Received-SPF: none (google.com: lojbab@lojban.org does not designate permitted sender hosts) client-ip=68.230.241.214;
Message-ID: <54199D5B.40209@lojban.org>
Date: Wed, 17 Sep 2014 10:40:27 -0400
From: "Bob LeChevalier, President and Founder - LLG" <lojbab@lojban.org>
Organization: The Logical Language Group, Inc.
User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; WOW64; rv:24.0) Gecko/20100101 Thunderbird/24.6.0
MIME-Version: 1.0
To: lojban@googlegroups.com
Subject: Re: [lojban] Logos Initiative
References: <e0b23cf5-5a67-4a9b-8db0-7d310eb4116e@googlegroups.com> <541714B1.9080300@gmail.com> <rWNr1o03N56Cr6M01WNtCG> <54186D9D.1030600@lojban.org> <rxd11o00T56Cr6M01xd2cp>
In-Reply-To: <rxd11o00T56Cr6M01xd2cp>
Reply-To: lojban@googlegroups.com
Precedence: list
Mailing-list: list lojban@googlegroups.com; contact lojban+owners@googlegroups.com
Sender: lojban@googlegroups.com
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8; format=flowed
X-Spam_score: -1.9
X-Spam_score_int: -18
X-Spam_bar: -

On 9/16/2014 5:36 PM, TR NS wrote:
> On Tuesday, September 16, 2014 1:39:34 PM UTC-4, lojbab wrote:
>
>     On 9/15/2014 2:22 PM, TR NS wrote:
>      > I don't see how a fork can be avoided. I think it's become very
>     clear
>      > that Lojban, pretty much as it is presently documented, is how the
>      > language is going to stay. The persons in charge give some
>     service to
>      > change by "usage" and potential consideration of proposals after
>     full
>      > documentation of the current language is complete. But how many
>     decades
>      > are we to wait for that to happen?
>
>     I think we are closer than you imagine.  Robin is working on the next
>     edition of CLL this week, and I am reasonably sure it will be out when
>     we need it next year.
>
>     The consideration of proposals could take a long time, or relatively
>     little.  If the proposers document their proposed changes in the
>     form of
>     change pages to CLL, it makes it fairly easy to consider those changes
>     and incorporate them relatively quickly (as well as to understand how
>     minor or major a given proposal is).
>
> I have no doubt little will change.

I expect a fair number of minor changes, and more additions.

> And I have it one good authority. I
> have read though a large portion of the mailing list archives and your
> position is clear "absolute commitment to the baseline".

Which doesn't mean much when it comes to formal changes to the baseline 
as part of the intended process.  It also presumes that my voice will be 
dominant/decisive in such a decision process.  I doubt it.

>     If the language is essentially complete and well-documented, I hope and
>     expect that the pressure for change will fall off.  Right now we have
>     15-odd years of accumulated but undocumented change proposals.  After
>     they are decided, then one would hope that new proposals would come
>     at a slower rate.
>
>
> That apparently has been the plan all along.
>
> "That is (and always has been) the intent as approved by the Board of the
> present, and I will support such myself in the future, but the decision
> will be up to the voting members at that time, as to what LLG will or won't
> do.  I have little doubt that once we have a solid Lojban-speaking
> community, there will be no more need for a formal freeze/baseline than
> Esperanto has, and the language prescription will have approximately the
> same force that the Fundamento has on Esperanto - keeps in mind the core of
> the language as it originated, but actual usage often deviates in minor
> ways from Zamenhof's designs.  The community itself will be the real
> normative force, and not the prescription."(http://mail.lojban.org/lists/lojban-list/msg02689.html)

I think I still hold to that statement, but the LLG community and voting 
membership have both expressed a strong commitment towards keeping a 
prescriptive standard.  And as I said, the decision will be made by them 
and not by me.

>     If they don't, then any project that you come up with is
>     just as doomed as Lojban to the same fate.
>
> I think you have it all wrong. Change is inevitable

It is, and I acknowledged it.  But I want that change to be more or less 
like natural language evolution; i.e. not planned by a group of 
tinkerers trying to "improve the language", but simply used until it is 
accepted through familiarity.

> and I think you just
> squandered ten years that could have been spent directing that change
> and perfecting the language.

I could not have either directed changes OR perfected the language.  My 
time for such has passed.

> Instead you spent the time doing everything you could to keep change at bay.

Until the documentation is done that will help serve as a normative force.

> And it is woefully wishful thinking, to
> believe that CLL 2.0, "to be published in a couple of years at most",
> will bring a watershed of speakers (thanks to all your efforts at
> stability)

That is where you are most clearly wrong.

Loglan/Lojban has accrued new speakers over the last few decades 
strictly by word of mouth.  We have avoided any sort of promotion of the 
language because we did not have the materials that people expect a 
language to have.

If CLL version 2 is accepted as a new standard, we produce a dictionary 
from jbovlaste and the new results, and update Nick Nicolas and Robin 
Turner's textbook to the current language, we then have the needed 
materials.  We probably would also formally publish some of the texts 
and translations.  Then we make our first serious effort to promote the 
language, and Lojban will grow much more quickly.

> My belief is the opposite. If you want to attract people to this
> language you have to make it so damn good that people can't help
> themselves.

Alas, what some of the tinkerers thing is "so damn good" is anything but 
to other people.

What will attract people is a body of other people actively using the 
language, materials published in the language, possibly including stuff 
not otherwise available (original works in Lojban).  People USING the 
language, and not arguing about changes to it is what will make things 
seem "so damn good".  You apparently don't realize how demoralizing it 
is to most people to read about yet another suggested change, and it is 
a turnoff simply to see changes being the primary discussion topic on 
the mailing list.  "So damn good" necessarily has to mean "no one wants 
to keep tinkering with it"

> They got to look at it and immediately go "Damn! I'd be a
> fool not to learn this."

That would happen if people saw a way to make money learning and using 
Lojban, and probably not much else.  Wisdom has one learning stuff that 
one can profit by.  English has largely become a "world language" 
because of British and American economic dominance, not because it is 
"so damn good" as a language.

>      > Besides, starting a new project also allows us to take a step
>     back and
>      > reconsider things that would simply not be possible otherwise.
>
>     You'd be surprised as to the sort of things that were "reconsidered" in
>     prior iterations.  Look at guaspi and Voksigid for prior efforts to
>     reconsider Lojban.
>
> I have looked at those. Any tonal language (IMHO) is doomed from the get
> go.

That is probably because you aren't Chinese.  And there are a lot more 
Chinese than English native speakers.

lojbab


-- 
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "lojban" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to lojban+unsubscribe@googlegroups.com.
To post to this group, send email to lojban@googlegroups.com.
Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/lojban.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.