Return-Path: Message-Id: Date: Mon, 18 Mar 91 01:01 EST From: lojbab (Bob LeChevalier) To: lojban-list Subject: news (long) Status: RO X-From-Space-Date: Mon Mar 18 01:02:35 1991 X-From-Space-Address: lojbab News notes: Ju'i Lobypli and le lojbo karni both were mailed yesterday to US and Canada, and will go to overseas people tomorrow. I would appreciate feedback from people a) so I know you got it, and b) so I have an update on how long the snail mail takes to get there. Expect up to a month to the West Coast. I am particularly interested in knowing when JL/LK reaches those of you overseas. Nick Nicholas reports that a mailing I made a month ago hasn't yet arrived. Other news: The LLG Board of Directors met today, and tackled a variety of issues (we meet only once or twice a year). 1. Bob and Athelstan will be going to the Georgetown Roundtable of Linguistics, a major professional meeting. WE will be seeking to make contacts in professional and academic linguistics, and to make them aware of Lojban, and its potential applications in research (See another posting of mine.) 2. We have adopted a fairly informal method of handling baseline change proposals that does not require endless dragged-on meetings, like the word review held at LogFest (which lasted 8+ hours talking about 20 words). After publication of a proposal in JL for comment, I (or whoever is President) will appoint an ad-hoc committee including the proposer and a couple of people expert in the area, and anyone else who is interested. These people must reach a consensus to approve the change after a reasonable comment period. If such approval is made, the Board of Directors is informed and will (presumably) ratify my selected committee and its review, and the change is adopted. The ratification can be informal if there is no Board meeting scheduled for at least two months. 3. We adopted a budget, and approved last years' financial report, which appears in JL, and more briefly in LK. 4. Patterned after 2., we have set up a generalized scheme of committees to farm out work so that I don't end up doing it all (and thus get more time to work on the textbook). The two committees mentioned in JL were dissolved (finance and electronic distribution), and I am creating a bunch of new committees with smaller, more specific tasks, and DEADLINES. Generally, I'll appoint a committee chairperson and 1 or 2 others who I know are interested. The chairperson will usually, but not necessarily, be someone on the Board, or who has a demonstrated history of regular communication with me or other Board members. The chairperson can add additional committee members on an ad hoc basis, as needed to get the job done. Specific committees I'm setting up (feel free to volunteer either to me, or where applicable, to someone on the net serving on the committee): LogFest activities (see 6. below) - Athelstan chairperson, contact me planning report by 1 May; activities planned completely by 1 week before LogFest (14 June) Financial Policy - Athelstan chairperson, Guy Garnett, contact me assigned to determine a policy on what we send new requestors of information, and set up packages for same (especially targeted for linguists, computer scientists, people who already know about Loglan, etc.), and to specify a policy on how much to award as volunteer balance credits for people doing specific, time-consuming work of particular value to the organization. Both reports by 17 April. Esperanto brochure committee - to translate the Lojban brochure into Esperanto, properly typeset it and prepare a master for printing as well as an electronic version for the Planned Languages Server soc.culture.esperanto, etc. Identify other key materials for translation. Desired completion before LogFest - 21 June Jerry Altzman, chairperson, also Mark Shoulson, Nick Nicholas, Mike Urban, Paul Francis O'Sullivan (a local Esperantist who did the first cut translation - contact care of me) Electronic distribution has been split among a couple of committees: Mini-Lesson - Athelstan, chairperson. draft mini-lesson by this Tuesday to be reviewed, with one more revision cycle before publishing in JL15 in May-June. Electronic version to be available by 17 May. Completion of simple exercises included with this mini-lesson will be a prerequisite for getting more advanced lesson materials without payment, for those claiming poverty. Reviewers, especially those not yet skilled in the language, are needed - but we want real comments, not just typo corrections. Electronic materials policy (see 5 below) - Athelstan, chairperson, also John Cowan (net point of contact). We are actively seeking others on lojban-list to work with this committee - volunteer to John. Assigned to review our publications list and unpublished materials as time permits, identifying materials suitable for electronic distribution. The Planned Languages Server will be the primary Internet repository, and the Compuserve Foreign Language Education forum will also be an official repository. The committee will determine what sort of copyright, copyleft, or public domain status will attribute to each publication to be posted, and to identify which can be posted as is, which need to be reformatted for electronic media, and which require too much reformatting to be practical for electronic distribution. Other considerations may be to wait until the next update of a publication known to be in revision Depending on the decisions, the following committee will prepare suitable license notices. Report on which materials to be available by 17 April. Make easily prepared materials available to Planned Languages Server by 17 May. Electronic headers/licenses - Albion Zeglin, chairperson, also John Cowan who will overlap with the materials committee and ensure that all needed varieties of headers are concocted. To include any official means of authenticity verification on our materials. Report by 17 April. Final by 17 May. Logo - Guy Garnett, chairperson, to finalize a version of his and one alternate logo for use in publications, and to identify both Loglan/Lojban and la lojbangirz. Report by 17 April. Final by 17 May. net addresses of those above who have them: me (and Athelstan, P.F. O'Sullivan, and Guy Garnett c/o me): lojbab@snark.thyrsus.com John Cowan: cowan@snark.thyrsus.com Albion Zeglin: 70611.3375@compuserve.com Jerry Altzman: jbaltz@cunixc.cc.columbia.edu Mark Shoulson: shoulson@husc9.harvard.edu Nick Nicholas: nsn@mullian.ee.mu.oz.au Mike Urban: urban@rand.org We WANT your participation. 