Message-Id: <199602012031.WAA04949@xiron.pc.helsinki.fi>
Date:         Thu, 1 Feb 1996 15:18:26 -0500
Reply-To: Logical Language Group <lojbab@ACCESS.DIGEX.NET>
Sender: Lojban list <LOJBAN@CUVMB.BITNET>
From: Logical Language Group <lojbab@ACCESS.DIGEX.NET>
Subject:      Re: CLD (was ro broda/ro lo broda)
To: Veijo Vilva <veion@XIRON.PC.HELSINKI.FI>
Content-Length: 27027
Lines: 530

>LLG has the power to create and maintain one well defined official
>version of lojban. Hopefully it will be the best one.


We HAVE created one.  If we "maintain" it other than to modify it to reflect
what has happened outside our control, then we are in turn exercising
control (assuming people pay attention ot it).

There has been a recent debate on the conlang group as to the extent to
which the Esperanto "Fundamento" is fixed and immutable and whether or not as
a result the language is evolving.  The opinions of several (but not all)
skilled Esperantists is that the Fundamento plays a role in evaluating
teaching materials, nd is an ideal some strive for, but that it is not borne
in mind during everyday Esperanto usage, and the everyday language thus is
fairly independent of the Fundamento.

The Lojban prescription is very much like the Fundamento - once it is done,
it is done.  Actual usagewill drift away from that Fundamento, but the
Fundamento does not get changed (apparently there is provision for
exactly one change to be made - at the time whne Esperanto gets some kind of
official adoption as a world language - but otherwise the Fundamento is
immutable.  This is by chance not unlike what we have for the Lojban prescrip-
tion - one scheduled reevaluation and possible chnage after 5 years and then
nothing is scheduled.

On the other hand the Fundamento, as with the machine grammar, is useful - it
may not be perfectly followed, but it keeps the language community together
and the language a singular form.

>Nonetheless, your argument as a whole is an argument for
>a design committe, rather than design heroes; if we are to get a
>language that has natural language features.

ESperanto has such a design committee - it is called the Academy.  Most of its
discussions are at the sub-Fundamento level, comaprable to the Lojban
dictionary, lujvo-making, approving "official" fu'ivla, semantics discussions,
place structures - the things not governed by the Fundamento.

>And of course the design
>committee has to be democraticly constituted

I am a confirmed small-d democrat politically, bu I am also aware that
democracy is a political process and not a scientific one.  There is no
particular reason to believe that a democratic body would make linguistic
valid, much less correct, decisions about Lojban, and considerable reason to
believe otherwise.

>The latest example of this is the new lujvo paper.  We are suddenly
>presented with a new lujvo paradigm to discuss.

It shouldn't be.  It was completely rewritten, but was rewritten from Nick's
 work.  Not having read it, I have no particular reason to believe that there
 are
any new paradigms reflected therin.

>There was no lujvo committee consisting of those
>who have special interest and expertise in this area.

I though you wanted democracy, and not meritocracy?

>Two that come to
>mind are Nick Nicholas and Jim Carter.

Carter argued the basic idea behind dikyjvo.  After much discussion and
his own analysis, Nick tackled to problem of attempting to write aguideline
to analyzing lujvo places according to the dikyjvo paragigm.  In doing so,
he also did place structure for 3000 plus lujvo according to his own rules.
In Decemeber, Nick submitted his "final" version of this paper for use in
the dictionary/refgrammar.  But it was heavily weighted down in logic and
Lojban terminology, and was stylistically unlike the rest of the refgrammar.
As a result, for the refgrammar, Cowan needed to rewrite the paper in his
own rather lighter style.

> Nick is off contributing to
>other languages,

Nick is stillaround, though temporarily incommunicado.  It is most unlikely that
 the refgrammar will go to press without his having further review of what
happened to his paper.  Carter also subscribes to Lojban List and has the
opportunity to contribute, though his ideas tend to face significantly less
respect.  Jorge is the other person who has reviewed the lujvo paper, and he
undoubtedly reviewing the current draft now, as he catches up from his month-
long net absence.

>Now after several flip-flops we hear that it is ok to discuss lujvo but
>not ok to discuss any other language issues.

Flip-flops?  Not hardly.  dikyjvo is not and will not be part of the language
baseline.  It is a proposal to DESCRIPTIVELY analyze what kind of thought
processes skilled Lojbanists go through in creating lujvo place structures.
Indeed it does not give any fixed rules that conclusively decide the place
structure of any lujvo, but rather summarizes conventions, and you have to
deciude which convention(s) if any apply to the concept/word-form you have
 chosen.

