any issues

[Logical Language Group <lojbab@ACCESS.DIGEX.NET>]

>Drowning in Lojban mail today, I nonethelss swim to the surface to
>console Lojbab:
>> It doesn't take much level of change to cause complete paralysis.  For
>> example, the long-winded and as yet undeciced semantics discussions of
>> the last year on "any", and kau/lambda, have caused enormous problems.
>
>There isn't an ANY problem.  We can already say anything "any" can.
>Various cmavo have been proposed (e.g.  Jorge's one, Djer's one, neither
>of which I now remember properly, and pc's two, both of which I support
>[one meaning "jump to start of local prenex", and one meaning "quantify
>this outside the current duhu" - don't take that as gospel]).
>
>But all these are additions; they don't entail revisions.  So rest easy.

I consider the whole complex of issues regarding the meaning of
"masses", "lo'e" and default quantifiers on "lo" et.al. to be all one
single mess started around a year ago with the discussion of "any".  Out
of that discussion, no final decisions have yet been made, and I have
been unable to surface from the voluminous flow long enough to even be
sure I knwo what issues need deciding.  Nora tried to follow from
outside for a couple of months, but then gave up.

The bottom line is that, pending decisions, we don't seem to clearly
agree on what the bare gadri "lo", "loi", "lo", "lei", "lo'e" and "le'e"
all exactly mean.  And any time we try to discuss one of them, you and
Jorge collectively seem to add to the tangle by introduce a new set of
deriviative issues and questions, and we never get the old one decided.
And that tangled mess of issues, is what I have labelled the "any"
problem.

I don't even know what pc's proposals are any more, they never stayed in
my queue long enough for me to understand them in depth.  My review of
email remain stuck at last August, and catching up isn't even on the
priority list.  (One significant effect of this is that emailed orders
for Lojban materials dating all the way back to last August haven't even
been READ, much less filled.  Likewise new email registrations, address
changes etc.  I have no time to run the organization while trying to be
editor/publisher of JL, dictionary writer, and net Lojban guru.  Cowan
and Nick used to take a lot of the latter off my shoulders but not
lately.  Thank lai cevni for pc.

In the latter vein, Dylan added:
>I think we should all perhaps start thinking of the list more along the
>lines of a newsgroup:  not something we necessarily have to follow every
>thread in.  There are a lot of mailings, most of which take a good deal
>of thought, and it's just not reasonable for anyone (especially not
>lojbab) to follow all of them.  (Well, depending how much time; for
>instance, procrastinating studying for finals gave me an awful lot of
>spare time :-).

That is fine, if I know that someone is following any given issue enough
that a clear resolution will be achieved.  And if the discussion
involves a "proposal" for change, we need to eventually decide on the
adoption of the proposal as a group.  At which point, if I-and-others
HAVEN'T been following the discussion, we need to have the issue-monitor
prepared to write up the proposal as Cowan has in the past summarized
grammar-change proposals.  (Or maybe this needs to become standard
practive in all cases of proposals.)

lojbab