From pycyn@aol.com Sun Jul 08 06:44:09 2001 Return-Path: X-Sender: Pycyn@aol.com X-Apparently-To: lojban@yahoogroups.com Received: (EGP: mail-7_2_0); 8 Jul 2001 13:44:09 -0000 Received: (qmail 10399 invoked from network); 8 Jul 2001 13:44:08 -0000 Received: from unknown (10.1.10.27) by l7.egroups.com with QMQP; 8 Jul 2001 13:44:08 -0000 Received: from unknown (HELO imo-r09.mx.aol.com) (152.163.225.105) by mta2 with SMTP; 8 Jul 2001 13:44:07 -0000 Received: from Pycyn@aol.com by imo-r09.mx.aol.com (mail_out_v30.22.) id r.86.c3cc1ce (26116) for ; Sun, 8 Jul 2001 09:43:59 -0400 (EDT) Message-ID: <86.c3cc1ce.2879bd9f@aol.com> Date: Sun, 8 Jul 2001 09:43:59 EDT Subject: Re: [lojban] optional punctuation To: lojban@yahoogroups.com MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/alternative; boundary="part1_86.c3cc1ce.2879bd9f_boundary" X-Mailer: AOL 6.0 for Windows US sub 10519 From: pycyn@aol.com X-Yahoo-Message-Num: 8466 --part1_86.c3cc1ce.2879bd9f_boundary Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit In a message dated 7/8/2001 4:32:56 AM Central Daylight Time, nicholas@uci.edu writes: > To me, the preface is not part of the paedagogy of the lessons; there's > usage in there, after all, that's not covered in the lessons. Nonetheless, > it has been pointed out to me that there is conflict between using optional > punctuation in the preface, and saying that punctuation is not necessary in > Lesson 1. I don't think there is such conflict ("not necessary" != > "banned", "thousand flowers bloom", yadda yadda); but what do you think? > Harmful eccentricity, or needless confusion? If there's enough consensus, > I'll kill them. (Kicking and screaming, admittedly.) > As the first bit of Lojban the student sees, it ought to be a pure specimen. A questionable premise, I suppose. If the students notice -- and they may not, they may well wonder what the critters are when they come to the section that assures them that they are not punctuation (yes, it only says punctuation is not needed, not that it is forbidden -- but it gives no hints about how it might be used, and, indeed, there aren't any general conventions). If they are linguistically more sophisticated, they may go off like pi,er into clicks and glottal stops (curiously not mentioned in the phonology). On the other hand, I share everyone so far's horror of endless unbroken lines of lower case text, broken only by an occasional period and a slather of apostrohes. And I am constantly getting bogged down in the involutions of some people's clausal structures, for which the odd comma (or superfluous {kei} even) would be an enormous help. The complaint about the intro was just that of presentation and conflict with what was about to be said, not with the notion of punctuation per se. Maybe, when all these clauses get introduced, a few words about the civility of writing and the use of punctuation to aid that could be made to legitimate the whole thing? --part1_86.c3cc1ce.2879bd9f_boundary Content-Type: text/html; charset="US-ASCII" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit In a message dated 7/8/2001 4:32:56 AM Central Daylight Time,
nicholas@uci.edu writes:


To me, the preface is not part of the paedagogy of the lessons; there's
usage in there, after all, that's not covered in the lessons. Nonetheless,
it has been pointed out to me that there is conflict between using optional
punctuation in the preface, and saying that punctuation is not necessary in
Lesson 1. I don't think there is such conflict ("not necessary" !=
"banned", "thousand flowers bloom", yadda yadda); but what do you think?
Harmful eccentricity, or needless confusion? If there's enough consensus,
I'll kill them. (Kicking and screaming, admittedly.)


As the first bit of Lojban the student sees, it ought to be a pure specimen.  
A questionable premise, I suppose.  If the students notice -- and they may
not, they may well wonder what the critters are when they come to the section
that assures them that they are not punctuation (yes, it only says
punctuation is not needed, not that it is forbidden -- but it gives no hints
about how it might be used, and, indeed, there aren't any general
conventions).  If they are linguistically more sophisticated, they may go off
like pi,er into clicks and glottal stops (curiously not mentioned in the
phonology).  
On the other hand, I share everyone so far's horror of endless unbroken lines
of lower case text, broken only by an occasional period and a slather of
apostrohes.  And I am constantly getting bogged down in the involutions of
some people's clausal structures, for which the odd comma (or superfluous
{kei} even) would be an enormous help.  The complaint about the intro was
just that of presentation and conflict with what was about to be said, not
with the notion of punctuation per se.  Maybe, when all these clauses get
introduced, a few words about the civility of writing and the use of
punctuation to aid that could be made to legitimate the whole thing? --part1_86.c3cc1ce.2879bd9f_boundary--