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Date: Sun, 25 May 2014 13:18:52 +0200
From: selpa'i <seladwa@gmx.de>
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Subject: Re: [lojban] Balningau: The Great Update
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la .lojbab. cu cusku di'e
> On 5/24/2014 4:46 PM, selpa'i wrote:
>> With the gimste revision hopefully about to begin, I'd like to introduce
>> you to some goals of this project as well as present a simple outline of
>> how I hope we're going to accomplish those goals.
>>
>> For ease of learning and for aesthetic reasons the gimste should be
>>
>> 1. As interally consistent as possible
>> 2. As simple as possible
>
> A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin...
>
>> Lojban is marketed as "simple and easy to learn".
>
> By the standards of languages, it is.  Of course, in point of fact, if
> you are trying to learn Lojban to a level of fluency that requires 30000
> distinct concepts to be labeled clearly (i.e 30000 brivla with known
> place structures), you probably won't find that to be "easy", no matter
> how regular the lists are.

What's easier to memorize: a gismu that follows a common pattern or one 
that doesn't? When there is a semantic group of, say, 20 gismu that 
follow a common place structure pattern, learning them is much easier 
than if all those gismu had different place structures.

>> and irregular sumti places.
>
> Likewise, so what.

See above.

> Meanwhile, the very first change you make to the existing gismu list, no
> matter how regularizing it may seem inherently makes the language HARDER
> to learn because you have potentially invalidated all prior use of that
> gismu both as an individual words and as a component in a lujvo.

No.

First of all, lujvo don't change, since they mean what are defined to mean.

Secondly, when a speaker always has to skip around a place (e.g. {broda 
fi ko'a} for skipping x2) because they never need that place, then that 
is an annoyance.

> You
> have made someone who knew that gismu less knowledgeable (and whether
> you have experienced it or not, the relearning of language changes is
> among the more difficult parts of learning a new language.

They need to relearn the gismu, yes, but it will be a simpler 
definition. Also, if we also take future Lojban speakers into account, 
it's more desirable (in my opinion) to hand them a consistent and 
easy-to-learn gimste, and they *won't* have to relearn anything. The 
number of people right now who are fluent in all the sumti places of 
every single gismu is close to zero. What the gismu are about remains 
the same, and some details which most people never even got familiar 
with are adjusted. The practical impact is much less drastic than you 
make it sound.

>> The simpler and the more consistent the gimste, the higher are the
>> chances for the average person to learn Lojban  and the more pleasant it
>> is to be a user of this language, I believe.
>
> Those claims are merely that: claims.  Unsupported by actual evidence.

Experience, both my own and those of other jbopre I interact with. We 
use the language daily, and making slight adjustments in gismu place 
structures results in a big increase in pleasantness of use. This may 
not be the case for you, but it is for some.

>> For the second step it makes sense to proceed not in alphabetical order
>> but by semantic groupings.
>
> We found also that Roget's thesaurus concepts work nicely for
> non-predicate languages.  Alas, all of that analysis was based on the
> meaning of x1 of the various gismu, which in a way invalidates the
> analysis.  Try doing a semantic grouping of the gismu based on the x2 of
> each word and you find that the semantic groupings will be quite
> different from those based on x1.
>
> And it is important that this be so, because too much semantic emphasis
> on the x1 risks losing the predicate nature of the language.

But they are not limited to x1. And they couldn't be, since Lojban 
sometimes puts the experiencer in x2 and someimes in x1. We are able to 
look past x1 and figure out what a gismu is about.

>> That way it becomes much easier to get related gismu to align.
>
> All gismu are "related".
>
> Why should some "align", and not others
>
>> For example, all the gismu about emotional states could go together.
>
> They could.  But what about the words that you don't recognize to be
> about emotional states

I think we can agree that {klama} is not an emotion, whereas {badri} is.

>> As part of the revision, I would also like to define each gismu well
>> enough that we can come up with examples filling *every* sumti place of
>> every gismu.
>
> That would be an interesting but probably unproductive challenge.

Then you aren't aware of one of the most common requests by beginners I 
hear. They want examples, they want to know how to use a gismu. (to 
which you will reply again "it's used how people want to use it")

>> Currently there are certain sumti places which nobody
>> really knows how to fill.
>
> The first time someone fills it, they will know.

I'll adress this attitude at the end of the mail.

>  > so we should either figure out what it means
>
> Worthwhile goal, but not a very high priority one when we have cmavo
> that people haven't figured out.

Not a high priority for you, but for many others. Lojban is not only 
made up of cmavo.

> Of course, since the language is intended to "go feral" and cease to be
> under prescriptive control, it can be argued that we already have
> conceded that time-free sense in incorrect.  Or perhaps any apparent
> rule which does change through usage is therefore not-a-rule.  In which
> case we may never know "the rules of the language" as long as there are
> Lojban users.  (This tension may indicate why many Lojbanists like the
> idea of the community deciding what the language is through usage, while
> at the same time want a perpetual BPFK around to codify usage questions
> prescriptively (which is arguably exactly the opposite of community
> decision.)

I know you want usage to decide (but since you want usage to decide, 
wouldn't you accept it if people simply started using different gismu 
place structures?). However, a *lot* of people prefer a centrally 
defined language. They want clear semantics, they want clear rules. If 
the community wants it, then why should they not get it? Afterall, who, 
if not the community of users, keeps Lojban alive?

Before you call this another claim without evidence, here is a thread 
from 2010 about just that:

https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/lojban/xn8hCt3Aagw

I hope we don't have to repeat that thread again.

mi'e la selpa'i mu'o

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