From a.rosta@lycos.co.uk Tue May 27 16:56:54 2003 Return-Path: X-Sender: a.rosta@lycos.co.uk X-Apparently-To: lojban@yahoogroups.com Received: (qmail 97883 invoked from network); 27 May 2003 23:56:53 -0000 Received: from unknown (66.218.66.218) by m6.grp.scd.yahoo.com with QMQP; 27 May 2003 23:56:53 -0000 Received: from unknown (HELO lmsmtp04.st1.spray.net) (212.78.202.114) by mta3.grp.scd.yahoo.com with SMTP; 27 May 2003 23:56:53 -0000 Received: from oemcomputer (host81-7-56-112.surfport24.v21.co.uk [81.7.56.112]) by lmsmtp04.st1.spray.net (Postfix) with ESMTP id E7443489DD for ; Wed, 28 May 2003 01:56:50 +0200 (MEST) To: Subject: RE: [lojban] Re: emotions Date: Wed, 28 May 2003 00:56:49 +0100 Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Priority: 3 (Normal) X-MSMail-Priority: Normal X-Mailer: Microsoft Outlook IMO, Build 9.0.2416 (9.0.2910.0) X-MimeOLE: Produced By Microsoft MimeOLE V5.00.2615.200 Importance: Normal In-Reply-To: <5.2.0.9.0.20030526171929.033c5890@pop.east.cox.net> From: "And Rosta" X-Yahoo-Group-Post: member; u=122260811 X-Yahoo-Profile: andjamin X-Yahoo-Message-Num: 19949 Lojbab: > Nora adds several arguments against ad hoc expansion of the gismu list by > simple addition to jbovlaste, which I summarize I'll add some counterarguments, for the record. My own view is that experimental gismu are relatively trivial, with no strong arguments pro or con. It is striking that nobody has proposed any really basic experimental gismu (such as "deserve/worthy" (not "earn") or "intend"). All experimentals fall very much among the semantic marginalia. I suppose the reason for that is that they are less intrusive. > 1. every added gismu makes the goal of "learning the gismu list", a worthy > goal for new Lojbanists, that much harder Hard to see why it is such a worthy goal. Many gismu don't see usage, because the need for them so seldom arises. A learner is better off learning the most basic and frequent gismu, & then moving on to other things. Furthermore, I imagine that a learner is going to encounter gumri more often than stero. So the grounds for learning the latter before the former are decidedly ideological rather than utilitarian. > 2. every added gismu makes the goal of learning rafsi (or deducing their > meaning) that much harder. Assume that parji is added even with no rafsi > assigned. Because it is there, then when you see rafsi paj, par, pai, or > pa'i, or even pra, then this is one more gismu that they MIGHT be, and > hence a little harder to learn Maybe true. I have never exerted myself to learn rafsi other than useful CCVs, so I wouldn't know. > 3. all of the gismu added, whether people agree they should be or not, went > through a certain amount of debate before we even made a gismu for > them. The sheer necessity of looking up a word in 6 languages means that > we had to consider the meaning carefully, so we'd know what to look up, and > there were at least three of us involved in looking up words, so we > therefore always debated (and Tommy and I had MANY long debates, since he > was a gismu minimalist - as few as possible) But the debates are closed, and resulted in an inventory of gismu that many people find uncompelling in many respects. Hence those debates do not necessarily command much respect -- if they'd produced excellent results, or if they were ongoing, it would be a different story. > 4. Once we got past the basic start of analyzing, weeding, and redoing the > TLI Loglan list words, words were added only with a careful consideration > of a)semantic completeness (e.g. of sets of food-grains), b) usability in > lujvo to cover semantic space. New words should have to be justified in > terms of necessity AS GISMU 1. It is hard to believe that many gismu could not satisfactorily have been rendered by lujvo or fu'ivla. So the specialness of gismuhood is not apparent from inspection of the gimste. 2. For some people the biunique association between 5-letter words and a particular closed class of words is not especially compelling, & certainly not fundamental to the functioning of the language. > 7. Without disparaging the contributions of new people to the language, > there is a tendency of many new people to, early in their Lojbanic career, > say "it would have been better to do it 'this way'" without fully > understanding the reasons why it was done 'the other way', so they advocate > for change without learning the language as it is. Without baseline > controls, the momentum of LOTS of usage, and a dictionary with words of all > varieties so that people can find most of the words they want without > inventing them, coining new gismu for every concept they want to say, is > natural. I myself am guilty of this, with my favorite "pitsa", but I would > never argue for adding it to the gismu list because I know better (and I > don't really care to make more gismu for pepperoni, sausage, peppers, ham, > and pineapple %^) I agree that to achieve stability, Lojban has to take a very firm line against innovation, to avoid opening the floodgates, the slippery slope, etc. I also agree that the sooner Lojban moves from a design to an actively used medium of communication, the sooner newbies will stop saying "it would be better to do it this way". > If it is "easy" to add words without thinking about meanings, > place structures, people will do so. I contend that, for gismu, this is > NOT a good thing It's not a good thing for any brivla. > 8. Finally, before there was a byfy, adding gismu to the original baseline > list was consider fundamental enough that each one was put to a membership > vote (at LogFest). People were expected to make a case for their word and > submit it for consideration by the members, and to abide by the > result. Hence I abided by the elimination of gumri. The current method of > putting words out there, and having them see usage without the debate, > without the research, without the discussion, and without abiding by what > was decided in the past, is disparaging of stability, tradition, and the > opinions of members who put time and effort into the language in the past Quite possibly. But see response to (3).