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Re: [lojban] Digest Number 1752

Eh, I either respond en masse or never:


Message: 1
   Date: Mon, 26 May 2003 12:48:27 +0100
   From: "And Rosta" <a.rosta@lycos.co.uk>
Subject: Re: emotions

Jordan:

 > cmavo is not a syntactic class, it is a morphological class
It is also a class of syntactic classes. 

It doesn't strike me as a natural class of syntactic classes, since
the only thing that those syntactic classes have in common is that
they all have the morphological property of being expressed by
cmavo.
... and that they are function words and not content words. Whose syntax may be disparate, sure, but has in common that it is not the syntax of predicates. 


Message: 2
   Date: Mon, 26 May 2003 12:48:50 +0100
   From: "And Rosta" <a.rosta@lycos.co.uk>
Subject: Re: emotions

Lojbab:

 At 03:32 AM 5/25/03 -0400, Rob Speer wrote:
 >On Sat, May 24, 2003 at 01:16:29PM -0400, Robert LeChevalier wrote:
 > > Why is it important that infrequently used jargon words have very short
 > > forms?
 >
 >(glances at lau, tei, and foi)

 Content words.  Obviously in Lojban, cmavo will be shorter than any content
 word,
Oh, I don't think that makes lau/tei/foi defensible, because Zipf's law applies to function words too. 


Not in principle. There are CVVVVVVVVVVVVVVV cmavo, in principle.
True, although until we see trisyllabic cmavo routinely (which we may well do), that's only theoretical. 


 > (I'm

 surprised that there has seldom been criticism of re'a, which I myself
 thought was a questionable addition, deferring to people with more
 mathematical orientations.)


It's disyllabic. There is no shortage of bisyllabic cmavo space.
Moreover, any objections (and there have been many) lambast the whole of MEX, and MEX cmavo have few defenders. Most prominently you, in fact; the only other I can think of who is on record as not minding them is Robin.CA. So re'a is a remarkably poor counterexample: deem all attacks on MEX to have included it by default. 


 > it is important that there be short ways to say acronyms even when they

 don't use Lojban-alphabet lerfu,


Not so important that the need has manifested itself in usage yet...
Huzzah. And is right: acronyms are being dealt with differently anyway. Moreover, how many acronyms use obscure letters anyway? If I ever felt the need to introduce Greek acronyms into Lojban, rest assured they would be (a) cmene, and (b) piggy back off Lojban lerfu. Greeks normally read acronyms as words anyway, a la RADAR. (Which is why the CIA ends up as "sia" --- in a thread somewhere else, I think Jorge mentioned the same of Spanish.) But if I wanted to talk about the governing party or the communist party, it wouldn't be ge'o py.abu.sy.obu.ky. or ge'o ky.ky.ebu (let alone kapas.bu kapas.bu .epsilon.bu); it would be pasok. and kyky.ebu. 

I really think this is trying to solve problems that don't exist.



Message: 6
   Date: Mon, 26 May 2003 14:13:14 -0000
   From: "jjllambias2000" <jjllambias2000@yahoo.com.ar>
Subject: Re: emotions


la lojbab cusku di'e


 >In any case, the best way to oppose these words is to provide
 >good canonical alternatives, as Nick said.

 Nora suggested that no noncanonical word should be allowed to be

added to

 the jbovlaste UNLESS a canonical (perhaps longer) alternative has

already

 been added.
This depends on whether jbovlaste is to produce a baseline dictionary or not. I still think the answer is "not", and that flagging experimentals is adequate. If exptal gismu are evil for ideological reasons, the lack of a canonical alternative makes them no less evil. 


That seems to put the onus on the wrong party. If I wanted
{parji} to be adopted then I'd be tempted to enter an unappealing
canonical alternative so that it won't really compete with my
proposal.
I would not expect the fundie form and the revisionist form to be posted by the same person; that's just schizo. I would expect the revisionist to exhaust baseline possibilities before suggesting a revisionist form, as a courtesy to the baseline; but that cannot be policed in practice. So fundies as a group have to be vigilant, rather than expect revisionists to do their work for them. 


