Subject: Re: [lojban] bacrynandu drata

From: "Bob LeChevalier (lojbab)" <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 29 Jun 2000 14:43:06 -0400

At 02:21 PM 06/29/2000 -0400, Robert A. McIvor wrote:
>At 21:20 -0400 28/6/00, Bob LeChevalier (lojbab) wrote:
> >A major thing we wanted to avoid was having the same tanru being used to
> >make several different words having different meanings. JCB and TLI took
> >the approach that the dictionary-makers would choose one correct form to be
> >used by all; I chose instead to say that all forms were valid and
> >synonymous.
>
> The last sentence is misleading. JCB, while having a strong
>preference for the shorter form, for the reason you cite always agreed that
>all forms were valid and synonymous.

That was certainly not made clear when we discussed the matter in 1986, 
though he may simply have not made clear what he felt. He did not always 
have a strong preference for the shortest form then, either, still feeling 
that the Zipfean correlation with frequency of concept (as shown in Eaton) 
should be respected, and also favoring parallel structures even if they did 
not always result in the shortest form.

Most importantly, he was the one who talked of the "canonical form" that 
would be in the dictionary, and he gave me no impression that any other 
form would be considered acceptable once a word was assigned a canonical 
form by the dictionary editor/group. Perhaps he felt that multiple forms 
were acceptable before a canonical form were chosen, though he had at the 
time put a lot of emphasis on the lujvo-making algorithm scoring system.

When we split off, and rejected in the process the concept of a "Loglan 
Academy" or any other standards board with the right to decide ad hoc 
canonical forms, it seemed like all-valid-and-synonymous was the only 
workable alternative.

>The dictionary creates a canonical form, based on a point-rating system he
>devised, but this can be (and is, occasionally) overridden for reasons of
>euphony. In these cases, the dictionary program generates the algorithmic
>form as well, with a 'See ....' reference to the overriding form. One
>reason for
>this is that dictionary users can enter the constituent predicates when 
>looking
>for a (or proposing a new) word to determine the algorithmic form.

This is somewhat similar to what I plan to do for the Lojban dictionary, 
but I plan to include the fully-expanded form, the shortest/best-scoring 
form, and any other forms that have seen high usage. The definition will 
be found under one of these (but not sure which) with the other two kinds 
of forms having a cross reference.

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