United States National Science Foundation (NSF) rejects a research grant proposal to use Loglan to test the Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis.

First partial machine grammar of Loglan using YACC by Doug Landauer.

An apprenticeship program where four subjects lived with JCB while receiving Loglan tutoring from him results in the first extended Loglan "conversation" (mostly pauses while people looked up words). The apprentices were Robert K. Jenner, Patrick Mears, Scott Layson, and John Parks-Clifford.

Anthropologist Conrad Arensberg, who is reading Loglan 1 writes Quine about it. Quine, replying, writes, "I am impressed with Loglan. Linguistically, logically, and philosophically it is very sophisticated." Quine forwarded his letter to JCB. An excerpt appears on the back cover of the Fourth Edition (1989) of L1.

1979

JCB wanted to make the Institute tax-exempt and most of the participants in the Loglanist wanted it to be a membership organization. In 1979, then, the Institute was reorganized as a membership organization and tax-exempt status as a research organization was applied for. Once the Institute became a membership organization, the board urged JCB to copyright (or whatever turned out to be the appropriate protection) the material: name, lists, examples and so on. He refused to do so at the time (though he did eventually do a part of it).

Nora Tansky (now Nora LeChevalier) becomes first "member" of TLI. By 1981, there were several members and TLI became nominally a "member-controlled corporation".

Great Morphological Revolution work starts. Completed in 1982

1980

The first election by the members of the board of The Loglan Institute was held in 1980, JCB still as President but the rest of the board being drawn from the members.

Gathering of New England Loglanists with JCB visiting - this was the first Logfest. During this period interested people met in informal Logfests, at various places in New England, usually in July (pc was in Maine for estivation, Jenner and several other participants lived in ME, MA or close enough). Some proposals, both about the language and about the Institute arose from these meetings.

1981

The Loglanist was slow to appear usually and so a new publication, Lognet was started as a communications vehicle for the membership of TLI, carrying intermediate news, including social events, personal information, and business of the Institute that needed membership input. It soon came to also include some discussion of issues.

1982-1985: Political turmoil after the Great Morphological Revolution

1982

In 1982, for the second TLI election, JCB stepped down as President but took the office, Chairman of the Board – ultimate control but freedom from day-to-day matters; pc was President.

By 1982, JCB's "engineering interventions" have resulted in the "temporary dismantling" of Loglan, with usage coming to a "near halt", as JCB noted in the foreword to 1989's Fourth Edition of Loglan 1 .

. First "complete" machine grammar of Loglan completed by Scott Layson after significant contributions from Jeff Prothero

Jim Carter publishes "la metflidjimao vedsia" ("The Welding Shop"), the first original short story in Loglan.

Suzette Haden Elgin begins the construction of Láadan, building a vocabulary based on the Swadesh list and publishing an original story written in the language in the fall issue of Women and Language News. Láadan would later lend its evidentials to Lojban.

1983

JCB turned to completing the Great Morphological Revolution – already pretty much done – of getting all primitives equipped with affixes to build compound word and of fixing the form for such compounds as well as some rules about borrowings.

Dissent within the TLI membership over GMR and other technical issues causes JCB to reassert full control of TLI

Jim Carter publishes several variant Loglan materials independently of TLI; this work is labeled Nalgol by pc because "it got everything in Loglan backwards". Debates over Carter's work turn JCB's reassertion of control into a major political fight. Most active Loglanists beome inactive over the next year, and The Loglanist ceases publication.

1984

The third TLI election was 1984. For whatever reasons (apparent loss of control?) JCB decided to return to a Board of cronies, but was late in getting his slate out and did not inform the rest of the board that he was preparing one. The board cobbled together a slate drawn entirely from members and presented it simultaneously with JCB presenting his slate. JCB persuaded the membership slate to withdraw and declared that the slate had been presented too late under the bylaws. His slate was elected. He then attacked the people who had put together the other slate in a variety of ways (though never actually accusing them of betrayal). They quit the organization.

Loglan 3 is reissued via University Microfilms.

