Date: Mon, 3 Feb 92 08:36:04 -0500
From: cbmvax!uunet!grebyn.com!lojbab (Logical Language Group)
Message-Id: <9202031336.AA20389@daily.grebyn.com>
To: major@pta.pyramid.com.au
Subject: Re:  Mail order word lists
Cc: cowan@snark.thyrsus.com
Status: RO

The PLS lists are free and public - and you and anyone else are free to
copy and distribute them.

There is more than one book being talked about, and more than one generation
of the books being planned.

Generation 1
1st out will be a reference book, which might end up as two books.  it will
have
a) updated versions of all of the existing lists.  In the case of the gismu,
this will mean newer, more complete information woithin the place structure,
but not 'definitions' in the standard dictionary sense.  Indeed, it is not
entirely clear that a standard dictionary definition distinct from a place
structure is all that applicable to Lojban predicate words, since for any
such word you have to define the places that go into each word as well as the
relation between them - and the existing place structures, although abbreviated,
to just that.  What will be improved is the English look-up capability, so that
many more English words will point into the Lojban word lists, and presumably
to a limited extent, vice versa.  Not anywhere near what I intend the dictionary
to be in the long term, but I think much more useful than what we have now.
b) reference style description of the grammar.  Cowan has written papers on Mex
and tenses, and is working on logical connection.  We also have the old negation
paper that will be updated.
c) a good glossary of technical terms that we use.

2nd will be an update of the deraft textbook, but also including some other
teaching materials from JL, and the draft 1st lesson of the new textbook and t
the minilesson.

Generation 2
Cowan and I will eventually have papers on all facets of the grammar, about
a dozen in all, that will be assembled into a single book.

The new version of the textbook will be completed.

There will be a reader, with updated and corrected versions of a lot of the
Lojban text that has flown by, graded by difficulty.

An updated dictionary - more dictionary like this time, if only in having
more extensive coverage.  I'd like to have a few thousand lujvo in the
2nd generation book.


The generation 2 materials will serve as the 5-year baseline.

Comments welcome - does this plan sound like what YOU need to learn the 
language, or what you think others need?  What can we do better?

lojbab