From nobody@digitalkingdom.org Sun Nov 20 11:46:29 2005 Received: with ECARTIS (v1.0.0; list lojban-beginners); Sun, 20 Nov 2005 11:46:29 -0800 (PST) Received: from nobody by chain.digitalkingdom.org with local (Exim 4.54) id 1Edv8v-0000Bw-25 for lojban-beginners-real@lojban.org; Sun, 20 Nov 2005 11:46:29 -0800 Received: from rlpowell by chain.digitalkingdom.org with local (Exim 4.54) id 1Edv8u-0000Bn-Mq for lojban-beginners@lojban.org; Sun, 20 Nov 2005 11:46:28 -0800 Date: Sun, 20 Nov 2005 11:46:28 -0800 To: lojban-beginners@lojban.org Subject: [lojban-beginners] Re: Up-to-date definition of Lojban Message-ID: <20051120194628.GM23316@chain.digitalkingdom.org> References: <1003614874.20051119120342@mail.ru> <20051119060745.GK23316@chain.digitalkingdom.org> <925d17560511190633j100f3c6dhfa8f70c2a540924@mail.gmail.com> <20051119203205.GS23316@chain.digitalkingdom.org> <925d17560511191259k90d9ae1j873f05b2bb835284@mail.gmail.com> <20051120000136.GU23316@chain.digitalkingdom.org> <925d17560511201051l29a88443o2a4f958d89a83c7@mail.gmail.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline In-Reply-To: <925d17560511201051l29a88443o2a4f958d89a83c7@mail.gmail.com> User-Agent: Mutt/1.5.9i From: Robin Lee Powell X-archive-position: 2630 X-Approved-By: rlpowell@digitalkingdom.org X-ecartis-version: Ecartis v1.0.0 Sender: lojban-beginners-bounce@lojban.org Errors-to: lojban-beginners-bounce@lojban.org X-original-sender: rlpowell@digitalkingdom.org Precedence: bulk Reply-to: lojban-beginners@lojban.org X-list: lojban-beginners On Sun, Nov 20, 2005 at 03:51:41PM -0300, Jorge Llamb?as wrote: > Robin, I'd appreciate not being lightly accused of deception. I > know you probably don't really mean it, I know you sometimes use > much stronger words than what you mean, but still... All right; let's take that part private, I guess. > Anyway, before we let this escalate any further, it might be > useful to describe what brought up Yannis's question. It had > nothing to do with xorlo. He proposed the following sentence: > > The rocket is flying upwards. > le jakne cu ga'u vofli > > I commented: "Upwards" would be {ga'u mo'i}. Agreed. > (I now notice that I should have said {mo'i ga'u}, because {mo'i} > modifies what follows rather than what preceeds). > > I didn't check what was official or what wasn't when I made that > comment, I just commented based on my working knowledge of the > language. I even made a mistake in my correction! *nod* > He then challenged my comment (which is a very healthy thing to > do, there is no reason to accept a correction just because somone > who is more experienced with the language has made it) by citing > the ma'oste: > > ga'u FAhA2 above > location tense relation/direction; upwards/up from ... "upwards" in English means two thing: The rocket is flying upwards. The bedroom is upwards of the living room. Or so I thought; answers.com doesn't agree with me: http://www.answers.com/upwards&r=67 > I didn't even remember this definition from the ma'oste, I just > knew that {ga'u} is meant to be a location, not a direction. So I > checked with CLL and confirmed that there the location and > direction meanings are clearly separated. *nod* > I told Yannis that the ma'oste is not always 100% reliable and > pointed him to the corresponding chapter in CLL. I didn't say > anything about officialness, because I don't really give as much > value as others to what's official or what's not, *grin* > but in this case it just happens that CLL is "more official" than > the ma'oste. > > Now, I aways try to be careful when commenting on someone else's > use of the language to separate what is clearly and > uncontroversially an error (a missing {cu}, an impermissible > consonant cluster, etc) from what is my preferred usage. In the > latter case, I normally say things like "that's not necessarily > wrong, but I would prefer such and such", or "I would say it like > this instead of like that", or "I prefer to use this word in this > other way" etc. I never just say that something is wrong when I > know there is a controversy. Again, my memory on this point differs, but until and unless I can find an example I withdraw my allegations. > The BPFK stuff is not official yet, maybe some parts of it will > never become official. But 95% of it agrees with the official > definitions and is often more clear and better defined, so hiding > it from "beginners" or making it seem as if it is something very > suspect and that you shouldn't look at is not, in my opinion, a > good policy. I'm not hiding anything; it's linked liberally around the main site. I just don't think pointing out things that complicated is a good pedagogical choice. So, we agree to disagree. No problem. > All the definition pages have the heading "Proposed definition" so > it is not as if anyone would be misled into thinking it is the > last word on anything. You'd think that, but people seem to keep getting upset about how the BPFK is going to ruin everything. It gets grating after a while. > In fact we need more people to look at it and comment as much as > possible, and we are all beginners in some sense, so being a > beginner should not keep anyone interested from looking into it. Fair point. -Robin -- http://www.digitalkingdom.org/~rlpowell/ *** http://www.lojban.org/ Reason #237 To Learn Lojban: "Homonyms: Their Grate!" Proud Supporter of the Singularity Institute - http://singinst.org/