From lojban+bncCN673cmqFBDqoYfeBBoEqVYwiA@googlegroups.com Sun Apr 11 06:39:13 2010 Received: from mail-gw0-f61.google.com ([74.125.83.61]) by chain.digitalkingdom.org with esmtp (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1O0xNU-0005nB-Qy; Sun, 11 Apr 2010 06:39:13 -0700 Received: by gwj21 with SMTP id 21sf2637500gwj.16 for ; Sun, 11 Apr 2010 06:39:02 -0700 (PDT) DKIM-Signature: v=1; a=rsa-sha256; c=relaxed/relaxed; d=googlegroups.com; s=beta; h=domainkey-signature:received:x-beenthere:received:received:received :received:received-spf:received:received:x-vr-score :x-authority-analysis:x-cm-score:message-id:date:from:user-agent :x-accept-language:mime-version:to:subject:references:in-reply-to :x-original-authentication-results:x-original-sender:reply-to :precedence:mailing-list:list-id:list-post:list-help:list-archive :x-thread-url:x-message-url:sender:list-subscribe:list-unsubscribe :content-type; bh=zJqWi9apraW0Z97rpBumbn8cBgCZrOi/sJiOIlWNRko=; b=aneGCPGW+zeSwZaNlJ8+mLcuIpcE0i4EVvOVH8KgMAtKUcX9sYOhNwMoDtU9XyLE+n Q067DLT6L9kTcBppyO83xVEBlIo+odJxbG6VQQ7yccpp2w65//OEuc3df99AsVlH+yLn m2oXUStK2vuZNYXnSIVlutfh5y+wA/4Lwekgs= DomainKey-Signature: a=rsa-sha1; c=nofws; d=googlegroups.com; s=beta; h=x-beenthere:received-spf:x-vr-score:x-authority-analysis:x-cm-score :message-id:date:from:user-agent:x-accept-language:mime-version:to :subject:references:in-reply-to:x-original-authentication-results :x-original-sender:reply-to:precedence:mailing-list:list-id :list-post:list-help:list-archive:x-thread-url:x-message-url:sender :list-subscribe:list-unsubscribe:content-type; b=CKEafi/EFPkgeoVW4vqZD90Sjs6ewcGY7D6+lh8UYzKGV1bsnw4wAJgE0bMultIMIP Qk80sEuVmhdsu1dfeN6QPZxcx2qfnrv1h4osf9NHKj8KlVFD6ONunzupu/utrdzjJgx9 tht2O3bigI+/4DXEtX/FDAkIwh8IR6xlBLBdo= Received: by 10.91.59.20 with SMTP id m20mr447670agk.40.1270993130756; Sun, 11 Apr 2010 06:38:50 -0700 (PDT) X-BeenThere: lojban@googlegroups.com Received: by 10.91.67.25 with SMTP id u25ls242604agk.7.p; Sun, 11 Apr 2010 06:38:49 -0700 (PDT) Received: by 10.91.58.18 with SMTP id l18mr2283217agk.1.1270993129185; Sun, 11 Apr 2010 06:38:49 -0700 (PDT) Received: by 10.91.58.18 with SMTP id l18mr2283215agk.1.1270993129120; Sun, 11 Apr 2010 06:38:49 -0700 (PDT) Received: from eastrmmtao103.cox.net (eastrmmtao103.cox.net [68.230.240.9]) by gmr-mx.google.com with ESMTP id 18si308369ywh.9.2010.04.11.06.38.48; Sun, 11 Apr 2010 06:38:49 -0700 (PDT) Received-SPF: neutral (google.com: 68.230.240.9 is neither permitted nor denied by best guess record for domain of lojbab@lojban.org) client-ip=68.230.240.9; Received: from eastrmimpo03.cox.net ([68.1.16.126]) by eastrmmtao103.cox.net (InterMail vM.8.00.01.00 201-2244-105-20090324) with ESMTP id <20100411133847.MHCS27114.eastrmmtao103.cox.net@eastrmimpo03.cox.net> for ; Sun, 11 Apr 2010 09:38:47 -0400 Received: from [192.168.0.100] ([70.187.225.124]) by eastrmimpo03.cox.net with bizsmtp id 4Den1e0032hfrC602Dengb; Sun, 11 Apr 2010 09:38:48 -0400 X-VR-Score: -100.00 X-Authority-Analysis: v=1.1 cv=garkv6WxUlWCZxlYffz6yNGlDVHTZyAXTUdcTJEJ4sc= c=1 sm=1 a=DIPdann0B3IA:10 a=8nJEP1OIZ-IA:10 a=lsg66w07okjF3vGJL2g+Jw==:17 a=8YJikuA2AAAA:8 a=iMNkEIyugE1yf8SfZMAA:9 a=DEj-ph-GpSXfSy7-iMUA:7 a=IXSQLEvaUc_W99_X-O2UrGxoNWcA:4 a=wPNLvfGTeEIA:10 a=dxBpO5_FDU0A:10 a=k6Z1aWdC7BPib6SL:21 a=4KKbA98mu4DlOOMM:21 a=lsg66w07okjF3vGJL2g+Jw==:117 X-CM-Score: 0.00 Message-ID: <4BC1D15A.5030409@lojban.org> Date: Sun, 11 Apr 2010 09:40:42 -0400 From: Robert LeChevalier User-Agent: Mozilla Thunderbird 1.0.7 (Windows/20050923) X-Accept-Language: en-us, en MIME-Version: 1.0 To: lojban@googlegroups.com Subject: Re: [lojban] Response to Robin's "Essay on the future of Lojban" References: <4BBE188B.8070807@lojban.org> <20100409014708.GB11541@digitalkingdom.org> <4BBF197D.6080601@lojban.org> <20100409222518.GN11541@digitalkingdom.org> <4BC02ABC.8000300@lojban.org> In-Reply-To: X-Original-Authentication-Results: gmr-mx.google.com; spf=neutral (google.com: 68.230.240.9 is neither permitted nor denied by best guess record for domain of lojbab@lojban.org) smtp.mail=lojbab@lojban.org X-Original-Sender: lojbab@lojban.org Reply-To: lojban@googlegroups.com Precedence: list Mailing-list: list lojban@googlegroups.com; contact lojban+owners@googlegroups.com List-ID: List-Post: , List-Help: , List-Archive: X-Thread-Url: http://groups.google.com/group/lojban/t/33d26e8385fed297 X-Message-Url: http://groups.google.com/group/lojban/msg/9fd0e409c1bbf762 Sender: lojban@googlegroups.com List-Subscribe: , List-Unsubscribe: , Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed Stela Selckiku wrote: > On Sat, Apr 10, 2010 at 3:37 AM, Bob LeChevalier wrote: >>On the other hand, Nora just said something that I think profoundly reflects >>my misgivings. She's tried (far more than I have) to understand xorlo, but >>she just can't get her mind around it. That makes her feel incompetent at >>the language, which is the strongest demotivater for actually using it, much >>less