Lojban (1986-1997): From the fork to CLL

1986-1993: LLG's foundation, Lojban's legal defense

Lojban is forked from Loglan. The Logical Language Group (LLG) is formed. The mailing list is founded. Sixteen issues of "ju'i lobypli" are published. The Great Rafsi Reallocation. Loglan's trademark is canceled.

1986

Sometime around 1986, Robert LeChevalier came to aid JCB with computer related projects, tidying up the YACC grammar and computerizing the very haphazard membership and book-order files of the Institute. When LeChevalier moved to the Washington DC area, he took some of the membership data with him to continue trying to bring some order out of it. In Washington LeChevalier started a local Loglan group, which produced some discussion, and eventually a newsletter, which was sent to all the Loglanists in LeChevalier’s database (The Loglanist was still being published with a new editor and joined with the old Institute newsletter to offer a more regular – though less meaty – periodical).

July - me la uacintyn loglytuan (the future ju'i lobypli ) #1 published as an attempt to create a Washington DC area Loglan Users group and reactivate the membership. The concept of the "baseline" is introduced.

(the future ) #1 published as an attempt to create a Washington DC area Loglan Users group and reactivate the membership. The concept of the "baseline" is introduced. August - me la uacintyn loglytuan #2 published.

#2 published. September - Joel Shprentz creates a Loglan area on a BBS, with downloadable Logflash and Loglan wordlists. Bob LeChevalier restarts the annual gathering of Loglanists at Logfest. JCB perceives lojbab's efforts as an attempt to take over TLI, threatening legal action when lojbab refuses JCB's authority and TLI claims of ownership of his and Nora's work, particularly Logflash, a computerized version of lojbab's flashcard routine which had been created by Nora Tansky and never given to the Institute. JCB sought legal protection for all of the elements of the language: the YACC grammar, the whole vocabulary and many of the other programs which were used. Though the members of the Washington group were for the most part also member of the Institute, JCB took the position that the group was unauthorized and was trespassing on Institute business (though the Institute had no other local groups, even in San Diego). He further held that mere membership in the Institute did not entitle a person to make use Loglan material – all under copyright – and so even citing Loglan words was forbidden as were definitely writing Loglan sentences or citing bits of the grammar.

September 12-14 - Eight loglanists, including lojbab, Nora, Art Wiener and Jack Waugh attend LogFest 3, which had been announced in Me la Uacintyn Loglytuan #2 , and was later reported in Hoi loglypli #3 . Loglan notebook #3 (NB3) was reviewed and computer speech generation programs were tested.

, and was later reported in . Loglan notebook #3 (NB3) was reviewed and computer speech generation programs were tested. October - Bob LeChevalier meets John Clifford during a business trip to St. Louis.

1987

In response to JCB's hostility as well as the accumulated suggested additions and “corrections” to the Institute’s language, the Washington group – with some remote adherents – decided to create a new version of Loglan from scratch. The outlines were thrashed out in a series of Logfests at LeChevalier’s house in Fairfax VA; the details – the derivation of new primitives from a revised list of the most widely used languages, the reorganization of the phonology and morphology, the revision of the grammar were done by LeChevalier and John Cowan with a variety of helpers in one area and another. The result was launched in 1987 as “Lojban, a realization of Loglan.”

March - Bob LeChevalier offers a loglan class in Washington, D.C.

April - "me la uacintyn loglytuan" became "hoi loglypli" with the publication of issue #3.

May - on Memorial Day weekend, Lojban (then called Loglan-88) is started by Bob LeChevalier, Nora LeChevalier (still Tansky at that point), Gary Burgess, and Tommy Whitlock. At this point, it is intended merely as an alternative gismu list and phonology to evade copyright claims by JCB.

June - The process of gismu creation begins.

July - The Logical Language Group founded.

August 1 - "Lojban - A Realization of Loglan" adopted as the name of the language at LogFest 4.

October 23 - lojbab and Nora married in a ceremony with vows in primitive Lojban.

December - initial gismu list completed

1988

1989

1990

1991

1992

ckafybarja project initiated.

project initiated. February: Athelstan injured.

