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Re: [lojban] le ga'ifanta

At 07:43 PM 05/21/2000 -0400, pycyn@aol.com wrote:

 .i ja'o do natfe le tu'a la bab>>
 Nope, just interpreting him in the light of events.


Correct.  I just wasn't up to saying it in Lojban yesterday %^).


  The freeze has been in
effect for some years now -- I even remember having a meeting or two to vote
necessary changes to save the grammar.  It will remain in effect until at
least five years after the books are published.
Yes, the baseline has already started, on all but the dictionary lexicon (and changes in the latter are severely constrained by baselines on the gismu and cmavo and rafsi). We of course welcome lexicon work. There are 10K words or so in the current file, and I'm sure many more have been used in the last 5 months. 


Remember that the purpose of
baselining and the freeze is to have a stable language we can learn and work
with before we start fiddling around, some that Institute Loglan has never
officially achieved (and often not in reality neither).  This means that when
the books are written they describe the language that we have learned and
that is still in use, not something that used to be or we hope to come
(various version of Loglan 1 did both of these).  It is hard to hit a mioving
target so the LLG target will stand still until it has been described and
lived with at least five years.  I can speak to the desirability of this --
or at least the disaster of not: I use "laldo," I have for forty years.  The
last time I had occasion to lojban "old," I remembered there had been a
revolution and looked up the new word.  Unfortunately, I forgot there had
been at least one more revolution, so that word also got "ki'a."  This sort
of thing can discourage a person from pursuing Lojban if it become a regular
feature of the learning experience.  So, the freeze is on and will stay on
for the foreseeable future.


Good summary.


Notice, however, that the fact that no changes may be proposed or considered
has not stopped anyone from discussing them, nor should it.  It just means
that no official notice is taken of the discussion, even if it reaches
gi-normo proportions -- short of showing that the grammar doesn't work.
I will add that we prefer that such discussions, if they must occur, be in Lojban. Again, we do not want the image of changes being contemplated by some Lojbanists (officially noted or otherwise) to discourage new Lojbanists from starting. And we do want any eventual changes if possible to take place by natural evolution; i.e. people just start using the new form rather than some committee decreeing it. There may have to be a transition step at the end of the baseline where some committee considers some issues and makes some decisions before people are comfortable with such free change, but I think it harmful to even think about that step right now, since it presumes that there is something broken that needs such deciding. I think we need lots more usage by lots more people to know if anything in the language design is flawed. 


So
far, such proportions have not happened with any discussed change -- due
partly to the list's natural perversity, partly to the good sense of the
original designers and the corresponding clunkiness of the discussed
modifications.  But even if the really good idea does come along, it will
just be filed away, to resurface at the designated time.
Or it will be used as an unsanctioned bit of "bad Lojban" until the baseline ends, at which point if it has caught on, it will suddenly cease to be "bad Lojban". In effect this what is happening with what some perceive as contradictions in the Book, but which I have called "vagueness". 

lojbab
----
lojbab                                             lojbab@lojban.org
Bob LeChevalier, President, The Logical Language Group, Inc.
2904 Beau Lane, Fairfax VA 22031-1303 USA                    703-385-0273
Artificial language Loglan/Lojban:                 http://www.lojban.org