From: cbmvax!uunet!math.ucla.edu!jimc
Message-Id: <9108091907.AA28799@luna.math.ucla.edu>
To: lojban-list@snark.thyrsus.com
Subject: Definition of lujvo
Date: Fri, 09 Aug 91 12:07:50 -0700
Status: RO

This thread about the definition of lujvo may have gone on over-long
but it's important and deserves the attention.  

Lojbab, I'm sorry to have misunderstood what you told me about lujvo
policy.  Have I got it straight now: users in the field will make lujvo
themselves; the central office will monitor that usage and will compile
a dictionary of lujvo that are both correct and common; and of the
various possible meanings and/or place structures the dictionary will
prescribe one to be the lujvo's unique meaning.  

The key point (for me) in Lojbab's comment to me was: 

> Thus making up a new Lojban word has all the 'risk' of using 'impact'
> as a verb or doing any of the many ad-hoc derivations that we can do to
> make new words on the fly in English - adding suffixes, compounding etc.
> ... This easierness (see I just made a new English lujvo and you understand
> I hope) will be matched by a higher Lojban dependence on creative (make
> that CREATIVE so jimc gets the emphasis - not algorithmic) wordmaking
> to express new ideas.

Don't you get it, "easierness" is made not creatively but algorithmically:
root is "easy", add "er" for comparative, add "ness" for abstraction
"quality of", and both algorithm steps work for any adjective I can think
of.  If you look at the Old Loglan lujvo you can see the same processes at
work all over the place, just not codified by JCB.  Which do you prefer:
to have a zillion non-creative words like "easierness" entered into the
dictionary by your tired fingers, or to have an algorithm?  Which would
the student prefer to learn?  Can't Lojban be as easy to handle as
English in this regard?  Patterns exist, so use them!  

Now I'm not dumping on the dictionary per se (a change from a position
taken about 2 years ago).  Creative tanru and/or lujvo are possible and
should be disseminated.  One of mine is "tirxyta'a - tirxu tavla -
tiger talk - nag" from a Chinese idiom.  But wouldn't the dictionary be
much nicer if it were reserved for creative idioms like this, and if
the thousands and thousands of regular compound words (analogous to
"easiness") could be simply omitted as being obvious to anyone who had
finished lesson N?

I'd like to head off a nasty turn in this thread, namely subjective vs.
objective language.  Each solipsist learns his native language by
seeing matchups between words and events, and the events vary, so
certainly there is a substantial subjective component in each person's
notion of the meaning of each particular gismu.  But the magic of
language is that humans demand and get universality of meaning so that
we say that the words have objective meanings independent of the
person.  People must work hard, talking back and forth and
straightening out their notions of gismu meanings.  

Now you can say that a lujvo is like a gismu with its independent
(subjective - objective) meaning.  This is how you interpret a creative
metaphor like tirxyta'a.  But if you recognize word creation patterns
in the language, the meaning of the regular compound is no more or less
subjective - objective - vague than its component gismu.  Thus the
issue of subjective meaning is irrelevant to whether lujvo should be
interpreted algorithmically.

		-- jimc