From opoudjis@optushome.com.au Thu Dec 05 05:48:22 2002 Return-Path: X-Sender: opoudjis@optushome.com.au X-Apparently-To: lojban@yahoogroups.com Received: (EGP: mail-8_2_3_0); 5 Dec 2002 13:48:22 -0000 Received: (qmail 84880 invoked from network); 5 Dec 2002 13:48:22 -0000 Received: from unknown (66.218.66.218) by m4.grp.scd.yahoo.com with QMQP; 5 Dec 2002 13:48:22 -0000 Received: from unknown (HELO mail023.syd.optusnet.com.au) (210.49.20.162) by mta3.grp.scd.yahoo.com with SMTP; 5 Dec 2002 13:48:22 -0000 Received: from optushome.com.au (c17180.brasd1.vic.optusnet.com.au [210.49.155.40]) by mail023.syd.optusnet.com.au (8.11.1/8.11.1) with ESMTP id gB5DmKi08782 for ; Fri, 6 Dec 2002 00:48:20 +1100 Date: Fri, 6 Dec 2002 00:48:20 +1100 Mime-Version: 1.0 (Apple Message framework v548) Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII; format=flowed Subject: Re: ka'enai (was: Re: A question on the new baseline policy) To: lojban@yahoogroups.com Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Message-Id: <36DCCBB8-0858-11D7-9FC7-003065D4EC72@optushome.com.au> X-Mailer: Apple Mail (2.548) From: Nick Nicholas X-Yahoo-Group-Post: member; u=90350612 X-Yahoo-Profile: opoudjis X-Yahoo-Message-Num: 17548 cu'u la xod. > On Mon, 2 Dec 2002, And Rosta wrote: > >> Anyway, if the conservatives won, I wonder how >> many "ka'enai" users would stop using it. Not many, I suspect. >> Maybe Nick, depending on his mood on a given day. So you're likely >> to end up with a baseline that is followed only in those aspects >> that command intrinsic respect. > A very interesting and worthy point. If the BF's decisions will be > ignored > by significant fractions of users, why should it bother making them? > This > is a case of the leaders seeing where the people are going, running > out in > front of them, and then claiming to lead them. Zinger upon zinger; in all seriousness, this community is privileged to have both of you in it. I think ka'enai will be a litmus for Lojban; as someone on the wiki said (was it Robin.CA?), ka'enai will be the Lojban "ain't". We have two clashing imperatives: analogy, which is how natural languages work, and unambiguity, which is how engelangs work. They conflict. Assuming that Jordan and John are right, and that ka'enai is hopelessly vague: I think the grammar needs to be swayed by fundamentalist and formalist criteria --- no change unless broken (where 'broken' does not just mean 'inconvenient', but 'contradictory' or 'ambiguous'). Real human beings don't talk like robots, you'll say, they'll want to make the analogy. Accepted. And real human beings will not abide by 100% of the current Lojban grammar, either. The grammar *was* designed for robots, and represents a standard which people will not necessarily speak rigorously. i frankly don't see the point in the machine grammar continuously morphing to keep track with the natural evolution of the language (to the extent it happens): an unambiguous syntax is a selling point in its own right, and spoken Lojban will always butt against it. So let's leave the grammar alone. The grammar is stupid in many, many ways, whether this is an instance or not; but I don't regard us as having a mandate to make it more convenient, learnable, or sensible --- just to prevent any ambiguity. I will rejoice if people 'subvert the baseline' on this one; but throwing this kind of thing open for prescription now is just too risky, and I don't see the point. Let Lojban have its "ain't": if you forestall one instance of people generalising away from the syntax, you won't be able to forestall them all. And is quite right to characterise me as a weathervane. Whether I'm developing a coherent ideology yet, I can't really tell. Maybe I just won't. The business of the leaders is to run in the same general direction as everyone else; the point being, I suppose, that the leaders diagnose what that direction is, because the population running often can't tell. That's why I preferred your formulation of 'Standard Lojban'. But there are a couple of other imperatives the BPFK needs to follow first --- fundamentalism and formalism-lite: a commitment to unambiguousness, at least, even if not outright formalisation. (The 'aims of the language' that the board statement speaks of.) Sometimes, people haven't been running in that direction at all. In this kind of situation, though, when the formalism-lite imperative is brought up, people usually accept it and change their usage (e.g. ce'u). I'm not saying naturalism-lite doesn't achieve this either (past usage all other things being equal --- e.g. vo'a). --- DR NICK NICHOLAS. nickn@unimelb.edu.au FRENCH & ITALIAN, UNIVERSITY OF MELBOURNE, AUSTRALIA. In Athens, news spreads fast: they know everything as soon as it happens, sometimes before it happens, and often without it happening at all. --- Jean Psichari, _My Voyage_. http://www.opoudjis.net