AFAIK, this has been a fixed and unchanging LLG policy from the time the
issue
was discussed.

There are many issues that are free to be discussed as well.  all of the
current things being discussed are perfectly discussable.  Indeed, my mindset
is that everything is free to be discussed.  But some things are not free
to be changed.

> I feel we are being
>treated like grad students whose professor wants to publish his
>student's ideas under his own name.

AFAIK, credit for ideas is being spread liberally, and authors of books are
considered authors of books and not researchers publishing work that is
"their own".

We also have no constraint against anyone publishing independently of LLG.

>Wasn't this the problem with JCB?

The problem with JCB's approach is that he did NOT condone any publishing
outside official TLI sanction, and considered that no one had th right to
do ANYTHING with the language,unless it had his approval.

>As a political structure we haven't advanced much.

I do not consider LLG to be a political structure.  But inasmuch as it is,
it is not unlike what JCB SAID he was setting up in his member organization
and then backed away from.  LLG has a membership, and that membership is not
determined by me, but by vote of the members (it thus is self-perpetuating).
So far as I know, no one has been turned away from voting membership, and the
only stated requirement is that you (convince the others that you) have a
commitment to fulfill the legal responsibilities of a voting member.

>It was possible then
>to split and write your own language if you didn't like the design
>decisions, we still have the same choice.

It is a fundamental principle of LLG that anyone does have the right to do
this.  The language, and the language design materials are irrevocably in the
public domain.  WE do not WANT to have the choice to take this back.

>I don't know what And will do, I hope he doesn't found another
>language. I am sorry I omitted his name from the list of those who
>should be a part of the formal design committe, a committee which could
>divide and conquer those countless issues. And I wish I knew the exact
>referent of that "we". I wouldn't have to use the word "cabal".


The referent of "We" in terms of LLG is so large that I could not enumerate
the exact members.  Different people have contributed to different things.
And a lot goes back to JCB as well.  Indeed some of JCB's people would count in
 our cabal, since I think it fairly safe to say that Randall Holmes
 argumentation
was significant to convincing Cowan to change his interpretation of "me" in
the refgrammar.  (THat we have no unison-thinking cabal is shown on this one
issue, since the change was made without my full agreement -there are some
things I don't know enough or consider important enough to fight about).

But the fact that we CANNOT enumerate the set of language designers does mean
that "cabal" is no more operative than "democracy".

>>>Witness the current struggle concerning ro, dapoi and existence.  There
>>>has been no opportunity to let genuine democratic process work inside a
>>>parlimentary structure before a forced decision must be made to publish
>>>the refgrammar on schedule. A consensus could be reached on this matter
>>>with time, leadership, and an academy.


Not necessarily.  And what would make a democratic process reach a "correct"
answer.

SEriously - if you want a treu democracy, then the language is frozen today,
and no changes need be discussed.  Because presented with th opportunity
to vote, MOST of the community would so vote rather than grant specific
people the right to argue to their hearts content about any issue before
deciding.  The votong membership has specifically taken away MY and COwan's
authorization to so-endlessly argue - we are charged with producing books,
and if necessary, compromising language quality to do so.  That IS the
result of democratic processes.  Furthermore, the LLG membership, if not
by formal vote, has made clear that it does NOT want to decide each design
issue democratically.  We already know how long the debate went on in
baselining the gismu list, and that with eveyone in a single room facing
each other, and under the inherent time pressure of bodily needs.  At that
time the membership was around a dozen - any well-represented committee
on major LOjban issues would now have at least 2 dozen people who are
knowledgeable enough that I would want to explicitly ask their opinions
(though by opening the process to the whole net, we are doing something
larger then his, as well as allowing people to self-select their issues.)

The forced decision to publish the books on schedule has been the major
subject of discussion at the last several LLG meetings.  There is absolutely
no doubt in my mind that the membership insofar ithat it represents the
community completely supports following a schedule, indeed rather more so than
has proven feasible given the authors' time limitations.

>djer:  We've tried the passage of time without democratic process, now
>it should be tried with democratic i.e. committee-of-experts process.

I consider "democratic" and "committee of experts" to be contradictory.
If you want a meritocracy, then please believe: that is what we have now -
decisions are made largely by a self-selected committee of experts in whatever
 the subject of debate is.  That is how Cowan and I have operated the last
several years, and indeed how Cowan got into his current role: by being on
every self-selected committee and taking a leadership role in most of them.
>It would be possible to declare assumptions explicitly with our grammar
>specification, and let the speaker choose.

