call for volunteers?!

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

One of the more common complaints about Lojban materials is that there is
insufficient number of dialogs and readings for beginners.  This was reminded
to me by reading the ciomment to that effect on the new web page set up by
 hezekiah.

The problem has always been that the people most likely to write those
writings
have been too busy doing other things.  But the recent spate of people
able to correspond in Lojban, even to write poetry, suggests that we
may be able to at least make a dent in this problem using some of the
relatively new people.

The ckafybarja project was intended to build a set of related writings, but
I think the standard was set so high by the early writings that few beginners
were willing to try.  That project has in essence become one for "literary
Lojban", as opposed to beginners texts.  I think we need some new
ideas for writings, and over the weekend, I got some inspiration from my
Russian textbook.

First of all, what texts exist in the textbook fragment already written
center around a few characters that Nora created back when I wrote that
fragment.  Alice and Fred and company were long silent, until they made a
rerappearance in the Attitudinals chapter of the reference grammar, which
has a long dialogue among these characters.  We know little about these
characters, except that they seem to be twenty-somethings, attending school
in some form since they are taking a Lojban class together.  There is also a
love triangle of a sorts.  the style of the writings has generally been
light, indeed humorous when possible.

One possibility would be for people to add writings expanding upon these
 characters.  Perhaps some are vcollege students, who might be living in a
 dormitory
(a frequent topic in Russian textbooks are matters for the new foreign
student at Moscow State University of this sort).  The international flavor of
Lojban and its community would welcome some obviously non-English
 names/characters into this little situation.  Perhaps some of the characters
 are in the
working world.  Where might they work?  My idea qwould be to have at least
a couple who work for the United Nations (maybe in New York, though we could
also establish a field office in Lojbanistan that the characters could visit).
The UN is often thought of as bureaucratic, and there are openings for some
light office humor of the Dilbert sort centeringa round such a bureaucracy.
Anbd of course we can briong in non_Americans through such an international
workplace.

These are ideas to write about.  Keep things short - 1 or 2 paragrqaphs if
text, and dialogues up to 10 exchanges (you can copy the example of a dialog
from the reference grammar if you want it totally in Lojban, or just use
names followed by colons to make it like the textbook examples.  No idea which
form will be used in the final textbook.

If you need a lujvo that is not yet made, coin one (defining the place
structure if you think you know how the conventions work), or ask on the list
giving both an English equivalent word AND a context (since context might
determine a better lujvo).  People can post their writings, or send them to
me, where I will accumulate them for posting on our ftp site afetr they have
been checked, (possibly with glosses from Nora's program which is in testing).


I am NOT asking people to try to illustrate particular grammar points - tehse
writings will likely either need some adaptation when the textbook gets written,
or will serve as skill readings encompassing all grammar up to an appropriate
level.  Probably you want to keep sentence structure simple, and avoid
"elegant" features of the language, but if something fits right, use it.


Now if we have lots of volunteers and texts, then I will probably ask the more
productive and/or Lojbanically skilled paritcipants to atke over some or all
of the collection of these writings, and perhaps serve an editorial function
as well, but lets see what people do first.

A second idea, which can be used in conjunction with the first (if teh
characters fit what you want to do), is to come up with illustrations of the
emotions represented nby the attitudinals.  Try to focus on a single
emotion, such as fear (.ii), come up with a situation where one character
might express the fear attitudinal, and build a short dialog around this
expression, or even a story with conversation if it suits you. You are by
no means limited to only using the attitudinal in question - use as many as you
feel are appropriate to your dialog situation.  But focus on a situation
whjere
the key attitudinal is expressed appropriately at least once.  (You can
use
attitudinal modifiers and intensifiers if you want, but we have a need for
dialogs illustrating such as ".i'o" and "i'oro'u" may distract from the
focus on "i'o".  But then you can choose ".i'oro'u" as your attitudinal
focus if you want %^).

I will notethat creating just these kinds of dialogs is an exercise typical in
the Russian language textbooks that I have studied, so we will probably have
such exercises in the textbook as well, but we need some texts to start with.

If you are planning to do a particular writing, just go to it.  But if you also
speak up on the list that you are doing so, maybe others will be inspired
by your courage to do the same.  This won't really gekl unless we get several
people doing writings, and not really worrying about consistency of the
situations and chatracters - that can be resolved by an editor later if
needed.

Probbaly anyone who has written more than a couple of sentences of Lojban
text uis qualified to contribute.  We aren't looking for elegant writing,
and even perfection of wiriting can be achieved later using parser and
editor, so don't worry about mistakes too much just because this project is
loosely associated with the textbook effort.

Because the textbook effort is low priority right now, delegating writing
to volunteers can work because we don't need immediate results from any
one person, and we don't need someone dedicated as a coordinator unless
so many people are writing that keeping track of all the submissions is
a bigger job than merely collecting postingfs to the list (or to me).

(Hezekiah: feel free to add some appropriate summary fo this to your
volunteer page)

lojbab
----
lojbab                                                lojbab@access.digex.net
Bob LeChevalier, President, The Logical Language Group, Inc.
2904 Beau Lane, Fairfax VA 22031-1303 USA                        703-385-0273
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    or see Lojban WWW Server: href="http://xiron.pc.helsinki.fi/lojban/";
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