Vi le Sritoe pe la Cefli

The Loglan Institute (TLI) is the official organization which coordinates the development of the artifical human language Loglan. The main Loglan web site is here: that is the place to look for lots of general information and resources on the language.

Here is a good place to start finding out what Loglan is, Loglan I (fourth edition) by James Cooke Brown.

This is the proposed reference grammar for the language. Originally, I intended to submit this as a series of proposals to an advisory Keugru (a version of the old Loglan Academy of the same name) but that group has not been active. So it is a body of proposals to the community, backed up by the fact that the parser implements the syntactical parts of these proposals (mod bugs). Discussion is very welcome; I would love it if people would test this document by reading it. Updated 1/30/2022

Parser resourses (all updated 2/15/2022):

• The PEG engine: here and Loglan preliminary file here.

• The current official parser here. This needs the two files under the first heading. The current official parser here, in a one-file format incorporating the PEG engine and preamble.

• A test parser permitting multiple arguments before the predicate in a simple sentence: here. This requires the two files under the first heading. The test parser here, in a one-file format incorporating the PEG engine and preamble.

• The PEG grammar for the official parser in a compact form here. In its fully commented form here.

  This was updated 2/15/2022 with systematic changes to rule names in the grammar.

  Just for clarity and lack of clutter, we now provide only one official grammar file, which is for the official parser. The test parser is obtained by not requiring the use of GIO in the grammar rule statement: put a question mark after it. Our opinion is that it should be required; flexibility about its use is nice for poetry.

  For those with special PEG file needs, here is a compact PEG without comments for the test parser.

• English-to-Loglan

• Loglan-to-English

You can run the parser in a web page here.

Here is a really pretty new web parser (hapci's parser)

Loglan 3

• Here is volume 1 of Loglan 3, by Stephen Rice, our one language textbook so far.

• Here is volume 2 of Loglan 3

• Here is volume 3 of Loglan 3

• Here is my not yet complete commentary on Stephen Rice's Loglan 3, which remains our best teaching material. The commentary notes some mistakes and some anachronisms; as long as those are kept in mind, I strongly recommend studying this text.

Some reports to the Institute

• Here is the current public agenda of the Institute (which I wrote in 2013): Public Agenda of TLI

• Here is an agenda document (the Spring 2018 Report on the State of the Loglan Language; this has been steadily updated since Fall 2015) which is intended be essentially a complete report on the state of the language from my perspective as of Spring 2018. It includes a list of issues that I have worked on, an updated text of the reference grammar, a list of current proposals (including new ones), the complete PEG grammar (I am still updating annotations to it), and the trial.85 grammar. It is a substantial document.

• Here is my latest annual report (2019): 2019 Annual Report.

• Here is a document I am working on in summer 2023, which is intended to become a description of the current state of the language and possible motives for the project: "Notebook 4"

There is a mailing list for people interested in Loglan. The original one, loglanists@ucsd.edu is dead (and alas, we do not have archives for it: people who have local archives of this list are encouraged to share them; I have records since about 2008). The new one is loglanists@googlegroups.com. Email me, Randall Holmes, to get info about it.

There is a Discord server devoted to Loglan: this is an invitation to it.

A small group meets every week at 9 am Pacific time in the online world Second Life to talk (well, mostly write) in and about Loglan. You can ask me about it if interested.

On the rest of this page you will find my current Loglan projects and some general information about the Loglan language, its history, and its relationships with other artificial languages.

The parser uses PEG (Parsing Expression Grammars), a scheme for developing parsers (developed by Bryan Ford) described here. This differs from a use of a BNF grammar disambiguated using yacc which underlies LIP, and does raise questions about ambiguity (or more correctly, unintended parse) problems.

The Python programs which call the parser to parse Loglan text and the PEG grammar of the official parser and a test parser are provided at the top of the page.