I am not sure whether you are talking about the language her or about the
political process of deciding the language.  I think that it is reasonably
clear that all versions of assumptions that are made about the language
foundations are expressible in the language.  Thus, whether ro da implies
existence is NOT part of the language baseline.  That is a semantics issue,
and people can argue it to their heart's content.  But the reference grammar
will pronounce something on the matter and people can choose to follow it
or not as they wish.

>djer>>
>>>Let the refgrammar follow the
>>>community, not vice versa.

>Oops- I meant to say academy, or grammar committee here; not the
>community as a whole, but its representatives.


I'd like to say that we are doing so.  You seem to believe otherwise.  The
"representatives" are those who takepart in the discussion.  If anyone
reaches a conclusion, it will probably end up in the refgrammar.  But we
will not hold up the refgrammar for such debate to conclude.

The conclusions that are NOT automatically adopted are those which require a
change to already-baselined documents - especially the gismu list and
the machine grammar.  Those require approval by a second "committee" - which
is not so concerned with the specific issue, but with preserving the baseline.
And changes that pass that committee in turn are stillsubject to approval of
a new baseline when the refgrammar is completed (not that there is any
doubt of such apporval).  Declaring official baselines is still a formal
LLG function, though deciding what goes into the basekine technically is not.

>the point is that I am not in charge, nor is the
>>refgrammar.
>
>djer:
>You may not be in control, but you are in charge.  We expect the heads
>of state to try to make world peace, we do not imagine they can do it by
>executive decree.

I don't think anyone knows what kind of power I will have over the language in
the post-baseline period.  I hope it is minimal.  I really DO want to only be
first-among-equals.

Indeed, I think I may prefer to not be first, come to think of it %^)

>djer:
>In some sense the participants on the net are representive of
>the vast majority.  They are dealing with the problems of the language
>at an accelerated pace, they are the front runners for problems which
>will come up again and again as the community catches up, unless these
>problems are solved.

In which case I still don't know what you are asking for (unless you elucidate
further on - I haven't read the whole message yet but am responding as I go.
If I respond off line you won't hear from me for a month or more.)

If the participants in the net discussion are your "democratic" committee,
then why do you feel that you cannot participate in the debate?  If the
committee reaches a decision by consensus, unlikely as it seems to me now,
then I am pretty sure that the consensus will be in the refgrammar (though we
will not hold up the refgrammar for such agreement).  Only if a machine
grammar change is proposed is this process less certain, and I suspect
that in the case of the logical quiantifiers issue, IF such a consensus were
achieved, then that would probably justify one of the rare changes to the
machine grammar.

I am presuing here that the standard is consensus, and not democactic vote.
Because to have democratic vote, you have to restrict particpation in the
committee so you know who has a right to vote.  My standard for change is
consensus, which if not unanimity is  far more than a majority.  I su[psect
that what we have here is not unlike town-meeting democracy.  You participate
by neing present, you speak if you have a mind to, and in this case, you vote
by objeting or not objecting to the latest proposal.

>The democratic process I refer to has to
>do with the formulation of language versions promulgated by LLG.

That formulation is going on in these messages on this list.  Cowan and I
for example have very little side correspondence on technical issues, other
than to ensure that Nora and he and I agree that a consensus has been reached.
Since we are part of most every "committee"
we are part of determining any consensus of course, but so far as I know
there has been few decisions if any that have gone against "the will of the
majority".

>Now, if the Refgrammar is a private copywritten work , and owned and
>controlled in part by the investors you mention, and if its profits or
>losses go to them, that's ok with me too.

It hasn't been decided whether the refgrammar will be public domain or
copywritten.  The language design itself is public domain.  Profits if any
will go to LLG after payment of some royalty to Cowan, a royalty which will
be minimal.  As to the investors - we don;t know who they will be,  Possibly
it will be a simple bank loan, in which case LLG has to make sure we pay the
thing back.

>Quine, JCB, PC, lojbab, Cowan, and all the contributing members on the
>net gave something to this enterprise called lojban.  And they want to
>continue influencing the language.

Not sure about JCB, and Quine I think has expressly dropped out - he objected
to JCB citing his support  the last time around.

But how does this statement contradict reality.  The net community WILL
continue to influence the language heavily - BY USING IT.  Aftyer the baseline,
if you don;t use the language, you lose your "vote".

>So "what I am asking for" is very simple:  I want the design and
>destiny of lojban in the hands of the people who are true to its
>mission of being a logical language.

