From jcowan@reutershealth.com Thu Oct 10 20:36:40 2002 Return-Path: X-Sender: jcowan@reutershealth.com X-Apparently-To: lojban@yahoogroups.com Received: (EGP: mail-8_2_2_0); 11 Oct 2002 03:36:39 -0000 Received: (qmail 40837 invoked from network); 11 Oct 2002 03:36:39 -0000 Received: from unknown (66.218.66.218) by m4.grp.scd.yahoo.com with QMQP; 11 Oct 2002 03:36:39 -0000 Received: from unknown (HELO mail2.reutershealth.com) (65.246.141.151) by mta3.grp.scd.yahoo.com with SMTP; 11 Oct 2002 03:36:39 -0000 Received: from skunk.reutershealth.com (IDENT:cowan@[10.65.117.21]) by mail2.reutershealth.com (Pro-8.9.3/Pro-8.9.3) with SMTP id XAA11453; Thu, 10 Oct 2002 23:48:15 -0400 (EDT) Message-Id: <200210110348.XAA11453@mail2.reutershealth.com> Received: by skunk.reutershealth.com (sSMTP sendmail emulation); Thu, 10 Oct 2002 23:35:43 +4400 Subject: Re: [lojban] ka'enai To: opoudjis@optushome.com.au (Nick Nicholas) Date: Thu, 10 Oct 2002 23:35:43 -0400 (EDT) Cc: lojban@yahoogroups.com In-Reply-To: from "Nick Nicholas" at Oct 11, 2002 12:51:00 PM X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.5 PL6] MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit From: John Cowan X-Yahoo-Group-Post: member; u=8122456 X-Yahoo-Profile: john_w_cowan Nick Nicholas scripsit: > > cu'u la djorden. > > >>Changing CAhA to allow > >>NAI deliberately is (a few) *people* deciding, not usage deciding. > >>So CAhA+NAI remains bad grammar (what's so bad about saying "na'eka'e" > >>anyway) for now (I suppose after the baseline CAhA+NAI may be > >>adopted). > > cu'u la xorxes. > > >There is nothing bad about NAhE+KAhE. There is nothing bad about > >KAhE+NAI either. When Lojban forbids some potential form, it is > >usually because allowing it would cause ambiguity. In this case, > >there is no reason for the rule, so the only possible argument > >against using it is that the baseline does not contemplate it. A > >very lame argument for some. > > Allow me to equivocate. > > (1) Humans impose patterns on grammars. If you've been told that CAhA > is a tense as much as pu and fa'a; if you've seen that every single > other tense has NAI; if you see no logical reason why you wouldn't > say CAhA NAI, then of course you'll say CAhA NAI. I did. I probably > still do. I don't remember being corrected. If I was, I may have just > said "dumb rule", and gone about my business, because I may not have > realised it was fixable (see And's email.) I don't remember, and > right now, don't really care. > > The reason for the asymmetry between CAhA and all the other rules > seems to me simple: it was forgotten. I'm willing to be corrected on > this. > > And it's counterintuitive, and arbitrary, and people will not do it. > It has to be pointed out to people that CAhA NAI is wrong; the > natural assumption is that the grammar is internally consistent, and > that it is right, and CAhA behaves like all other tenses. > Particularly as noone's ever given a good reason why it shouldn't > (have they?) People don't come to Lojban to have to learn exceptions. > People will not learn 1500 rules when they can learn 500 and > generalise. Like, duh. > > The baseline was dumb on this point; but we'd been told all the while > that stability was the thing, and noone seems to have cottoned on to > this. My suspicion is, I never even realised CAhA NAI was > ungrammatical. I think this exception is so criminally negligent, the > person responsible should be pilloried. And I agree with And that, > while there was piecemeal revision in the early '90s, there wasn't > ever the sense of "now we're throwing everything open for review". > There was a strong sense that even back then, existing usage > constrained things. There were a *lot* of rafsi reassignments that I > myself rejected as forcing too much relearning. > > But... > > (2) It's too late. The grammar is stuck. I think this rule is wrong, > and on this particular issue, I'm happy for people to use {ka'enai} > in real life. Because the rule is dumb. But in official LLG, such as > will be taught in lessons and published in LLG-approved texts, the > baseline must be adhered to for the foreseeable future. And I expect > fundamentalists to use {na'eka'e}. > > (And it is possible to be a fundamentalist on most issues, and be > rankled by one or two.) > > Furthermore, if fixes are proposed as techfixes to the grammar (which > we haven't talked about, but seems unlikely), things would have to be > really broken; as in, ambiguous. I don't think {ka'enai} passes that > bar, since NAhE CAhA is, after all, possible. > > So I agree with And on this particular issue. The rule was dumb, but > we're stuck with it, and we need a baseline. I'm happy to see it go, > it won't go just yet, but I'd like for it to be possible to go one > day. So I'm happy for it to be 'subverted', in that individuals keep > saying {ka'enai}. (Try and stop them.) But there must be a Lojban > standard, and currently {ka'enai} is alien to that standard. > > -- > **** **** **** **** **** **** **** **** **** **** **** **** **** **** **** > * Dr Nick Nicholas, Linguistics/French & Italian nickn@unimelb.edu.au * > University of Melbourne, Australia http://www.opoudjis.net > * "Eschewing obfuscatory verbosity of locutional rendering, the * > circumscriptional appelations are excised." --- W. Mann & S. Thompson, > * _Rhetorical Structure Theory: A Theory of Text Organisation_, 1987. * > **** **** **** **** **** **** **** **** **** **** **** **** **** **** **** > > > To unsubscribe, send mail to lojban-unsubscribe@onelist.com > > Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/ > > -- One art / There is John Cowan No less / No more http://www.reutershealth.com All things / To do http://www.ccil.org/~cowan With sparks / Galore -- Douglas Hofstadter