From lojbab@lojban.org Sun Oct 22 05:33:32 2000 Return-Path: X-Sender: lojbab@lojban.org X-Apparently-To: lojban@egroups.com Received: (EGP: mail-6_1_0); 22 Oct 2000 12:33:32 -0000 Received: (qmail 2108 invoked from network); 22 Oct 2000 12:33:32 -0000 Received: from unknown (10.1.10.142) by m3.onelist.org with QMQP; 22 Oct 2000 12:33:32 -0000 Received: from unknown (HELO stmpy-5.cais.net) (205.252.14.75) by mta3 with SMTP; 22 Oct 2000 12:33:32 -0000 Received: from bob.lojban.org (dynamic109.cl7.cais.net [205.177.20.109]) by stmpy-5.cais.net (8.10.1/8.9.3) with ESMTP id e9MCjcp08228 for ; Sun, 22 Oct 2000 08:45:38 -0400 (EDT) (envelope-from lojbab@lojban.org) Message-Id: <4.3.2.7.2.20001022082954.00b75550@127.0.0.1> X-Sender: vir1036/pop.cais.com@127.0.0.1 X-Mailer: QUALCOMM Windows Eudora Version 4.3.2 Date: Sun, 22 Oct 2000 08:37:21 -0400 To: lojban@egroups.com Subject: Re: [lojban] RE:literalism In-Reply-To: <62.83ff879.27237f0a@aol.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"; format=flowed From: "Bob LeChevalier (lojbab)" X-Yahoo-Message-Num: 4652 At 07:21 PM 10/21/2000 -0400, pycyn@aol.com wrote: >Anyhow, general remark. Ultimately, if Lojban survives, literalism has to >lose. The >vocabulary of Lojban has to expand beyond the 6000 concepts or so that are >encoded in the gismu in their various places. And there are only three ways >to go: borrowing, creation, or metaphor (in the real -- not the JCB/Lo??an -- >way). Literalism can't add to the semantic field; at best it can reduce a >new concept to an old one, making it not new at all (that is what I meant by >saying that literal tanru and lujvo don't add to the language -- of course >they add words and text -- but not concepts, except as subsumed under >existing ones). But per my other reply to pycyn, we HAVE expanded beyond the 6000 gismu-encoded concepts. Indeed there are something close to 10000 lujvo out there in the file, and we've had another year of usage since I made that file up. The question is whether people coining new lujvo as they need them ever make up lujvo that are NOT analyzable by Nick's canonical rules is something that can be determined by actually doing the analysis. If Lojban can expand its vocabulary to cover all the concepts people feel they need in order to say what they want to say, using only the rules that have been made up, then those rules will stand as a complete set. If new lujvo are found in actual usage that don't fit the conventions, then either there will need to be new conventions, or we will agree that it is fine to have nonconventional words. I happen to share what I think is pc's sentiment that we should be able to have nonconventional lujvo, but the bottom line is that usage will prove the determining factor. "Let usage decide" has been our watchwords for such controversies before, and I think pc is the one who first said that. So pc, for your argument to not be moot, we need some Lojban usage from you which includes nonconventional lujvo %^) lojbab -- lojbab lojbab@lojban.org Bob LeChevalier, President, The Logical Language Group, Inc. 2904 Beau Lane, Fairfax VA 22031-1303 USA 703-385-0273 Artificial language Loglan/Lojban: http://www.lojban.org