I am not sure that the language community considers that to be Lojban's
primary mission, at least insofar as you seem to understand it.

>I want one machine parsable
>language that is growing and changing with the advances in logic and
>language studies.

And I want a machine parsable language that grows and changes with the usages
of the community.

> I want those who love it, understand it, and use it
>to have a part in its official form and destiny.

Which is what I just said.  Logica and language studies are done by people
who as a group don't give a damn about Lojban, and those people have a
"vote" only insofar as they are in the latter group of those who love,
understand, and use it.

>All these things require that there be an elected academy or peer group
>which is representative of the users that will make real decisions and
>have real power concerning the language design.

Not necesaarily.  And impracticably, because we have no way of qualifying
who is entitled to elect such an academy at this point.  If there comes
to be such an academy, it will not be before net debate gets so unwieldy
that such an academy must cease to be an academy of the whole - i.e.
Lojban List.

> That is something that
>_is_ in your control, or at least in the control of the LLG board.

Membership actually.  And I am sure they will discuss it when the time comes
that it becaomes relevant.

>"What I'm asking for" is some action on your part to establish a
>Committee for Language Design, or CLD. Just as stiv.n did before me.

I will not do that unless directed by the membership (and will do that if
directed by the membership %^).  And I doubt that it will be an agenda item
before the baseline is solidly in place.  I further doubt that the membership
any time soon will be of a mind to appoint a committee that will adopt changes
 to the language before the 5 year period.   And therefore probably will table
any such discussion until the 5 year period is over or at least nearing its
end.

If a committee is meeting officially and debating changes to the langauge before
 the baseline period ends, then there is no baseline, because people will
follow the committee rather than the baseline.

>djer:  Jorge certainly made it his business to explore every nook and
>cranny of the refgrammar, yet he was constantly complaining about
>getting second class citizen treatment on design decisions. And is
>another who meets your criterion.  Aside from an occasional hard won
>concession, they were not full fledged partners in any decisions.


Jorge is a voting member of LLG, and I think you misunderstand his status
and treatment.  ONLY in decisions that require a machine grammar change is
there constraint on anyone participating (although, in the final analysis,
it is between Cowan and the publisher of the refgrammar what the final words
that see print are going to be, and that is still another "committee".

And has so far as I know made it a point to consider himself an outsider
looking in.  But he is also a full participant in discussions.  You just
seem to be missing out on how much sentiment there is agfainst change.

For any random proposal nowadays, it is safe to say that i consider the
following people to have a vote:  Cowan, pc, myself, Nora, Nick, Jorge.
In addition, other people have a vote if they express an opinion, and on
various issues, I seek opinions explciitly from among some or all of the
following: Colin Fine, Veijo, Ivan Derzhanski, Mark Shoulson,Tommy Whitlock,
Iain Alexander, Sylvia Rutiser.

And, Jim Carter, and a few other people speak up insofar as they wish to do so,
and their opinions count if they indicate that they care that much.  I
pay less heed to And and Carter, Cowan pays rather more.  You and Steven are
certainly in this group, who have used the language to some limited extent.
There are also a number of new Lojbanists like Mark Vines, who have written
in the language to some considerable extent, but whose skill I am not
certain of because I'm not reading theri stuff.  Goran Topic is preeminent
among this group - he would be a more direct member of discussion if he
wanted it, by virtue of sheer volume of Lojban use his vote is taken very
seriously when he rarely expresses an opinion.

Still, I have to admit that atthis stage, seniority in the effort counts for
a lot in my estimation.  The old-timers know the perils of uncontrolled
change, and most have grappled with it directly.  On any matter that seems to
suggest uncontrolled change might result, I bounce back to the voting members,
which include another half dozne people I didn't name above, who mostly will
voite for the status quo.

Now, given the above list, I think that there is no issue on which so many as
4 people have agreed on fully in net discussions, which has not held sway.

>djer:  Patterns and conventions must be parsable, and that takes
>decisions by language designers, whoever they are. They are the final
>authority in any offical version. There are no meaningful changes
>without backup by the official YACC program, regardless of what Goran
>and Xorxes agree to.

I don;t think that the issues being debated have much to do with the
machine grammar.  Patterns and conventions are largely about usage, not
about formal grammar.

>
>I can't picture anyone but PC  as chairman of a Committee for Language
>Design.


You'd better get HIM to agree to that - he already has done his time on the
TLI Academy. %^)

Seriously, I doubt that anyone who you would consider qualified for such a
position WANTS such a position.

>djer:  I'm still mystified as to what a formal proposal is, and whether
>it need be in YACC form.

