[lojban-beginners] Re: Up-to-date definition of Lojban

[Robin Lee Powell <rlpowell@digitalkingdom.org>]

On Sun, Nov 20, 2005 at 03:51:41PM -0300, Jorge Llamb?as wrote:
> Robin, I'd appreciate not being lightly accused of deception. I
> know you probably don't really mean it, I know you sometimes use
> much stronger words than what you mean, but still... 

All right; let's take that part private, I guess.

> Anyway, before we let this escalate any further, it might be
> useful to describe what brought up Yannis's question. It had
> nothing to do with xorlo. He proposed the following sentence:
> 
>   The rocket is flying upwards.
>    le jakne cu ga'u vofli
> 
> I commented: "Upwards" would be {ga'u mo'i}.

Agreed.

> (I now notice that I should have said {mo'i ga'u}, because {mo'i}
> modifies what follows rather than what preceeds).
> 
> I didn't check what was official or what wasn't when I made that
> comment, I just commented based on my working knowledge of the
> language. I even made a mistake in my correction!

*nod*

> He then challenged my comment (which is a very healthy thing to
> do, there is no reason to accept a correction just because somone
> who is more experienced with the language has made it) by citing
> the ma'oste:
> 
> ga'u      FAhA2    above
> location tense relation/direction; upwards/up from ...

"upwards" in English means two thing:

The rocket is flying upwards.

The bedroom is upwards of the living room.

Or so I thought; answers.com doesn't agree with me:
http://www.answers.com/upwards&r=67

> I didn't even remember this definition from the ma'oste, I just
> knew that {ga'u} is meant to be a location, not a direction. So I
> checked with CLL and confirmed that there the location and
> direction meanings are clearly separated. 

*nod*

> I told Yannis that the ma'oste is not always 100% reliable and
> pointed him to the corresponding chapter in CLL. I didn't say
> anything about officialness, because I don't really give as much
> value as others to what's official or what's not, 

*grin*

> but in this case it just happens that CLL is "more official" than
> the ma'oste.
> 
> Now, I aways try to be careful when commenting on someone else's
> use of the language to separate what is clearly and
> uncontroversially an error (a missing {cu}, an impermissible
> consonant cluster, etc) from what is my preferred usage. In the
> latter case, I normally say things like "that's not necessarily
> wrong, but I would prefer such and such", or "I would say it like
> this instead of like that", or "I prefer to use this word in this
> other way" etc. I never just say that something is wrong when I
> know there is a controversy.

Again, my memory on this point differs, but until and unless I can
find an example I withdraw my allegations.

> The BPFK stuff is not official yet, maybe some parts of it will
> never become official. But 95% of it agrees with the official
> definitions and is often more clear and better defined, so hiding
> it from "beginners" or making it seem as if it is something very
> suspect and that you shouldn't look at is not, in my opinion, a
> good policy. 

I'm not hiding anything; it's linked liberally around the main site.
I just don't think pointing out things that complicated is a good
pedagogical choice.  So, we agree to disagree.  No problem.

> All the definition pages have the heading "Proposed definition" so
> it is not as if anyone would be misled into thinking it is the
> last word on anything. 

You'd think that, but people seem to keep getting upset about how
the BPFK is going to ruin everything.  It gets grating after a
while.

> In fact we need more people to look at it and comment as much as
> possible, and we are all beginners in some sense, so being a
> beginner should not keep anyone interested from looking into it.

Fair point.

-Robin

-- 
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Reason #237 To Learn Lojban: "Homonyms: Their Grate!"
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