On Tuesday, January 15, 2013 6:= 23:15 PM UTC+4, jongausib wrote:

Although you can be fluent with a restricted vocab= ulary, you're not a master of that language before you can speak of all kin= d of things without long metaphors or on-the-spot lujvo/fu'ivla no one else= ever heard of before (in my opinion).

I've been t= rying to translate parts of Ubuntu Linux to lojban, and for that you need a= lot of specific computer terms.

Skickat fr=C3=A5n min iPhone<= /div>

15 jan 2013 kl. 10:19 skrev la gleki <gleki.is...@gm= ail.com>:

On Tue= sday, January 15, 2013 12:41:18 PM UTC+4, aionys wrote:
On Tue, Jan 15, 2013 at 12:2= 7 AM, la gleki <gleki.is...@gmail.com> wrote:
On Tuesday, January 15, 2013 10:17:17 AM UTC+4, aionys wrote:
On Mon, Jan 14, 2= 013 at 9:19 PM, la gleki <gleki.is...@gmail.com= > wrote:

On Tuesday, January 15, 2013 2:28:01 AM UTC+4, Bob Slaughter w= rote:
=20 =20
On Mon, 2013-01-14 at 06:50 -0800, la gleki wrote:

doi lojbab mi ckire do .io lo ka ciksi so'a da

As usual this topic is turning into a rant. But that was predictable an= d unavoidable.
Reading lojbab's email, I find it a detailed and informative look at how th= e gismu list was started and the initial gismu were formed, including warts= . If you consider this a "rant",

I consider the following messages as "rant".

then it appears there really isn't much need for me to read any more = emails from you. I would be willing to consider otherwise, if you can demon= strate useful work you have contributed. The "lojban berries" is almost the= most useless thing I can think of -- *of course* "ckule" looks and sounds = like "school" -- it was derived from "school / schule" and the other words = from the target languages for *maximum phonetic recognition*.

This is only one tab of Lojban= berries. Look at the other tabs.

Two thin= gs:

1) Rants are typically lengthy paragraphs about a particular sub= ject for which the author has strong feelings for, not two sentences about = an observation which is accurate and calmly delivered.

2) I've looked at all the tabs, and I share his viewpoint on the useles= sness of it. When you wonder why nobody helps you in your endeavors, think = back on what he said.

It's just a continuation of Lojban Functional List.
If= no one wants to fill gaps in lojbanic lexicon, even in computer terminolog= y, well then no fluent speakers will appear soon. Otherwise how can we disc= uss anything on the internet?

A languages lexicon has little to nothing to do with = a person's fluency, and we /currently/ have fluent speakers (granted not ma= ny, but that's neither here nor there). As far as my assessment of your lis= ts as useless: there are two places where jbopre look when they want to kno= w the Lojban word: vlasisku and jbovlaste. If it doesn't exist there, they = either make one up, ask jbocertu to make one up for them, or use a differen= t word that does exist.

OK= . I'm asking once again. Here is the list of computer terms.

https://docs.google.com/<= wbr>spreadsheet/ccc?key=3D0Ahngu1CNj7wddDZBRzgwMm1EWlpKUEJRcTQtUG= NCMFE#gid=3D4

I need all of them translated to= stop talking in English.

Please, help.

On Sunday, January 13, 2013 7:40:28 PM UTC+4, lojbab wrote:

la gleki wrote:
> Every Lojbanist understands that gismu denote predicates that = are highly
> practical.
> e.g. {pilno} includes a goal as pilno3. Indeed, how can we ima= gine using
> something without a goal?
>
> My question is who collected those definitions?

Me.

> Was it JCB?

> How was this gimste formed?

JCB set the place structures for the TLI Loglan words. His ge= neral
philosophy of doing so was set forth in his books Loglan 1 and Logl= an 2,
though he didn't always follow his own principles.

I started with JCB's list, but greatly modified it, both adding and=
deleting words. As such, there are half-again as many gismu a= s there
were in TLI Loglan of the time. In very few cases can I tell = you for
certain the specific reason I added certain words, though for the <= br> culture words I made an attempt to be systematic. A large chu= nk was
added in 1988 as a result of Athelstan doing a thorough analysis ba= sed
on Roget's thesaurus, to make sure that we had good coverage of all=
semantic domains.

During the period from about 1990-1994, I subjected all change prop= osals
to the LogFest attendees, representing the community, for approval.= In
the latter two years, a faction emerged favoring the elimination of= some
gismu and thus keeping the total number constant, in the face of ne= w
proposals, if not shrinking. One last group of new ones was a= pproved,
and the list was frozen. Many years passed before any word wa= s proposed
with significant justification, thus suggesting that this decision = was
correct. (If no one has really needed a word in 25 odd years = of use, it
is hard to argue that it is fundamental, even if it might be useful= .)

Place structures started with JCB's general pattern. I attemp= ted to
find patterns, and then to make words of similar semantic domain consistent. Thus all plant and animal gismu were to have a sp= ecies
place. I eventually got things fairly systematic, though I ma= de some
mistakes. At that point, pretty much no one besides me was lo= oking that
closely.