Adding {brodr-} to a gismu form will always result in a valid
fu'ivla. So an automatic way of canonizing experimental gismu
would be to prefix them with brodr-, as in {brodrparji}.
This is true. The issue then boils down to which is the preferred fu'ivla; and you know I'd rather vote for danlrparasito than brodrparji. :-) 


Message: 7
   Date: Mon, 26 May 2003 10:30:36 -0400
   From: Robert LeChevalier <lojbab@lojban.org>
Subject: RE: Re: emotions

I first note in answer to Nick that the concept of "usage will decide" was
intended to apply to selection among multiple options built into the
language.  This concept has unfortunately been extended to inventing
non-baseline solutions and hoping that they catch on enough to force a
change in the baseline.
Bob, you can't control memes like that, and you look silly trying. If you couch "Usage Will Decide" in the language of anti-prescriptivism and natural evolution (which you have been doing), you should not be surprised if people take you at your word. And as I never tire of saying, "Natural Evolution" just doesn't work like that for conlangs; they are intrinsically too fragile and fissiparous.
There shall be a standard in the baseline, and the standard shall remain in place, as a standard --- howsoever it corresponds to what Lojbanists do in practice. What organicists do on their own dime is no different from what formalists do on their own time: if it's outside the standard, it's their responsibility, and they can do what they please and reap the consequences as they fall out. To bid them wait 10 years until they do what they please is silly, and I will not join in such futility. I advocate the standard as a standard, and I will discourage and combat movement outside it: just as they are free to be non-canonical, so too am I free to militate against them. But I will not do so by a bait and switch of "wait 10 years" or "wait till the language matures", but simply by advocating the virtues of a common standard that And has cogently presented. 


 >Furthermore, the value of a baseline (as opposed to

frozenness) is that it provides some sort of shared explicit
reference standard. If jbovlaste were used as such, then an
experimental gismu listed in jbovlaste would be more part of
the baseline than a lujvo that is not listed.


Indeed.  And it is obvious that jbovlaste will become such a reference
standard whether it is approved as a "baseline" or not.
So what would you have jbovlaste do? Ban all mention of exptal gismu? But they exist, and people have proposed them; are we to pretend that hasn't happened? No: what we are to do, if the BPFK reaffirms that they don't belong in the baselined language, is exclude them from the baseline dictionary. *Which is not jbovlaste*.
jbovlaste is not an out of control monster careening down a hillside. jbovlaste is a record of what people have proposed; as such, it is descriptive, and as source material, it is not beholden to any baseline. But it can be steered by the community. If fundamentalists don't like revisionist forms, let them put their money where their mouth is: let them vote, and let them counterpropose. But I'm not using my offices to stomp on jbovlaste: jbovlaste is flagging non-canonical stuff, so it's doing the right thing. My offices get used in a BPFK-produced dictionary, and that is a different animal from jbovlaste --- although obviously it will use jbovlaste as a base.
And that dictionary becomes in my book the reference standard, because that's what is expected of the baseline. That work, I will attempt to steer towards baseline compliance. jbovlaste, I'm keeping my hands off. 


Message: 9
   Date: Mon, 26 May 2003 10:46:12 -0400
   From: Robert LeChevalier <lojbab@lojban.org>
Subject: Re: emotions

At 12:48 PM 5/26/03 +0100, And Rosta wrote:

It's disyllabic. There is no shortage of bisyllabic cmavo space.


What is this big need for monosyllabic cmavo, except perhaps for the REALLY
frequent and fundamental words of the language like the logical connectives?
That we may unearth further fundamental words, and there are no free monosyllables to allocate if we do. Come, Bob, you've already conceded there's a case to be made for deallocating LAU, as long as it's done through the right channels; why are you protesting this? You have made and continue to make so much of Zipf; why are you surprised when people take you at your word, and think your decision to give monosyllables to lau/tei/foi wrong? 


