From @YaleVM.YCC.YALE.EDU:LOJBAN@CUVMB.BITNET Wed Aug 14 23:37:20 1993 Received: from ELI.CS.YALE.EDU by NEBULA.SYSTEMSZ.CS.YALE.EDU via SMTP; Sun, 15 Aug 1993 03:40:46 -0400 Received: from YALEVM.YCC.YALE.EDU by eli.CS.YALE.EDU via SMTP; Sun, 15 Aug 1993 03:39:29 -0400 Message-Id: <199308150739.AA11168@eli.CS.YALE.EDU> Received: from YALEVM.CIS.YALE.EDU by YaleVM.YCC.Yale.Edu (IBM VM SMTP V2R2) with BSMTP id 6143; Sun, 15 Aug 93 03:38:15 EDT Received: from YALEVM.CIS.YALE.EDU (NJE origin LISTSERV@YALEVM) by YALEVM.CIS.YALE.EDU (LMail V1.1d/1.7f) with BSMTP id 8998; Sun, 15 Aug 1993 03:38:14 -0400 Date: Sun, 15 Aug 1993 03:37:20 EDT Reply-To: Logical Language Group Sender: Lojban list From: Logical Language Group Subject: Re: The first 4 JLs (was Re: Cucaracha) X-To: lojban@cuvmb.cc.columbia.edu To: Erik Rauch Status: RO X-Status: All JLs are still available. I cannot say that I agree with Nick that the first 4 JLs are an interesting read. If you want to know how we got where we are, and my longwinded summary yestertday intrigued you rather than bored yoy , you might indeed be interested. But at that point, the writing was less informed of linguistics and more oriented towards developing enthusiam for the language and the project, and of course became ever more heavily affected by the politicization and then polarization of my relation with JCB and the Institute. There were no language design issues in those days since the assumption was still that JCB's language was 'done' and all we had to do was get the damned thing documented properly. It was only when we decided to recreatethe language with the basic assumption that the language was complete and that therefore not in need of change, that we came to realize that our assumption was false in terms of some specifics. The assumption is still that the status quo is by default 'good enough' and that 'thats the way JCB did it' is almost single-handedly a siffic ufficient arguyment for the ststus quo unless there is a countering argument that JCBs way defied common sense AND rational analysis (it is arguable that the entire language defies the former, but only by assuming the supremacy of the latter; likewise vice versa). (Note that a complete set of JLs isn't too cheap - thats 18 issues at an average in excess of 40 pages per issue - see you last order form for the exact page count, and 10c/page as the base price.) We may end up making back issues of JL available on the net, and indeed wanted t o at one point, but the PLS did not have enough space. The total is several MEG with formatting, and I have no idea how much with the formatting removed as it would have to be. lojbab