doing byfy work. > > I agree that this can only be a sign that you've thought about it too > hard. That tends to be what happens to people who work on language definition for years %^(, (and especially those who participate in discussions with xorxes on language definition - one HAS to think about it too much to keep up with him %^) > Under xorlo (which is the same as saying, with apologies to any > holdbacks, under modern Lojban) the meaning of the article "lo" (which > is the only one you need to learn to use) is simply "lo broda = zo'e > noi ke'a broda". In other words it's simply something that is an x1 > of broda. Nothing more is specified. Nora would have to speak for herself, but her misgivings extend to the old loi/lei pair (and I won't pretend to know any more, because I have no idea what xorlo did to them). One thing to remember is that Nora and I used pre-xorlo in Lojban for around 20 years, and Nora used the TLI Loglan articles for around a decade before that. Our usage was ingrained, habitual, fluent (at least with regard to choosing articles). Unlearning for us is non-trivial - I still on occasion use the gismu "gumri", even though it was eliminated more than 15 years ago. > A wiki page on each individual word! That. That is what I want. A > wiki is only one option, of course, but some sort of open forum > dedicated to each word. I would prefer to see it as a new, separate > project, clean, specific. (I suggest the name za'e "vlasnu".) I > could maybe be convinced that it could be hosted on the tiki or in > jbovlaste entry discussions, but so far it's seemed to me like the > organization and structure and vibe of those places isn't conducive to > the conversation I'd like to see. > > Most importantly I'd like to encourage questions from new students > about particular words to be asked and answered in that forum. We've > discussed most of the words in Lojban repeatedly, in depth, but we've > lost those conversations to a lack of organization. There was a concept proposed for preserving such conversations called "The Elephant", pre-byfy. I'm not sure what happened to it, but it never manifested. I personally would like to see something you describe as the way of addressing questions raised by newbies (or old-timers) post-baseline, rather than having an academy-like byfy making formal decisions, and possibly modifying the baseline. Regardless of the last paragraph, I am not sure how such a project would fit into the concepts in Robin's posting on documentation. Perhaps he or someone else could speak to that. > My perspective on it is: I'm glad to talk informally > in English about what I think the words mean, or attempt to specify > them carefully in Lojban, If someone were to try to add a careful Lojban definition of a word to a tiki webpage on the word, that would be a valuable long-term addition, Pragmatically, for the pages to be useful, we would probably want to keep English definitions and discussions separate from Lojban (though the two could perhaps cross-reference each other - I don't know the limits of hyperlinking in wikis). > but having to try to craft a brief yet On a wiki page, I don't think that they have to be brief. Obviously, there has to be an extract thereof which is of reasonable printable length for inclusion in a dictionary. > unambiguous English definition, There is no such thing, so trying to write one is of uncertain virtue. As I said in another post, the idea of byfy was to produce something "good enough" for the cmavo list, for a definition of "good enough" comparable to that implicit in the gismu list and CLL (leaning towards the latter, which was later). The gismu and cmavo lists were originally designed for use in the LogFlash flashcard program and were not intended to be baseline items, nor the primary source for the dictionary. For gismu and cmavo, the primary things were the lojban word and the English keyword, which had to be as short as possible because they were memorized and typed (without misspelling) multiple times by the learner, and the English keywords had to be uniquely deterministic of one Lojban word, rather than definitional. The full place structures were included as a third field because we did not want people to think that the keyword they were typing was a real definition, and we wanted people to be continually exposed to the idea that Lojban brivla are predicates linking multiple sumti. They were displayed in full as part of the English to Lojban (recall) prompt, and computer limitations led to fixed length fields of the current length. cmavo "descriptions" (they were never really considered "definitions") were given because the cmavo keywords rarely were enough by themselves to make the Lojban word clear, usually being chosen to be quickly typed, and thus somewhat more of a English-based "code" for the Lojban. The descriptions and keywords had the same length to keep the Logflash programming simple, and maintainable when