Here is a file corpus-original.llg of parsed Loglan sentences (if you have the file corpus-original.txt, this file is generated by typing >corpus-original in the parser interface), this now contains the entire teaching corpus in NB3 modified to work with the current grammar. This is up to date; it's the first test suite for each parser update.

More sample material (these are also Python files to be run in the presence of the Python parser files):

Lots of parsed examples from Loglan 1 ;

Some examples of complex predicates and phonetic parses

these need updates (they have not been run with a recent version of the parser)

Here and here find translations of my friend Laura's poems.

Here is a translation of a small opening segment of the Old English poem Beowulf, with parses here and a version that doesn't parse but does have notes here.

I have finished parsing the text of the Visit to Loglandia, the novel by Alex Leith which is the largest single Loglan text again It may be useful to note that my input files include comments on the revisions I had to make in the text to make it parse.

The particular points that often need repair in this text are worth noting

• My parser religiously requires commas after Loglan names. Serial names often need to be reformatted a little. Syllabic consonants have to be doubled. Names with non-Loglan letters in them become foreign names marked with lao.
• strong quotation is different (and does not come out badly in this text).
• APA and IPA words are a pain. In particular, the need to mark APA and IPA words with explicit pauses (and to require pauses where a break spoils an APA or IPA word to be comma marked) is a frequent source of slight changes from Leith's text. He really uses APA and IPA words quite often. Leith does seem to be aware of the issue (as I think JCB was).

• inverse vocatives made from arguments often need to be closed with guu to avoid eating following sentences. The sentence form is heavily used -- it is clear what it is for. But the use with arguments needs to be guarded (a grammar change was necessary to fix this, and it reflected a genuine ambiguity in 1989 Loglan, not detected because of the role of preparsing). Actually, inverse vocatives made from sentences also need to be closed with giuo frequently to keep from consuming unintended further arguments.
• Please note that this version was parsed with the official parser, which requires use of [gio] in SOV sentences. For this to parse correctly in the test parser for which [gio] is optional, one would need to close more inverse vocatives with argument text with [guu] to avoid their being misread as inverse vocatives with weird SOV sentence test. It is worth noting that Leith NEVER wrote an SOV sentence in the entire Visit: I did not add [gio] anywhere.

• One needs to watch out for closures with guo and its kin. My parser does not have pause/GU equivalence. I do not think Leith relies heavily on it, but he does not always effect the closures he needs. I was able to use information from my parses to detect a lot of failures to close lepo phrases properly, though surely not all of them (failures to close often created unintended gasents and imperatives).

• I believe that Leith himself was responsible for a number of badly formed predicates in his text, which I have fixed. He inspired me to scan the dictionary.
• all installments have been scanned with the latest version of the parser.
• Here is the text of the first installment of the Visit in the format I fed to the parser. I converted this one to phonetic transcript format. This is from the first time I parsed the Visit, but it still works.

  Here is the text of the entire Visit to Loglandia (original lines with #, edited lines without, additional comments with #). This is the entire text, in its original form and my form edited to parse, with occasional editorial comments.

  Here is the previous document with, in addition, all the parses. This is monstrously large.

• Here is my Beowulf translation, and here it is parsed.

• Here is a story about physicists in Loglan (JCB), and here it is parsed.

• Here is a letter about the preceding story, and here it is parsed.

• Here is a narrative about Greece, by Robert McIvor, and here it is parsed.

• Here is a text (some correspondence about Loglan between two Jameses), and here it is parsed.

• Here is the Boy who Cried Wolf, I think by Leith, and here it is parsed.

• Here is a text from Alice (the Dormouse's story), and here it is parsed.

• Here is a text (from the Rubaiyat, translated by Robert McIvor and his friends) and here it is parsed.

• Here is a text (A simple original Loglan composition about the pain of memorization.) and here it is parsed.

• Here is a passage from Sophie's World (translated by Leith), and here it is parsed.

• Here is a text (a Whitman poem translated by JCB) and here it is parsed.