April 28: United States Court of Appeals upholds trademark cancellation in "Loglan Institute v. Logical Language Group".

May 19: The White Knight's Song translated into lojban by DC Tuesday night group.

June: First baselining of the gismu list. Issue #16 of "ju'i lobypli" announces place structure changes.

July: Loglanists mailing list started

August: On the Loglanists mailing list, Gary Rector raises the question of how to say "I am waiting for a taxi" in Loglan when the awaited taxi is not specific, initiating a discussion on how best to describe intensional objects. Richard Kennaway suggests using the "mass descriptor", "lo" (analogous to "loi" in lojban). JCB endorses this solution with reference to the "Trobrianders". Lojban would also adopt mass description for this case until the development of xorlo.

August 16: Fourth annual members meeting of LLG.

October 2-18: lojbab promotes Lojban in Russia while visiting Moscow. First international promotion of the language.

1993

January - Issue #17 of "ju'i lobypli" is published, including a mention of the use of "a software system called 'IRC' (Internet Relay Chat)" for lojban conversation.

May - Issue #18 of "ju'i lobypli" is published. Although there have been attempts to resume publication, this is currently (2014) the last issue to date. ( le terpra cu denpa da poi balvi )

) June 1 - The Great Rafsi Reallocation goes into effect.

July 11 - Fifth annual LLG members meeting.

August - Erik Rauch announces a lojban FTP archive.

1994-1997: Lojban on the Web and in print

Lojban expands on the Internet while John Cowan completes the reference grammar. "The Complete Lojban Language" (CLL) is published and the language design is baselined and frozen for five years.

1994

First baselining of the machine grammar.

May 30 - Veijo Vilva publishes the Lojban WWW server, which eventually became www.lojban.org.

July 7 - Issue #18/19 of "lojbo karni" (dated May 1994) is announced.

July 15-17 - LogFest

July 17 - Sixth annual LLG members meeting

July 26 - Announcement that lojban mailing list surpassed 100 subscribers.

September - la xorxes asks how to say "I need either a box or a bag", initiating a discussion of opaque reference. At some point in the discussion, he proposes xe'e as a quantifier to mean "any".

1995

August - First reported fluent Lojban conversation, "The Glasgow Conversation"

August 18-20 - LogFest

August 20 - Seventh annual meeting of the LLG.

December 7 - lojbab, responding to a debate on the conlang listserv, posts the "finprims" document, detailing the etymology of gismu. Chris Bogart drafts the first version (numbered 0.5) of the Lojban list FAQ.

December 28 - xorxes and Jose Ramon Gallo Vazquez translate the gismu list into Spanish.

1996

la nitcion publishes an article Lojban as a Machine Translation Interlanguage in the Pacific.

The Loglan Academy ( La Keugru ) of TLI publishes Loglan Updater 1 on the internet. The Updater is a compilation of modifications to Loglan endorsed by the Loglan Academy since the 1989 publication of the Fourth Edition of Loglan 1 , including the reassignment of me as the "extensional predifier", a 1994 refinement proposed by Randall Holmes. A new word, mea was introduced to take over the role of "metaphorical predifier".

) of TLI publishes on the internet. The is a compilation of modifications to Loglan endorsed by the Loglan Academy since the 1989 publication of the Fourth Edition of , including the reassignment of as the "extensional predifier", a 1994 refinement proposed by Randall Holmes. A new word, was introduced to take over the role of "metaphorical predifier". February 15 - Veijo Vilva sets up European mirror of lojban FTP archives.

August - Wired magazine publishes an article about artificial languages that makes prominent reference to lojban.

August 10-11 - LogFest

August 11 - Eight annual meeting of the LLG. With the news that John Cowan had completed writing the reference grammar, a motion is passed to "baseline the contents of the Reference Grammar as of December 31, 1996, and all else as of June 30, 1997".

1997

January 10 - Electronic publication of the reference grammar is announced: "The Lojban language design is baselined and frozen for a minimum period in excess of 5 years".

July 3 - Announcement that the lexicon baseline, which had been schedule for release on June 30 per the January announcement, had been postponed.