we had versions for gismu, rafsi, and cmavo. The rafsi were included on the Lojban-to-English (recog) prompt to help them be learned, but also to enable the same file to be used for the rafsi/lujvo-making version of LogFlash. (All three LogFlash programs were produced, and still exist, but I think only Nora and I ever used the cmavo program to mastery, and only I used the rafsi/lujvo program, and not to the point of mastery.) It was only when I failed to produce a "real" dictionary within a year or two, while people were concerned about having an unchanging language to learn, that we basedlined the LogFlash lists as the definitive statements of gismu, cmavo, and rafsi, until a dictionary was produced. People were using the lists in lieu of a dictionary (and we were distributing them as being the best lists we had). But of course the cmavo were never defined. Trying to define them into dictionary form, Cowan and I started producing a "selma'o catalog" defining the selma'o in a standard way, which could be used in defining the cmavo in each selma'o without excessive redundancy and verbosity. The selma'o catalog eventually grew into CLL (with the catalog found in chapter 20). When CLL was done, neither Cowan nor I had the time or energy to define all the words (both of us had school-age kids, and I was bogged down in order fulfillment, trying to keep the mailing list uptodate and are businessy stuff, none of which I was good at) > well, that's just the sort of thing I > came to Lojban to avoid. :P Not that I don't think that's work worth > doing, but I'm not the person to do it, as I can't get my head around > it. If people can write non-brief definitions, I think it wouldn't be that hard for a dictionary editor to turn them into usable brief definitions. >> And the silent majority is still silent; many of them are like Nora, >>and unable to keep up with the traffic. > > Would you please ask Nora, and anyone else without the time to follow > our main forums, if they would please consider tuning into Lojbanistan > some other way? In Nora's case, especially trying to support me resuming the presidency, staying with the main show is the only feasible option. Gary Burgess, another co-founder, raising a young grandson and an older teen while working a lot of overtime, doesn't even have time for that. If he could consistently spend 15 minutes a week on Lojban, he would be lucky. Nothing in the community really supports the sort of people who have time for Lojban only a few times a month (or less). So he usually spends no time on it, except when I bring him up to date with a phonecon. (Doing such stuff as Lojban while at work is professionally verboten, even if they had the time). If we ever found a way to produce a good digest of the main list (which would require a heavy-handed but neutral editor), to reduce the reading load to a small fraction of the current effort, going elsewhere a little more often might be possible. But neither Nora nor I do well with web-based interfaces, coming from the unformatted, single-window, text-only DOS era (actually Nora can do it, but it is too much like what she does at work, programming in VB with heavy customer interaction). We've both tried IRC (not recently), but rarely had the fortune to find more than one other live reader (and rarely even that), and neither of us can work with an occasionally changing or interrupting page in the background (both of us are single-tasking fossils who don't work well in "interrupt mode" - cell phones and text messaging drives me to distraction even thinking about them), so if nothing is going on right that moment, we aren't sticking around. I dunno if it exists or even is possible, but a constantly available and updating IRC log, where one would log in and see the last couple of pages of discussion, regardless of how-long-ago it took place, would help, especially if it were possible to search back further if a topic of especial interest came up. (If volume were heavy, being able to quickly look at what was being talked about last, an hour ago, 2 hours ago, etc, would make it possible to keep up even if like Nora she can't read more than once a day for a few minutes.) Turning an IRC channel into a threaded newsgroup might work for me - you know I have occasionally read and responded to you on Usenet. We occasionally look at other Lojban sites, as well as the wiki, but there is no single place where we can, in a short time (and for Nora this means minutes per day on weekdays) keep the pulse of the language community. (At one point, Nora and I tried to follow the latest-updated and most-frequently-read links of the wiki, but I don't even know if they exist anymore.) lojbab -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "lojban" group. To post to this group, send email to lojban@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to lojban+unsubscribe@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/lojban?hl=en.