Re: [lojban] Re: [lojban-announcements] Essay on the future of Lojban, with a simple poll for the community.

[Sean Patrick Santos <quantheory@gmail.com>]

I know that I'm generally a rather inactive/quiet member of this community but I thought it might be appropriate to weigh in as a newbie with some background in language/grammar.

 

First, I disagree with your poll statement, because it's a gamble to put such a strong freeze on any large project, and anything as basic and socially oriented as a language must keep pace with its user base. People will get frustrated with aspects of the language that are needlessly unweildy or simply don't work, and they are always going to be able to find something lacking, especially as the vocabulary and the range of topics that people use lojban to address grow.

 

Second, if the language is no longer unambiguously parseable, it loses its main selling point. It will lose that feature if left to drift naturally without some body overseeing changes and prescribing new rules. So I agree with the main thrust of your essay.

 

Third, your goal number three seems to me to be badly phrased. I don't think it's a virtue for lojban to be unlike other languages. Actually, that's a bad thing because that makes it harder to use. What I think you meant is that lojban should not be too closely intertwined with any single language or language family, to the extent that it becomes more distant from other widely-spoken languages (or more succinctly, lojban should avoid a heavy cultural bias).

 

Fourthly, I think that we do have some problems already with words whose meaning is not 100% clear when they are specified in English. Even using multiple English verbs or nouns to describe a lojban word does not avoid issues regarding, say, prepositions. As an example, when using "mrilu", what are the appropriate uses of the x3 and x4 places? Can I put the address there, the person or organization, the point of entry/departure into/out of the mail system (like post office or mailbox)? Is one of these meanings favored or do all of them work? In English, after all, I send something to a mailbox, to an address, to a person, to a location... But in lojban, it's not clear that you would have to say all those things using the same word.

 

My point is not whether this particular word is ambiguous as to proper usage. My point is that if an issue like this comes up, it should have a standard place for the community to discuss it, and if an important clarification is needed, someone should be able to go around to all the official/unofficial dictionaries and other references to clarify the point there, so that the issue is settled and does not have to be re-raised by a random newbie 5 years later.

 

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Sean Patrick Santos

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