From @YaleVM.YCC.YALE.EDU:LOJBAN@CUVMB.BITNET Sat Feb 6 22:27:41 1993 Received: from YALEVM.YCC.YALE.EDU by MINERVA.CIS.YALE.EDU via SMTP; Sun, 7 Feb 1993 03:30:06 -0500 Received: from CUVMB.CC.COLUMBIA.EDU by YaleVM.YCC.Yale.Edu (IBM VM SMTP V2R2) with BSMTP id 6940; Sun, 07 Feb 93 03:29:07 EST Received: from CUVMB.BITNET by CUVMB.CC.COLUMBIA.EDU (Mailer R2.07) with BSMTP id 2709; Sun, 07 Feb 93 03:30:29 EST Date: Sun, 7 Feb 1993 03:27:41 -0500 Reply-To: Logical Language Group Sender: Lojban list From: Logical Language Group Subject: Nora's reaction to John's proposals X-To: lojban@cuvmb.cc.columbia.edu To: Erik Rauch Status: RO X-Status: Message-ID: I'll first note that I don't think this change is quite as major as Nick seems to think it is. It is not really a change in the established language, but 1) a recognition that somewhere along the line we eliminated a distinction that we once thought important, and deciding that in some instances it really IS important, and 2) providing for that distinction when it is wanted in such a way that the overall expressive power of the language is improved. Thus the change is essentially a (re)expansion of the language, and such have been easier to convice people of than 'real' changes. It cannot totally be argued that established usage has been changed, since the reason the problem was discovered is that our mainstay for teaching the language, the textbook, said that what we had was DISTINCT from a non-restrictive attachment. The people who are studying the language from the textbook (as opposed to the people who read and participate on Lojban List to learn the language) will not understand what has disappeared. Indeed, John, in conversing with me about this proposal (Lojbab, by the way; Nora later), mentioned that Nick was one persosn who asked about the "mo'u" loose end in the textbook, whereupon John sluffed off your question (as he recalled). Now, Higley also questioned the distinction, in the case of "mau", which is of course the example we can't solve properly with "ne" (which is why Nick that I think a need for examples of other usages from John is less important - there are a lot of things in the language fro which we don't have immediate usages for, but which are provided as expansions in parallel with a known usagge form). Higley is an example of someone learning the language solely from the textbook, with no net access, by the way. So at least 3 people have detected some kind of error/inconsistency is the status quo, which is two more than usual for a screwup before we decide that it is a problem. Dealing with Nick's broader comment: I don't see that we are putting the whole language back on the drawing board. Indeed, out of John and me have come only proposals that relate to things that appear in the specific document that we are working on at the moment. Most of these documents have already appeared in draft form, especially those likely to generate significant change in the language. Thus John made the statement quoted in JL17 that he thought that very few additional chnages would surface prior to the books being completed. (You will note thatthis example came out of Lesson >6< of the draft textbook, and that John has raised no issues from any of the draft textbook earlier than that lesson.) On the other hand, we have to firmly nail down cmavo meanings, since the cmavo list is to be baselined with the dictionary, and, to put it mildly, the definitions given in the LogFlash version, are often as clear as mud if you don't already know how the word is used. Now, Nora's reaction: she was entirely in favor of the change, except that she believes that a "zo'e" for utterances, which is how she sees "dai" is useful, and indeed one of the more useful of the "zo'e" set of anaphora. It may not warrant a monosyllable, and hence she (and Lojbab, incidentally) would accept diplacing it to "do'i" or even elsewhere if necessary in favor of a more frequent usage, which the empathy and *mo'u proposals both seem to be. Back to Lojbab: the argument for the monosyllable, by the way, is based on Zipf. The change since Lesson 6 was intended to give *mo'u and its then restrictive equivalent a monosyllable, "pe" and "ne" respectively. In this case we are similarly proposing a monsyllable. I do not favor the interpretation of the empathy attitudinal as similar to or warranting a word related to "do" (or "mi" for its counterpart) since I see most usages of the existing "seinai" on attitudinals that we are displacing as being attributiuons to a third party of attitude. This certainly is the case for expressions of attitude for a character in a story where the narrator is a defined role in the story, as in Ivan's translation of Tale of the Stairs included in JL17. (I should amend that "defined role" isn't athe right word; maybe "point of view obviously distinct from the major characters"). As for the other cmavo proposals that Nick referred to; I had no impression that they had gathered a consensus for change (and in particular I am reasonably sure that neither Cowan, Nora or I had been convinced of support enough to turn them into a formal proposal, much less that it was a good idea). Colin's proposal, as I recall it, to be properly implemented, requires one or more grammar changes - since you need to be able to attach an accuracy anywhere that there exists a quantifier, if accuracies are really needed. I also recall no actual usage in text (as opposed to examples) of an xVV based on the proposal, but could easily have missed same, since i tend to ignore most xVV words as uninterpretable when scanning text (the people who propose these tend to forget that they aren't in a cmavo dictionary, and thus, at least for now, should be defined by footnote or whatever whenever they appear in text so that we know which experiment is being experimented with, I find in particular that I cannot keep Nick's proposals straight, at least in part because I have never understood at least one of them in the first place). I know of none of the existing xVV words that has been proposed by one person and seen usage by another person, perhaps indicating that others see these proposals as tentatively as I do. I certainly have heard no indication of c enough consensus behind any of them to warrant assigning them a cmavo, and the fact that they are relegated to xVV space means that someone was unconvinced at the time they were proposed that they weren't so obviously a good idea that they warranted an immediate assignment of one of the existing cmavo. lojbab