From LOJBAN@CUVMB.BITNET Sat Mar 6 22:45:57 2010 Reply-To: Logical Language Group Sender: Lojban list Date: Fri Dec 8 08:20:17 1995 From: Logical Language Group Subject: Re: TECH: new cmavo "ju'e" X-To: jorge@PHYAST.PITT.EDU X-cc: lojban@cuvmb.cc.columbia.edu To: John Cowan Status: OR X-From-Space-Date: Fri Dec 8 08:20:17 1995 X-From-Space-Address: LOJBAN%CUVMB.BITNET@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU Message-ID: Thanks for not taking my somewhat angry rejoinder personally. But I am going to have to invoke whatever authority I hold as "chief designer" on this matter. The less emotional basis that I SHOULD have made clear is: The LOjban grammar is baselined. AS such, we are required to resist unnecessary change, and as much as possible make whatever changes we are forced to make have a minimum effect on the language. The standard has generally been "if it ain't broke, don't fix it". The experimental part of the grammar design ended when we baselined, and we are NOT going to add new experiments just because someone thinks they would be useful. Broken generally means that there is a definite logical flaw, or we find that there is something from the natural language that one cannot say at all. Aesthetic flaws are not covered, because aesthetics "has a standards place" it is subjective to individuals. Cowan has a little more flexibility than the rest of us on proposing grammar changes since he is writing the reference grammar. "Hard to describe" is in my book "broken", because of the need for the reference grammar to be an ultimate standard for the language. I am also sensitive toproblems in teaching the language since I've been stuck with that job more than once %^). The limiting case at the moment on what constitutes an appropriate change is a proposal Veijo made last year to improve preposed relative cluases. The existing language design forces "center embedding" when these are nested, and that can be seen as "broken". I cannot easily evaluate the proposal, since I don't use presposed relatives - the importance of an issue like this is much different for a native speaker of a natlang with preposed relatives. But even this change is not a "sure thing". Cowan has not even turned it into a formal proposal yet. As to the stag-bo vs connective+stag-bo, minimal change requires us to use the latter form, as does consistency, because that form IS allowed. By recoignizing this, "ju'e" suddenly gets elevated to the next rank of importance "logical flaw", because we do NOT have a way of explicitly saying "connected- but the nature of the connection is not specified" except at the sentence level with ".i" My personal standard of using ".e/je/gi'e" is logically flawed in that some will take it to mean a logical conjunction, even though my practice had been to ignore the conncective when followed by a modal. Cowan has convinced me (and Nora) that one cannot always ignore the connective - there are times when it is important. So ju'e, which requires no grammar change is baseline-preserving minimal change. To the extent it solves other problems that have not been raised, all the better. Jorge's X1 and X2 are more difficult to evaluiate, since it is hard to say that there is something broken - we specifically did NOT try to make the language able to express all scopes in afterthought that could possibly e resolvable in forethought. So whether to change in order to allow these will come down largely to Cowan's worthy opinion for how easy/hard it makes it to explain the grammar with.without the changes. The fact that the changes are simple expansions of the langauge and cannot possibly eliminate any past usage is in their favor, Thge fact that Jorge solved the problems for GIhEks and not for GUhEks (jargon alert for Chris's FAQ - look also at other grammar non-terminals that get widely used in list discussions), makes the proposal seem incomplete. The change to JE grammar is trying to fix what isn;t broken, and in my opinion breaking something to boot. Likewise Jorge's new X5, which has the added burden of restricting a currently possible usage. But the bottom line is that I cannot see justification for fiddling with ANY of this part of the grammar due to baseline considerations. Faced further wityh deadline pressure to get books done, I am especially unwilling to bend right now - we have lost much of the last year because Cowan and I were uncertain whether the LO/LE/any discussion with all of its funky scope issues was going to blossom into a grammar change with lots of "broken" consequences. A loto of this is judgement calls, and I feel that I have the responsibility and the authority to make those judgement calls. That is my "Lojban Central" role - oitherwise my voice is no more than first among equals, and even there it is largely because on any significant issue, I have Nora here making my "pronouncements" on behalf of two instead of one. I apologize to Jorge because I think I was a little clumsier and less direct than I was in respondingf to Mark Vines' proposal. But I think also that I had presumed that Jorge understood that we are extremely resistant to all sorts of changes - he has been told "no" a lot more than "yes" to his ideas, not all of which would be bad if we were starting fresh (and No I am not going to say which, since I don't know). At least Mark needn't feel alone as a rejected proposer, and Jorge is anything but a newcomer. And Jorge is getting ONE change made tot eh language albeit a much more minor one of a new cmavo. Though Cowan still has yet to weigh in on X1 and X2. lojbab