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Re: emotions

And of course, the obligatory flame:


Message: 18
   Date: Sat, 24 May 2003 00:32:13 -0400
   From: Robert LeChevalier <lojbab@lojban.org>
Subject: Re: emotions

At 03:28 PM 5/23/03 -0700, Robin Lee Powell wrote:

What's a dictionary for? :)

http://www.lojban.org/jbovlaste/dict/parji


Maybe he, like me, refuses to recognize words that are not Lojban.

BTW, the inclusion of such things in jvovlaste means that I for
one have no particular interest in using the thing.  It cannot be
a standard for the language until the byfy decides to weed out the
garbage.


You've just rejected something on the order of 80 man-hours on the
basis of a *single* *word*.
It did unfortunately happen to be the first word I've ever looked up. I can't help it that I feel extreme revulsion when it seems like my 15 years of fighting for a solid baseline, with clear delineation between valid and invalid usage according to the language prescription, is being undermined.
Your issue (on those particular words) is with Abbat, not with Kominek or Powell. Your solution is to propose a canonical word for parasite, not to vent revulsion. (And I remind you of our recent discussion on big and small tents.) 


Go stick your head in a pig.


As a dictionary it is useless to me until the non-standard words are
excluded.  That presumably will be done by the byfy.
Since it's the only dictionary we really have outside the disparate wordlists, and it is not yet standardised anyway, your rejection is premature. It's certainly more useful than the vapourware dictionary that LLG never produced. And any publication under bpfk auspices of a dictionary, generated by jbovlaste or not, will be reviewed by the bpfk. jbovlaste itself (which will continue to exist in the long term) has its own democratic process of review; this may or may not be a good or canonical thing, this may or may not fall under bpfk or LLG auspices, but I trust that the project administrators will issue all caveats and disclaimers necessary about non-canonical words (as long as the baseline holds, at least). Jay's involved in it, for heaven's sake. 


Because the policy of
its use allows standard and non-standard Lojban to be entered as if the two 
were equal in value, I strongly question that policy.


Exptals are clearly delimited.


It means that
someone looking up the word for keyword X may get an invalid answer, and non discriminating users (probably most people) will take that answer as 
gospel.
When jbovlaste is closer to being a standard (and of course, jbovlaste is very much evolving right now in its content), it will be trivial for the programmers to add a little flag next to any expt'al word that comes up on lookup. If you think it should right now as a matter of priority, log a feature request.
Of course, I believe that anyone non-discriminating (that isn't going to bother to look up the Lojban gloss that comes up, e.g. to check its place structure) has no business speaking the language. (This will be viewed as exclusionary, I'm sure.) 


I can't support a policy of "usage will decide" along with a
policy that promotes non-baseline solutions as being equal to
baseline-compliant solutions.
Well, you know what I think of your "usage will decide", and how it inherently undermines any baseline...
**** **** **** **** **** **** **** **** **** **** **** **** **** **** **** * Dr Nick Nicholas, French & Italian, University of Melbourne, Australia * 
         nickn@unimelb.edu.au          http://www.opoudjis.net
* "Eschewing obfuscatory verbosity of locutional rendering, the * 
  circumscriptional appelations are excised." --- W. Mann & S. Thompson,
* _Rhetorical Structure Theory: A Theory of Text Organisation_, 1987. * **** **** **** **** **** **** **** **** **** **** **** **** **** **** ****