Subject: Re: [lojban] le ga'ifanta

From: "Bob LeChevalier (lojbab)" <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 22 May 2000 12:46:20 -0400

At 07:43 PM 05/21/2000 -0400, [email-masked] wrote:
> .i ja'o do natfe le tu'a la bab>>
> Nope, just interpreting him in the light of events.

Correct. I just wasn't up to saying it in Lojban yesterday %^).

> The freeze has been in
>effect for some years now -- I even remember having a meeting or two to vote
>necessary changes to save the grammar. It will remain in effect until at
>least five years after the books are published.

Yes, the baseline has already started, on all but the dictionary lexicon 
(and changes in the latter are severely constrained by baselines on the 
gismu and cmavo and rafsi). We of course welcome lexicon work. There are 
10K words or so in the current file, and I'm sure many more have been used 
in the last 5 months.

>Remember that the purpose of
>baselining and the freeze is to have a stable language we can learn and work
>with before we start fiddling around, some that Institute Loglan has never
>officially achieved (and often not in reality neither). This means that when
>the books are written they describe the language that we have learned and
>that is still in use, not something that used to be or we hope to come
>(various version of Loglan 1 did both of these). It is hard to hit a mioving
>target so the LLG target will stand still until it has been described and
>lived with at least five years. I can speak to the desirability of this --
>or at least the disaster of not: I use "laldo," I have for forty years. The
>last time I had occasion to lojban "old," I remembered there had been a
>revolution and looked up the new word. Unfortunately, I forgot there had
>been at least one more revolution, so that word also got "ki'a." This sort
>of thing can discourage a person from pursuing Lojban if it become a regular
>feature of the learning experience. So, the freeze is on and will stay on
>for the foreseeable future.

Good summary.

>Notice, however, that the fact that no changes may be proposed or considered
>has not stopped anyone from discussing them, nor should it. It just means
>that no official notice is taken of the discussion, even if it reaches
>gi-normo proportions -- short of showing that the grammar doesn't work.

I will add that we prefer that such discussions, if they must occur, be in 
Lojban. Again, we do not want the image of changes being contemplated by 
some Lojbanists (officially noted or otherwise) to discourage new 
Lojbanists from starting. And we do want any eventual changes if possible 
to take place by natural evolution; i.e. people just start using the new 
form rather than some committee decreeing it. There may have to be a 
transition step at the end of the baseline where some committee considers 
some issues and makes some decisions before people are comfortable with 
such free change, but I think it harmful to even think about that step 
right now, since it presumes that there is something broken that needs such 
deciding. I think we need lots more usage by lots more people to know if 
anything in the language design is flawed.

>So
>far, such proportions have not happened with any discussed change -- due
>partly to the list's natural perversity, partly to the good sense of the
>original designers and the corresponding clunkiness of the discussed
>modifications. But even if the really good idea does come along, it will
>just be filed away, to resurface at the designated time.

Or it will be used as an unsanctioned bit of "bad Lojban" until the 
baseline ends, at which point if it has caught on, it will suddenly cease 
to be "bad Lojban". In effect this what is happening with what some 
perceive as contradictions in the Book, but which I have called "vagueness".

lojbab
----
lojbab [email-masked]
Bob LeChevalier, President, The Logical Language Group, Inc.
2904 Beau Lane, Fairfax VA 22031-1303 USA 703-385-0273
Artificial language Loglan/Lojban: http://www.lojban.org