If it requires a change to the machine grammar, then yes, it has to
include a YACC formulation, and preferably to have been test-YACCed.  It
also should have a writeup comparable to that Cowan has exemplified many
times over the years, and which is clear enough that Jorge had no trouble
matching it for his 6 proposals.

For changes to the cmavo or gismu list, the minimum requirement is a
line for insertion in the list.
For a change, you would need to present a pretty solid rationale, but there
have been few such changes proposed, so there is no standard format.
I consider minor matters of clarification wording to be in my jurisdiction
as dictionary editor, but I presume we are talking about substantive
chages.

Among other changes, the primary record is the refgrammar, and you propose
a change by sending to Cowan or posting a comment on the paper, indicating
the version number of the document you are reviewing.  Cowan is pretty good
about giving you a point by point response.  I think that any issues that
Cowan does not agree to generally turn into list discussions.  So far as
I know, Cowan has always abided by consensus in a list discussion.

None of these procedures in formalized, and we are too small and unstructured
to formalize them at this point.  People have to trust Cowan and me to be fair
and to respect people's opinions, but then even with a formal group and
procedures that would be necessary.  We are not unchecked in authority - but
come up for election each year at the annual meeting of LLG.
>>In the absence of formal proposals, the bottom limne is that the person writi
>> the book makes the final decision.  Of course it can then be said that the
>>publisher of the book has final veto power, but reasonably spoken, the
>>language is being designed by those willing to write the books.
>
>That's the problem.  I don't want to start learning lambda calculus,
>for instance, if the book writer decides he wants it.

That is what happens no matter what the formal procedures are.  The most formal
procedures won;t stop a renegade book-writer.

But we DON'T have a renegade book writer, and Cowan has not added lambda
calculus merely at his own whim.  The lambda interpretation that it gets
most mention in has been under net disucssion for over 3 years, an dhas also had
informal discussion at Logfest for  at least the last 2 meetings.  What is
in the refgrammar has been reviewed by several people per the above list, and
untold others, since anyone can review it.  I think that only Jorge and
And have spoken against what Cowan wrote, and I think maybe someone gave
them very lukewarm support (Chris Bogart?)  That is FAR from a consensus to
change, and specifically does NOT include pc, whose opinion would
affect mine and Nora's significantly.  (I am referring in this to the "ke'a"
debate, which as far as I know is the primary issue that there was no
agreement on.  There were some side things that were needed in order to allow
 ke'a to serve double duty, but they are moot without ke'a).

> I would vote for him as next president of LLG

Again, you presume anyone wants this bloody job %^)

> the idea
>that the structure of the official version of the language is under one
>man rule is passe

Indeed.  But no one thinks otherwise.  The "structure" of the official language,
which is the machine grammar, is right now almost independent of any one man's
rule.  Again Cowan could slip something inthere, since he is the Implementor
of machine grammars.  But if he misimplemented, I am sure that everyone on the
list will hear of it.  Likewise, anything I do (when I rarely get the chance
to do something) gets reviewed by Cowan specifically, Nora specifically,
and the net community in general.  And unlike JCB we ARE responsive to
comments from the community.  You get a yes or no answer, and we update the
documents, and put them out for everyone to see.  JCB was not accountable
EXCEPT whne he put a book out, and not even then because he felt no obligation
to acknowledge much less implement any comment he objected to.  His academy
is selected provately by him, and any member of the Aacdemy can veto any
change, thus giving him absolute veto on any language change.  And since
he can boot people off the Academy, no one will oppose him on anything he is
strongly in favor of.  How is our system isn ANY way like that?

>A democracy works by majority rule and consent of the governed.  It is a
>viable political life form, not about to fall apart from internal
>contradictions. And it is enforceable inside the LLG, which is all I am
>talking about.

So far the inside-LLG democrcay seems to be working quite well.  Chris
Bogart may be able to comment as first-time participant at the last LogFest.
But LLG is NOT Lojban List.

>djer:  Well, swordplay did not cease when we got the ten commandments
>down from the mount, and they were published in stone. The problem was,
>you see, that they weren't arrived at by a gender balanced Committee
>for Language Design.  (CLD) :).

If you throw in gender-balance, then the CLD will not be democratic.  Much
as I would like otherwise, LLG by all standards of membership is
90% or more male.  As for whether people will support, much less pay for
the refgrammar - we'll have to see when it comes out.  The ultimate
democracy is when people vote with their feet and their checkbooks (and
in Lojban, with their tongues).

lojbab