Message: 11
   Date: Mon, 26 May 2003 17:06:47 +0200
   From: "Gregory Dyke" <lojban-out@lojban.org>
Subject: Re: Parasite

cu'u la bab


 >"parasite" is _gisaengcung_, "dependent-organic-worm". ({c} is
 >pronounced /ch/ as in church) Indispensable Unicode:
 >U+5BC4 U+751F U+87F2.



 >

 > >So, {tcuji'e} means "x1 is parasitic". For "parasitic worm",

 >use {tcuji'e curnu}.

 I love it!  Someone add it to jbovlaste, please!!  (And if there is a way
 to note the Korean connection in jbovlaste, it seems worth doing so).


I find your enthusiasm terrifying. Without any disrespect intended to
sanxiyn or to the korean who coined _gisaengcung_, this is a poor
representation of my idea of a parasite. Why limit this this to the organic
(let alone the living, as the lojban does)?. Also, based upon the underlying
tanru, I am a parasite, because {mi nitcu lemi rirni}
I find the enthusiasm ill-motivated myself (especially when someone else has to enter the word in :-) ), but literal parasitism is a property of organisms, and inorganic parasitism is merely dependance. Saying something is a dependent organism is an appropriate way of rendering "parasite" when used to refer to organisms.
In some senses, you are parasitic off your parents (the Greek literally means "feed next to" --- not even "feed off".) But we would understand the lujvo as referring to an organism that is innately parasitic, that cannot grow out of being parasitic. In the worse case, use TAhE. 


If you argue that the negative connotation (which is what I don't enjoy
about being called a parasite) shouldn't transfer over to Lojban, then we
are left with the fact that parasite = nitcu. And I'll not have malnitcu
defined as parasite + negative connotation, as it already means (to my mind)
"addicted"
malnitcu merely means derogatory need; let's not pass verdict on whether it means addiction or parasitism. The difference between addiction and parasitism is that the 'host' is a substance for addiction, but an organism for parasitism.
You're right, too: the negative connotation is the concern of the source languages, and is irrelevant to Lojban lujvo. 


I'd define parasitic as "uni-lateral dependancy", (by which I mean that the
parasitic organism doesn't give anything back to the host). Someone with
more motivation than me can work out the lujvo for that... (you can then
also add a zdani to that if you want symbiotic parasites)
The addict gives nothing back to the heroin, either. Your tanru is nalsimxu lacri, though I don't think it is specific enough. 

cidja fatri sarcu jmive
jmive jibni sarcu renvi jmive
jmive jibni lacri renvi jmive

Do I hear an advance?


I think the whole idea of finding out how other languages does stuff is
absolute bullshit. Experienced lojbanists know more about combining their
own concepts to say what they mean than any other language does about
combining their own words to creat new ones. Just imagine if we started
using some of the ridiculous computer terms that some natlangs have come up
with: "Browser", "butineur" for instance...


Greg, you are a superstar. Thank you.


Message: 12
   Date: Mon, 26 May 2003 11:08:36 -0400
   From: Robert LeChevalier <lojbab@lojban.org>
Subject: Re: RE: Re: emotions

 >And with all respect to jbovlaste, I don't see anyone expecting that

the entirety of its contents will ever constitute a baseline
(especially if it is to be issued in the next three years).


It is not that it will constitute a baseline, but rather that it will be
USED as the reference standard for the language "because it is there".  (As
you noted, the official dictionary is not there - even though it isn't
"vaporware", but merely draft - but then so is jbovlaste.)
The solution to the issue of needing a baseline dictionary available to be used is... to make a baseline dictionary. Which is one of the things the BPFK will do. And it will be based on jbovlaste, your draft, and whatever other materials are available. 


Thus I note that jbofi'e seems to have displaced the official parser, and
the E-BNF which was the unofficial  grammar standard displaced the YACC in
usage to the point that it was added to CLL and hence made part of the
baseline, and now people find "errors" in the language based on jbofi'e and
the E-BNF.
This is going to be an issue for the BPFK anyway, but the LLG wanted to advocate the supremacy of the YACC grammar, it should have gotten the parser out of DOS and onto online lookup. Or commissioned this. Curnow stepped into the breach; I will not condemn him for acting where the LLG did not.
(In my book, the sensible strategy is to switch to EBNF anyway, 'cause it's not like YACC is readable: even you had to resort to EBNF to explain the distribution of NAI to Craig on phpbb. But that too is a debate for another forum.) 