November 28 - Publication of The Complete Lojban Language by John Cowan announced.

Lojban (1998-Present): Since CLL

1998-2000: Lojbanistan debates a sequel

Publication of an official guide to the language did not stop discussion of what the language should be, starting with disputes about what the official text actually meant and then what it should have meant – or said. The popular albeit unofficial parser, "jbofihe", is developed. JCB passes away.

1998

July 11-12 - LogFest

October 5 - John Cowan posts machine grammar version .300.

December 3 - lojbab announces acquisition of the "lojban.org" domain.

1999

luryri'e published (online only edition).

published (online only edition). A revised web edition ("Revised Fourth Edition") of Loglan 1 is published, integrating material from Loglan Updater 1 .

is published, integrating material from . Jan 12 - Lojban WWW server moves to www.lojban.org.

Feb-Nov lapoi pelxu ku'o trajynobli serialized on la jboste .

serialized on . March 9 - lojbab publishes revised gismu source language weights.

May 7 - YACC parser .300 and Nora's glosser released as beta software.

June - Richard Curnow begins work on "jbofihe", a parser which came to replace the YACC grammar as a de facto standard, and which, in 2003, was recognized as an official project.

July - A review of "The Complete Lojban Language" by Geoffrey Sampson is published in the Cambridge "Journal of Linguistics", Vol. 35, Issue 2.

July 16-18 - LogFest

mi terpa by Steve Furlong. First children's book in Lojban.

The "Elephant" is proposed by John Cowan: An IBIS (Issue-Based Information System) implementation to manage the documentation of discussion around points of contention in lojban. Although never implemented, it would continue to be discussed through 2006.

February 13 - James Cooke Brown died. Dr. James Cooke Brown, inventor of Loglan and founder of the Loglan Project, died in February while on a cruise around South America. He was 78. On behalf of LLG, Bob LeChevalier expressed personal and official sorrow at his passing. While Lojban and LLG were founded as a result of substantive disagreement with JCB over several issues, he was a creative genius who will be greatly missed. There have been some soundings taken as to the possibility of rapprochement between the TLI Loglan and LLG communities. Both communities seem strongly in favor of the idea, though it is uncertain what types of moves could be made. Discussions will continue over a longer period of time.

The last issue of Lognet is published by Alex Leith. It included an essay on "The Future of Loglan" by Leith which was written before JCB's passing, and a number of letters looking back on JCB's life and work and the conflict between TLI and LLG, including submissions by Robert McIvor, Randall Holmes, Robert LeChevalier, John Clifford, Steven Belknap, and Jorge Llambías. Leith passed away in 2001.

is published by Alex Leith. It included an essay on "The Future of Loglan" by Leith which was written before JCB's passing, and a number of letters looking back on JCB's life and work and the conflict between TLI and LLG, including submissions by Robert McIvor, Randall Holmes, Robert LeChevalier, John Clifford, Steven Belknap, and Jorge Llambías. Leith passed away in 2001. April 29 - Lojban attracts Attention - Lojban was mentioned as a discussion item on Slashdot. The result was an enormous volume of hits on the Lojban website: More traffic than had been seen in two years in the course of a single day, comprising about 1 gigabyte of bandwidth. But the web host CAIS Internet (www.cais.net) stayed up and presumably a lot more people now know about Lojban. After the first week, traffic died down somewhat, but ran for a time at about double the traditional levels.

May 9 - first Russian Lojban web page created by Evgenii Sklyanin

August 5-6 - LogFest 2000: The annual meeting celebrating Lojban, as well as the annual meeting of The Logical Language Group, was held at lojbab's house.

2001-2002: Sustained lojban production

"jbovlaste" and the Lojban wiki are started. Large-scale translations: xorxes did Alice and The Little Prince and a number of other works, including game scripts were made. There was also a serious and growing amount of spontaneous communication in Lojban over IRC, generating another large corpus of usage. The LLG Baseline Policy is proposed and ratified.

"tremendous apparent growth" - Peak traffic on "lojban" email list. Many Lojbanists create web pages.