I strongly avoided one-place predicates.

But at one point, I realized I was going too far, ascribing to any =
possible tool a purpose, and to any object both material and form <= br> places. I backed off from this somewhat. I thus avoided= >5 place
predicates. At about this point, the current concept of BAI s= tarted to
emerge, and it was realized that a large number of places were
superfluous. I made one last pass, generally reducing many of= the
excess places I had added.

Is there a changelog of modifications to gismu
> definitions starting from the first edition of loglan?

Not hardly. I introduced the concept of configuration managem= ent in the
1988-1994 period, starting to document all changes once a chunk of = the
language was baselined. Before it was baselined, documentatio= n was
rarely attempted, though there are some cases. In only a few = cases do
we even have good copies of the evolving word lists - this was stil= l a
primarily paper and pencil project.

> My particular interest here is with the recent discussion of a= possible
> new gismu meaning "qua". The corresponding word is of high fre= quency in
> Mandarin but in European languages it is often confused with w= ords
> meaning {simsa}.
> e.g.
> "as" means both "like" and "qua".
> Russian "=D0=BA=D0=B0=D0=BA" [kak] means both "like" and "qua"= .

I have no comment on the merits of this, other than to merely obser= ve
that many of the world's languages seem to do fine without making a=
distinction.

The gismu list is baselined. New gismu are not being consider= ed, and
there is no plan to do so in the future, though this could be revis= ited
AFTER the existing language is fully documented.

> Were Mandarin predicates taken into consideration while constr= ucting
> gismu definitions?

Not that I know of. I did the Mandarin work for Lojban, and I= don't
know Mandarin.

More importantly, almost no consideration of semantics was involved= in
gismu-making. If the basic meaning was generally covered, tha= t was good
enough. It was expected that the meanings and place structure= s would
evolve with usage. (But by 1997, the community was tired of m= y and
other senior Lojbanists changing the language by fiat. The co= mmunity
wanted the language to stop changing in that matter. Complete= ly. I
agreed with them. We don't change the language by fiat anymor= e. The
only exception, adopted for byfy use, is that stuff which is so bro= ken
as to prevent good documentation of the status quo language, could = be
changed so as to allow that documentation. (Since then, senti= ment seems
to have grown against "usage-based change" which is the other
alternative, and one that cannot really be prevented. People = generally
are biased against change in language. They want books that a= re
prescriptive and unchanging, whereas lexicographers strongly consid= er
dictionaries by nature to be descriptive rather than prescriptive.)=

I did use some systematic techniques to try to be sure I was pickin= g the
correct root, and for a brief time, we had a native Mandarin speake= r who
looked over what I had done with approval. (A couple of Mandarin speakers since then have also said that the work I did was more tha= n
adequate, but they were generally comparing us to Esperanto and oth= er
Euroclone languages). I also used 3 different dictionaries in the c= ase
of Mandarin in order to be more certain, since Mandarin has such a = high
weight in Lojban word-making. Still, there are flaws, and I t= hink my
choice for Lojbanization of Mandarin was especially bad, being base= d
solely on the quasi-official Chinese description of the IPA
pronunciation of Chinese particles, and the system I used for mappi= ng
IPA in other languages. As a result, Mandarin inputs had too = many "a"s
representing schwa, and too many fricatives were mapped to s and c,=
leading to Lojban having a "she sells sea shells" quality that is h= ard
for some speakers, including me, to speak the language quickly and =
accurately.

But I don't know enough Mandarin grammar to have any clue what subj= ects
and objects any given Mandarin word might require (if any) I = did enough
comparative linguistics study to be reasonably confident that my approach was "good enough".

(Arabic is the other language where my word-making rules were syste= matic
but led to a relatively poor result. And since Arabic has the= lowest
weight of the 6 source languages, this meant that Arabic influenced=
relative few words, and its inputs were less useful to Arabic speak= ing
Lojbanists.

JCB may have had some native speaker inputs in the early days, but = my
general observations on his choices for word-making suggest that th= ey
were even more limited and flawed than my efforts. I know tha= t we had
much better dictionaries by 1987 than JCB had in 1955.

lojbab
--
Bob LeChevalier loj...@lojban.org = www.lojban.org
President and Founder, The Logical Language Group, Inc.

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--=20
Bob Slaughter, rslau...@WHATmindspring.com
ht=
tp://www.facebook.com/robert.s.slaughter 
"The price good men pay for indifference to public affairs is to be
ruled by evil men." -- Plato
"All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do
nothing." -- Edmund Burke
"The world is a dangerous place, not because of those who do evil, but
because of those who look on and do nothing." -- Albert Einstein
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mu'o mi'e .aionys.

.i.e'ucai ko cmima lo pilno be denpa bu .i = doi.luk. mi patfu do zo'o
(Come to the Dot Side! Luke, I am your father.= :D )

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