Because users can freely add to it WITHOUT any vetting on their additions,
people will add to jbovlaste.  And because it is readily available for word
lookup, those who live on the net will USE jbovlaste.  Thus it stands to
overwhelm any and all baseline standards by its mere existence, if it
permits non-baseline-standard entry/display on equal terms with
baseline-standard work.
But it muthaf-ing doesn't treat them as equals. It flags exptal words as such. And if it is so drastically urgent that exptals be flagged on lookup, then spend less time flaming it here, and more time logging feature requests.
What you're asking is that jbovlaste ban exptals from data entry; that is not being descriptive of the language, and is likely to backfire. 


(And I realize your criticism that I should be adding standard words to
compete with the nonstandard ones.
Bob, I've long ago given up expecting any language work of you. When I say "you", I am addressing fundamentalists in general. 


 >Gismu and

camvo are baselined. I really don't see the point in a large set of
lujvo or fu'ivla being in a baseline. In a reference dictionary, sure.


Which jbovlaste, unedited, will be.
Who on earth said there wouldn't be a baselined, edited version? Who said there wouldn't be votes on jbovlaste, that the entire community is free to take part in? 


 >(This counters Bob's vision of the dictionary.

Not sure what you think my vision is.  But your vision as presented is not
that unlike mine.  I just recognize what the user-community and the world
think about dictionaries supersedes what the linguists think about them.
Do we have a baseline or don't we? Are we allowed to tell users their usage is not baseline conformant or aren't we? Do we assume users can read enough to tell the difference between canon and experimental proposal or don't we?
I repeat: if users don't bother to read the fine print of the dictionary, let them wear the consequences in their Lojban-language interactions. LOJBAN IS NOT EASY. FFS. 


 >  But then, Bob has his vision, and I have mine. And I continue to think

 his vision naive.)


My argument on this issue is based on the fact that I KNOW my ideal for the
dictionary is naive when jbovlaste is a reality.  And I don't have time (or
web-programming knowhow) to come up with my own alternative, so I am stuck
with complaining, and hoping I can stimulate others into acting as needed.


"complaining, and hoping I can stimulate others".

*sigh* I'm dropping this, it's profitless. You sure ain't stimulating me.


Message: 16
   Date: Mon, 26 May 2003 07:57:52 -0700 (PDT)
   From: Jorge "Llambías" <jjllambias2000@yahoo.com.ar>
Subject: Re: emotions


la lojbab cusku di'e

 > > >In any case, the best way to oppose these words is to provide
 > > >good canonical alternatives, as Nick said.
 > >
 > > Nora suggested that no noncanonical word should be allowed to be
 >added to
 > > the jbovlaste UNLESS a canonical (perhaps longer) alternative has
 >already
 > > been added.
 >
 >That seems to put the onus on the wrong party. If I wanted
 >{parji} to be adopted then I'd be tempted to enter an unappealing
 >canonical alternative so that it won't really compete with my
 >proposal.

 One would hope that people would abide by the spirit of the rule, and not
 play such games.


Even if they disagree with the spirit of the rule? Why would
you expect people to act against their convictions?
I wouldn't. I would hope any experimental proposal loses, and I would work too keep it out of any baseline-defining document, but you have the liberty to propose whatever you want. And as I said, it would be silly to force anyone advocating a revisionist view to also propose a fundamentalist option. Fundamentalism is the fundamentalists' job.
But to subvert the fundament by proposing unappealing canonical alternatives is labouring in bad faith, and I don't see how it can be defensible. Ends do not justify all means. Moreover, what you would be doing would be fairly transparent, and would do your cause irreperable damage. 