April - Jay Kominek (jez) announces the development of a web dictionary, "jbovlaste"

May 6 - lojban-common debian package created, including lojban word lists.

June 13(?) - the first lojban wiki based on phpwiki engine started by jez

August 2001 - And Rosta creates jboske ("lojbanology") group to support the discussion of technical language issues.

August 7 - John Cowan registers "art-lojban" as ISO 639-2 code with IANA.

August 24 - Jay Kominek starts the lojban-beginners email mailing list. Initially housed on yahoo groups, it later is moved to google groups.

August 29 - Nick Nicholas releases an arrangement and recording of the Lojban Anthem.

October 3 - A "Lojban" article is created on Wikipedia.

alt.language.artificial.lojban (?) created.

4 January 2002 - jezrax started this timeline, little realizing what it would become...

10 January 2002 - The minimum freeze period for the original 1997 language design baseline expires.

18 April 2002 - The first draft of the Alice In Wonderland translation was completed, or nearly so.

1 July 2002 - There was a major (several day) downtime of the Lojban web site, due to bad RAM, which in turn caused file system corruption. The server was upgraded with a much faster processor, a new, larger hard drive, as well as a completely new operating system (NetBSD 1.5.2), and moved into a co-location facility with a connection to the internet that is close to 300Mb/s.

26-29 July 2002 - LogFest, the annual gathering of lojbanists, was held at lojbab's house in Fairfax, VA, USA, including the 2002 Annual Meeting of the Members of the LLG, at 1030AM EDT on Sunday July 28, 2002. The membership passed a motion raised by John Cowan providing guidelines for the recognition and maintenance of official LLG projects.

15 August 2002 - lojbanic livejournal community is founded.

September 2002 - Official LLG Projects and Committees web pages posted.

October 2002 - Discussion heats up on jboske ("lojbanology") mailing list, peaking in December. Much of the discussion concerned practical problems that turned up in translation and chat. Some discussion threads will eventually contribute to the definition of xorlo and the formation of BPFK (baupla fuzykamni – the committee responsible for a language plan) to amend CLL to remove doubts or uncertainties, to fill gaps and, if need be, to alter bits to deal better with perceived problems.

21 October 2002 - The Lojban FAQ was updated and moved and revamped and such, mostly by Dalton Graham.

1 November 2002 - Release of a lojban version of the "Colossal Cave" text adventure game, "nuntalyli'u" on the Inform platform.

26 November 2002 - The Baseline Statement, as drafted by the LLG Board was submitted to the lojban community for ratification.

9 December 2002 - Results of the successful ratification of the Baseline Statement were posted.

30 December 2002 - An IRC logging system was set up. See The Lojbanic Forums page.

2003-2006: Xorlo and BPFK 1.0

BPFK begins work. The Camxes parser is implemented. BPFK adopts xorlo. XKCD name checks Lojban.

2003

Robin Lee Powell started creating camxes, a new parser for Lojban which will eventually become a new standard.

February 2003 - Pierre Abbat releases "valfendi", a lexer implementatibg the baseline Lojban morphology algorithm.

21 February 2003 - lojban-fr, a French mailing list, is started.

3 March 2003 - phpBB forum installed to capture BPFK discussions and record polls.

4 March 2003 - Request Tracker installed to track jbovlaste issues. It was later used for other lojban projects as well.

29 March 2003 - BPFK opened for business.

7 April 2003 - The Level 0 book was added to the web site and a Request Tracker was set up to help manage future changes to the site.

11 May 2003 - Some bylaw changes from 1992 were incorporated. Split off of Old Projects into a seperate page, many changes (mostly minor) to the projects and committees pages. Markup changes all over the place. The full changes list can be found at the Aegis change page for change number 144.

15 May 2003 - Original deadline for completion of cmavo definitions per 2002 baseline statement. To date (2014), the definitions have not been deemed as completed.

June 15, 2003 - Annual meeting of LLG. The Baseline Statement, as drafted by the Board and ratified by the community, is adopted as LLG policy. After fourteen years, lojbab steps down as LLG president. John Cowan, elected by the Board of Directors, becomes president. Nora also resigns her position as secretary/treasurer, and is succeeded by Robin Lee Powell. The Board also appoints Robin as Webmaster. Bob remains on the Board to satisfy requirements of the State of Virginia. LLG membership grows to peak of 36 members.