• Here is a text provided by Cyril, and here it is parsed.

• Here is the Chase a poem in English by my friend Laura, which I translated. Parses are included.

• Here is the Tower Clock a poem in English by my friend Laura, which I translated. Parses are included.

• Here are files for La Bekli's song from the Japanese:
  • Here is the text of a song in Loglan by la Bekli (translated from Japanese)

  • Here is the parse of this song.

  • Here is the song, as sung by the translator.

  • Here is the song text as translated back into English by Randall Holmes and Cyril Slobin.

• Here are some readings by different speakers of Le Tcidaa Cirhea, a dialogue whose text is on pp. 73-4 of Loglan 3 vol. 1. Others are invited to contribute to this collection!

  Comments on pronunciation in this recordings are also welcome.

  • Randall (native English speaker): here

  • Cyril (native Russian speaker): here

  • La Bekli (native English speaker): here

• Nepo Cervo Janto project
• the text
• paragraph 1 read
• paragraph 2 read
• paragraph 3 read
• paragraph 4 read
• paragraph 5 and 6 read (updated 10/22/20220
• paragraph 7 read
• paragraph 8 read
• paragraph 9 and 10 read
• paragraphs 10 thru 13 read
• paragraph 14 read
• paragraph 15 read
• paragraph 16 read
• paragraph 17 read
• paragraph 18 read
• paragraph 19 read
• paragraph 20 read
• paragraph 21 read

Here are the current trial drafts of the English-to-Loglan and Loglan-to-English dictionaries in Torrua's latest version. Look and feel significantly changed in 1/15/2022 update. Here is the latest version of the database (for use with Peter Hill's dictionary program). Torrua has done a lot of dictionary work recently. I have changed to the original web format for the dictionary for the moment (4/29/2023), because Torrua's new one has a bug in entry order.

As of 1/23/2016, these dictionaries contain my latest corrections. Here is something utterly mad, a complete parse down to letters of the all the keys in the L-to-E dictionary.

Here is a version of Notebook 3, one of our founding documents, which has been scanned and OCR'ed by Gleki Arxokuna and post-OCR proofread and edited by Peter Hill. This is the unmodified original.

Here is a pointer to Appendix H of Loglan I, which details the past work of the Academy. I don't really believe that there is currently an Academy, so I am promulgating provisional versions of the language which I hope will eventually be accepted by consensus of the interested community!

At Brown's death in 2000, Robert A McIvor was CEO of the Institute; in 2008 when McIvor retired from this role he appointed me. I am not a member of the original group that built the language, though I had some personal contact with JCB and served as the logical consultant (la Lodtua) for a while in the 1990's; I am always interested to learn more about the earlier history of the project from those who were there. The Academy which made official decisions about the development of the language had made its last ruling in 1996 and was essentially defunct until I reconstituted it in 2013.

There is a sister language, Lojban, whose main web site is here, Ido to our Esperanto. The schism between the two languages happened about 1987 and culminated, alas, in a lawsuit, hinging on the fact that JCB claimed copyright on the word "Loglan" and on the Loglan vocabulary. He lost the point about the word, and the other language as a result has (or had originally) quite similar grammar and semantics and an unintelligible vocabulary (though even the vocabulary is formally similar in important ways). The two languages have drifted apart since, but are still quite closely related. Lojban has a much larger community and more activity. I think the original language still has something to offer, and the existence of two languages may provide some opportunities as well. Whatever the situation in the past, TLI is on good terms with the LLG which steers the development of Lojban, and though we do claim that essential materials of Loglan are the intellectual property of TLI and/or of their individual authors, we make them freely available to anyone with a private interest in learning the language or experimenting with modifications of the language (including Lojbanists!). Before undertaking any other use of the materials (and certainly before making any claim that your favorite modification is a feature of TLI Loglan!), please talk to us.

Here is another related language. And here is yet another!