From marob!hombre!uunet!marob.masa.com!cowan Mon Dec 10 07:47:06 1990 Received: by magpie.MASA.COM (smail2.5) id AA17238; 10 Dec 90 07:47:05 EST (Mon) Received: by marob.uucp (/\=-/\ Smail3.1.18.1 #18.1) id ; Mon, 10 Dec 90 07:10 EST Received: by hombre.MASA.COM (smail2.5) id AA04345; 10 Dec 90 04:05:23 EST (Mon) Received: from cbmvax.UUCP by uunet.UU.NET (5.61/1.14) with UUCP id AA24915; Sat, 1 Dec 90 22:48:34 -0500 Received: by cbmvax.cbm.commodore.com (5.57/UUCP-Project/Commodore Jan 13 1990) id AA28332; Sat, 1 Dec 90 22:39:43 EST Received: by snark.thyrsus.com (/\=-/\ Smail3.1.18.1 #18.14) id ; Sat, 1 Dec 90 22:07 EST Received: by snark.thyrsus.com (/\=-/\ Smail3.1.18.1 #18.14) id ; Thu, 29 Nov 90 07:08 EST Received: by cbmvax.cbm.commodore.com (5.57/UUCP-Project/Commodore Jan 13 1990) id AA01564; Thu, 29 Nov 90 06:15:21 EST Received: from RUTGERS.EDU by uunet.uu.net (5.61/1.14) with SMTP id AA17848; Thu, 29 Nov 90 02:34:18 -0500 Received: from phri.UUCP by rutgers.edu (5.59/SMI4.0/RU1.4/3.08) with UUCP id AA26000; Wed, 28 Nov 90 22:14:18 EST Received: by phri.UUCP (smail2.5) id AA09737; 28 Nov 90 22:10:06 EST (Wed) Received: by marob.masa.com (/\=-/\ Smail3.1.17.5 #17.4) id ; Wed, 28 Nov 90 14:13 EST Message-Id: From: marob!uunet!marob.masa.com!cowan (John Cowan) Subject: Lojban Stability To: lojban-list@snark.thyrsus.com Date: Wed, 28 Nov 90 14:13:47 EST X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.3 PL2] Status: RO There is fear abroad in Lojbanistan, it seems. People are afraid to write things in the language, to use the language, because what they write or say may become "obsolete": it may change meaning, be judged ungrammatical by a new revision of the machine grammar, or may be plain wrong. This fear inhibits the genuine development of the language, which consists not in tinkering with vocabulary lists or YACC descriptions, but in speaking, reading, writing, and understanding generally. This is a Bad Thing. I'll tell a story here. My father's philosophy professor, Edgar A. Singer of the University of Pennsylvania, wrote an article almost seventy years ago discussing what is called the "mind/body problem". This is the question of how it is that the states of the mind correspond (if at all) to the physical states of the nerves making up the brain. Singer decided he needed two adjectives meaning "relating to the mind/soul/spirit" and "relating to the nervous system/brain". He looked into his Greek Lexicon (for he was a man of some education) and came up with the excellent words "psychotic" and "neurotic" respectively. Unfortunately, the English language has decided otherwise. There is always a danger of obsolescence whenever we write or talk of something new. The people who talked of "push-down lists" or (still earlier) "tables" have become obsolete in computer-science lingo; all the world talks of "stacks" today. That does not mean that the things those people discovered about stacks are any the less true for their language which now seems quaint. Likewise, in the field of international relations, we no longer hear of "underdeveloped countries": this became "developing countries" or "less-developed countries". There were reasons for making these terminological changes, but those reasons do not render nugatory (what's a good tanru for "nugatory"?) the work done in the past. So let's try at least to make some stab at using our language, for only so will it become truly ours.