11 August, 2003 - Nick Nicholas posts "Quine vs Montague, the deathmatch" to jboske, declaring that he counts the extensional interpretation of gadri as a cornerstone of the definition of lojban and a non-negotiable "axiom".

September 2003 - Robin Lee Powell installs tiki wiki, replacing phpwiki and phpBB

2 September 2003 - John Cowan registers "jbo" as ISO 639 alpha-3 code, deprecating "art-lojban".

10 September 2003 - "What is Lojban?" was published.

20 October 2003 - Nick Nicholas (nitcion) resigns his position as chair of BPFK in email to LLG Board of Directors.

27 October 2003 - LLG Board of Directors accepts Nick's resignation and announces appointment of Robin Lee Powell to chair BPFK.

2004

2005

2006

2007-2012: A Temporary Baseline in The Land of Invented Languages

LLG passes zasni gafyfantymanri (ZG, "temporary baseline") policy. Japanese lojban community grows. In the Land of Invented Languages is published. Teaching and reference materials developed in multiple languages. Birth of the "jbocifnu".

2007

2008

Jan - Feb 2008 - Matt Arnold is elected by the LLG Board of Directors as the fourth president of LLG, succeeding Arnt Richard Johansen.

Mar 2008 - mublin reconstructs the Chinese etymology of gismu.

Apr 2008 - mublin reconstructs the English, Spanish (with the assistance of xorxes and Pierre Abbat), and Russian (with Evgeny Sklyanin, Cyril Slobin, Pierre Abbat, Dmitry Shintyakov, and Bob LeChevalier) etymology of gismu.

May 2008 - mublin reconstructs the Hindi etymology of gismu.

Jun - Jul - Lina Persson, a Swedish artist, releases «fanmo jimte», a film narrated in lojban about a fictional farmer named Nora in the town of Vulcan in Alberta, Canada. (Parts I, II, III, IV)

4 Jul 2008 - gejyspa publishes a translation of the book of Esther on the lojban tiki.

22 Aug 2008 - xorxes translates Franz Kafka's, "The Metamorphosis (Die Verwandlung)": lo nu binxo

29 Oct 2008 - The 2008 annual meeting of the membership of LLG is called to order. It was adjourned December 21.

la tijlan starts to promote lojban in Japanese language forums

2009

8 Feb 2009 - kamymecraijun announces jvozba, a web application for constructing lujvo.

1-3 May 2009 - jbonunsla at Penguicon in Detroit, MI.

19 May 2009 - "In the Land of Invented Languages", a book by Arika Okrent, details Lojban and its history

July 2 2009 - la pycyn publishes an article about LoCCan, an imaginary logical language.

1 Aug 2009 - jbotcan, the lojbanic "channel", featuring anonymous imageboards, an rss feed that collects news from all over, was brought back on line.

8 Aug 2009 - The 2009 annual meeting of LLG is called to order.

30 Nov 2009 - The Complete Lojban Language by John Woldemar Cowan was made available to buy from Amazon.com. Sales of CLL rise from about 25 copies per year to about 125 per year.

Knowledge Representation presentation written by Franz J. Kurfess.

2010

2011

2012-Present

IRC usage grows. la guskant and la selpa'i sing and rap in lojban. Lojban software proliferates on github. BPFK reauthorized with new charter. CLL republished in print and as e-book.

2012

2013

2014

2015

2016

2018

September - la gleki adds Mattermost, Facebook messenger and vk.com board integration to the live chat that is synchronized between those messengers as well as to Telegram, Slack and IRC (synchronization of which was deployed in 2015).

2020

January - la gleki starts a series of unofficial regular updates to the Complete Lojban Language book mostly fixing mistypes and contradictions in the book.

March 4 - a new channel for French speakers gets opened, immediately gets significant activity and gets bridged between Telegram, Discord, Slack, IRC networks (links)