This is a Gedanken exercise, to be sure, but let's not get carried away here.
Oh, and because I'll get time to respond to it elsewhere, I say unreservedly and for the record: even though I believe that Jorge's HumptyDumptyism causes Lojban damage in the Small Picture, in the Big Picture his pointing out of weaknesses and inconsistencies of the current baseline is indispensible to the language, and in the long run is crucial to the language realising its proclaimed goals. Jorge, we will continue to fight, but it is for the good; and thank you for holding your ground. (At least, until the BPFK has made its votes :-) 


Message: 17
   Date: Mon, 26 May 2003 12:59:05 -0400 (EDT)
   From: Invent Yourself <xod@thestonecutters.net>
Subject: Re: Parasite

 > I find your enthusiasm terrifying. Without any disrespect intended to

 sanxiyn or to the korean who coined _gisaengcung_, this is a poor
 representation of my idea of a parasite. Why limit this this to the organic
 (let alone the living, as the lojban does)?. Also, based upon the underlying

 > tanru, I am a parasite, because {mi nitcu lemi rirni}
What do you mean, "underlying tanru"? A lujvo picks only one of the tanru
meanings. Some other tanru meaning, under which you fear you fall, has no
bearing on a lujvo.
Eeyup. That said, the first instinct is indeed to read the lujvo broadly rather than narrowly. But it's not a compelling argument. 


 > If you argue that the negative connotation (which is what I don't enjoy

 about being called a parasite) shouldn't transfer over to Lojban, then we
 are left with the fact that parasite = nitcu. And I'll not have malnitcu
 defined as parasite + negative connotation, as it already means (to my mind)

 > "addicted"

I don't see it in Nora's lujvo list.
Yeah; sorry, but "to my mind" doesn't cut it. We need more explicit arguments than that. 


I don't know what a "butineur" is, but you're probably referring to
metaphors, which naturally, as a fine upstanding Lojbanist, you regard as
Satanic. Regardless, tcuji'e hardly falls into that picturesque category;
it is about as straightforward a rendering as can be imagined.
Gotta admit, I liked tcuji'e better than nalsimlacri. So though ideologically I agree with Greg, I'm with you on tcuji'e not being an instance of metaphoricism. 



Message: 22
   Date: Mon, 26 May 2003 17:57:57 -0400
   From: Robert LeChevalier <lojbab@lojban.org>
Subject: RE: Re: emotions

Nora adds several arguments against ad hoc expansion of the gismu list by
simple addition to jbovlaste, which I summarize.


I concur with these.


Message: 23
   Date: Mon, 26 May 2003 18:38:01 -0700 (PDT)
   From: Jorge "Llambías" <jjllambias2000@yahoo.com.ar>
Subject: Re: emotions


la lojbab cusku di'e


 1. every added gismu makes the goal of "learning the gismu list", a worthy
 goal for new Lojbanists, that much harder


One can always settle for "learning the official gismu list". I would
not recomend that as a goal, though. It is much easier, I think, to learn
them as needed through usage.
Many do do it. I wouldn't, and there are several gismu I wish I hadn't learned,when I was doing logflash. (Remember a certain colour word, Robin.CA? :-) But there is a constituency out there doing it. 


 > 2. every added gismu makes the goal of learning rafsi (or deducing their

 meaning) that much harder.  Assume that parji is added even with no rafsi
 assigned.  Because it is there, then when you see rafsi paj, par, pai, or
 pa'i, or even pra, then this is one more gismu that they MIGHT be, and

 > hence a little harder to learn.

This is probably true, if you use that method of learning rafsi, but you
are the only person I have heard saying they learn them that way. For me
rafsi are the hardest things to learn in the language. Except for the
few that are used very often, I have not learned very many yet, even after
several years of not insignificant usage. For most gismu, I can't tell
what their rafsi is, or even whether they have short rafsi.
But the two positions are not contradictory. If you refuse to memorise rafsi (I do too), then you have to guess them, and adding gismu makes it even harder to guess them. 


 > 3. all of the gismu added, whether people agree they should be or not, went

 through a certain amount of debate before we even made a gismu for
 them.  The sheer necessity of looking up a word in 6 languages means that
 we had to consider the meaning carefully, so we'd know what to look up, and
 there were at least three of us involved in looking up words, so we
 therefore always debated  (and Tommy and I had MANY long debates, since he
 was a gismu minimalist - as few as possible).