5. We had discussions of the electronic policy committee, which never completed its work, to the dismay of lots of people. So we've dissolved it and are setting up a new several to replace it, as described above. Some decisions seem indicated: JL, and the textbook will not be suitable in one case because it will be our financial income source, in the other because of size, extensive reformatting required, and the need to keep a minimum US subscriber list for bulk mail purposes. Others will be reviewed by the materials committee, with a bias towards making as much available as possible - criteria will include amount of formatting needed (thus probably ruling out the Synopsis for at least a while), and how self-explanatory it is to someone FTPing the file cold. Some revisions will no doubt be required and made to make more documents suitable and available. Word lists and the machine grammar are considered public domain and will receive the highest priority after the brochure, and some linguist-targeted introduction to the language. It is expected that over time, most of our material will become electronically available, but there is a lot of work to make the products suit the professional image that we are trying to build. 6. LogFest will change its emphsis this year, given that we now have a few people resonably comfortable speaking the language. Our emphasis will be on getting more people to this state, and to get people who are waiting for a reason to start actively learning the langauge to get started. Games and activities in language are therefore targeted; we will probably have less in the way of endless theoretical discussions of new words and place structures, although there will probably be some of that going on 'on the side' during the meeting. LogFest this year by the way, is 21-24 June this year at my house in Fairfax VA. If you think you are interested in attending (no commitment needed yet), let me know ASAP for logistics planning purposes. Families are generally invited. Some specific activities: 1. Mentored Conversation - We'll have at least 1 conversation session of an hour or so duration wherein the novice or minimally experienced Lojbanist will have a chance to speak and use the langauge in conversation. Each inexperienced Lojbanist will be paired with a more skilled speaker as mentor. Each person passes notes and whispers as necessary to her/his mentor, who serves as translator, instant dictionary, or whatever is needed to allow the participant to experience being part of a Lojban conversation. THis may sound minimally productive, but has been demonstrated to greatly aid in motivation, and learning for new speakers. We should have up to a half-dozen people suitable to be mentors, and we'll rotate new people to give everyone a chance to participate as conversants. 2. Free Conversation - There will be at least one conversation of an hour or so where people can participate as they choose. The mentors will also be in this conversation, and thus the conversation flow will probably be more natural. 3. Group 'Translation' - An effort to translate as a group, a familiar tale like John Cowan's The Three Bears, NOT FROM AN ENGLISH TEXT. The emphasis will be on formulating specific ideas into Lojban predicates, selecting words for concepts, and building Lojban sentences. By not using an English text, but a familiar story instead, we can concentrate on ideas rather than specific words and translation problems. 4. Games - several of these: - Athelstan is translating the Parker Brothers board game 'Careers', also invented by Jim Brown into Lojban, and we will try to play a game using only Lojban, in his honor. (lots of help provided where needed) - pc is going to work on a translation of Wff 'n Proof, a logic game, into Lojban. - There will be a group adventure game, possibly aided by computer. The group working together will issue commands to me acting as the computer, and I'll respond, as the computer would. We will try to use Colossal Cave, or one of the other well-known games and I'll have pre-translated the room descriptions, etc., though I may cheat and use the computer (in English) to determine the result of a particularly strange command. - possibly a card game, like 'Go Fish', that involves extensive but simple, repetitive language use - Sylvia Rutiser has proposed a two-step activity, preparing a Berlitz-like phrase book, and then conducting improvised role-playing skits of a visit to mythical Lojbanistan to see the various tourist attractions therein. - Last year, pc posed a challenge for people to describe a time travel or other situation, and he'll come up with any tenses necessary to cover it. We'll try to stump pc (and maybe resolve Jeff Prothero's 4th tense as a result). We'll also try to devise examples of some of the more obscure tense elements in the language. (This activity is subject to pc's attendance, which may be impossible due to logistics this year, but he said he may be able to support the activity by telephone if necessary.) 5. Demonstrations of new (and old) software 6. Impromptu criticial reviews by the 'users' of our various publications and educational materials to identify needed improvements 7. Discussions, including AI applications and linguistics/language education research, or whatever people are interested in. 8. Introductory lessons for people who need them. If you are a possible attendee and these or other ideas for activities interest you, let me know. We want this to be a LogFest that people who haven't come before find worth the trip.