From lojbab@access.digex.net  Sat Mar  6 22:45:12 2010
Date:  Mon, 29 May 1995 21:31:27 EDT
From: Bob LeChevalier <lojbab@access.digex.net>
Subject:      Re: Quantifiers (was Re: A modest proposal #2: verdicality)
To: ucleaar <ucleaar@ucl.ac.uk>
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X-From-Space-Address: lojbab@access.digex.net
Message-ID: <pdH3yjRljwF.A.b1E.4t0kLB@chain.digitalkingdom.org>

>> We're not at a stage where a rewrite is acceptable.  This is a stage
>> many new and enthusiastic learners go through.  First, however, it's
>> important to learn what has already been defined; it turns out to be
>> more subtle than you expect.  (I speak from experience.)
>
>But once one has learnt what has been defined one learns not that
>radical change would not lead to improvement but that achieving even the
>slightest change constitutes, however great the improvements they'd
>confer, a monumental triumph over the forces of conservatism.
>Advocating grammar change in Lojbania is like advocating gun control in
>the USA; sweet reason neither butters parsnips nor carries the day.  My
>ambition is to look back in my dotage and tell my grandchildren "See
>that cmavo?  It was me that got it into the language" (One giant leap
>for man, one small step for mankind), and they'll look on me not with
>pity but with great awe and reverence, thereafter boasting to their
>peers, to general gasps of iacuhi and ianai, mingled with uhe.io, "Ti le
>bahe mibrorpatfu oha oha cu cmavo se fuzme".

%^)

Come on, And!  Isn't this true for any natural language?  Advocating a
change in the grammar of the English language (or RP) is at least as
fruitless a task for an individual.  Proposing a new content word or
phrase for English has only slightly better odd of catching on.
Proposing a new structure word (a new cmavo!) or grammatical construct,
or to reinterpret an existing grammatical construct, is a pure waste of
time - yet you as a native speaking Professor of English, can almost
certainly claim greater authority and knowledge of the English language
than you can of Lojban.

IF the Lojban design is complete, THEN we should allow no grammatical
change except through natural linguistic evolutionary processes.  Thus,
every time we concede and make a change prescriptively, we tell people
that the design has remained flawed, and that it may yet be incomplete -
and some will thus refuse to learn the not- yet-stable/complete
language.

UNLIKE natural languages though, you CAN contribute lastingly to Lojban.
There are any number of concepts for which no lujvo yet exist - there is
little standard of 'great Lojban literature' so almost any new writing
ranks among the best.  Questions of usage and semantics that simply do
not arise in English as being too subtle to debate within the limits of
the language, or too obvious from long historical context, attract much
debate on this forum.

Chaucer and Shakespeare contributed and are remembered for their
contribution - not for the individual words they added to the language
(though scholars point to words that first appeared in their texts, we
only know that we presently have no OTHER text that used them earlier,
not that they "invented" the word), but for the soul they imparted to
the language.

lojbab, the spiritualist