Well, it seems that lack of debate won't be a problem in this case.
True, true. :-) And you know, I'm not eager to embark on this, but new gismu can be brought to the BPFK for consideration, just as old place structures can (though not as a priority.) But the case for them needs to be pretty damn good. 


 > 4. Once we got past the basic start of analyzing, weeding, and redoing the

 TLI Loglan list words, words were added only with a careful consideration
 of a)semantic completeness (e.g. of sets of food-grains), b) usability in
 lujvo to cover semantic space.  New words should have to be justified in
 terms of necessity AS GISMU.


Even so, there were some gaps left. For example, one that came up
recently on the list:

tirna sance
viska jvinu
sumne panci
pencu tengu
????? vrusi


BPFK mantra: we are not here to optimise Lojban :-) . vrusyzga it remains...


As for usability in lujvo, one that I've often missed is something
correponding to Esperanto -inda, "deserving of".


mapti is kind of vague, but can be pressed into service, surely.


 > Whether

 people think there is a lot of meaning to the 6-language word-making, it
 offers a couple of things: an objective way to decide the "best form",
 dissociation of the word from the keyword in any single source language, so
 that it is less likely to be encoded English (or whatever language).


This goal was sort of defeated by the English keyword list. People
learn the keywords to the point that they sometimes use the wrong
place structure because of a misleading keyword.
Oh, missed the dissociation thing. Yeah, that is bulldust. The words are defined by the placestructure and definitions in the gismu list alone; the 6-language word thing might as well have produced random strings, and in no realistic sense has affected how we understand the words (expect as "false friends"). 


And that's about the whole list, isn't it? It seems like you are making
the issue seem far bigger than it really is. Even if all the experimental
gismu from the wiki were transferred to jbovlaste, I don't think they are
more than 50, and almost all of them are cultural words.


Cultural words being a distinct, and very messy issue.


A few words like
mango, pitsa or taksi have a special status in that they are international
_and_ are already gismu-form without any need of adaptation. It is hard
to resist those, since they don't even need a dictionary definition in order
to be understood. I'm sure those will end up as part of the language in
any case.


You underestimate the power of fundamentalism. :-)


 > 6. (hard to explain) the list of existing gismu slants the choice of how

 one makes and interprets lujvo.  The semantics of the language is based on
 what has gone before.  Adding a new gismu to the coverage of semantic space
 changes the semantic map, and thus could change the color of meaning of
 other words in unexpected ways.


Unexpected = bad ?


Yup. Language stability.


I agree. Not only for gismu, but also for lujvo and fu'ivla. They should
not be added willy-nilly and without due consideration. Especially so in
the case of gismu forms.


So, we're in agreement. Which I should have realised. :-)


 > 8. Finally, before there was a byfy, adding gismu to the original baseline

 list was consider fundamental enough that each one was put to a membership
 vote (at LogFest).  People were expected to make a case for their word and
 submit it for consideration by the members, and to abide by the
 result.  Hence I abided by the elimination of gumri.  The current method of
 putting words out there, and having them see usage without the debate,
 without the research, without the discussion, and without abiding by what
 was decided in the past, is disparaging of stability, tradition, and the
 opinions of members who put time and effort into the language in the past.


The members will have to realize at some point that the language will
belong more and more to the users than to the members.
Ah, I see you've been infected by the organicist meme too. ;-) While the LLG advocates a prescription for the language, that prescription is the business of the BPFK. When the prescription is lifted, we will go our separate ways; we're not there yet. But obviously even now you are right: the language belongs far more (as in, is influenced far more) to a user who happens not to be a member of the LLG than a member who doesn't use the languge. So an LLG membership vote on gismu is now silly, and that's why we have the BPFK. 

That's enough fire dousing for one day...
--
**** **** **** **** **** **** **** **** **** **** **** **** **** **** ****
* Dr Nick Nicholas,  French & Italian Studies       nickn@unimelb.edu.au *
  Rm 637 Arts Centre, Melbourne University, Australia    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.    *
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