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Re: [lojban] Response ro Robin's "Essay on the future of Lojban"
And Rosta wrote:
Bob LeChevalier, On 09/04/2010 19:49:
And Rosta wrote:
Pierre:
Can we have some Lojbanists accepting some, but not all, of the
rulings of the BPFK?
The usage of Lojbanists would and should be unregulated. The
declaration of Lojban would exist to be used freely however people
choose.
A bunch of rules that no one will ever use - sounds like a form of
mental masturbation (or since this is a group effort, an orgy
thereof). But then I've always tended to disparage conlang-making,
where the process of language-making is the point, and not the result.
Some people do want to work with Lojban as a mental toy, and we have
to allow for that. But more, I think, want to communicate with it,
which is what sets Lojban apart from most of the hundreds of conlangs
that are out there.
Need I spell out the contempt that your similes deserve?
No. I understand, and I apologize for any contempt that seemed implicit
in the simile. I got a little carried away and thought it was a
sufficiently funny mixed metaphor to override the potential
offensiveness. My humor has gotten more salty in recent years.
> Perhaps you would dismiss
I "dismiss" nothing at all.
I'm not particularly appreciative of art for its own sake. I know
others are, but I am me. People who invent conlangs that they do not
intend people to use, engaging in "the secret vice" - I recognize they
are doing something they love and they are often quite talented and
gifted people. But I feel none of that myself, and think that mindset
is poison to something like Lojban, where it is important, indeed vital,
to several goals, that it be used, skillfully, by people.
And unfortunately, in the first few years, I was dealing with lots of
such people, who didn't understand me and what we were trying to do any
more than I understood them.
And I was dealing with academic linguists who associated artificial
language solely with that sort of thing, or with Esperanto evangelism.
I fought hard, for several years, to neutralize that negativism, and I
think I succeeded - Lojban has managed a couple of academic citations,
and I started getting enough positives in correspondence and at
interactions at a couple of linguistic conferences I attended, that
people started thinking we were bona fide and serious about making
Lojban linguistically credible. (Getting called Dr LeChevalier was a
bit of egoboo, even if the title is unearned.)
My feelings aren't hostile or dismissive towards such things, *except*
in the context of Lojban. And especially when those things threaten to
be schismatic - you and I went round on that issue several years ago.
And anyway, you've missed the point in various ways. The fact that a
language is a set of rules (definitional rules, not rules regulating
behaviour) does not entail that nobody uses the rules or that nobody
wants to use them.
I disagree with the definition.
Merriam-Webster
1 a : the words, their pronunciation, and the methods of combining them
used and understood by a community
used, community
b (1) : audible, articulate, meaningful sound as produced by the action of the vocal organs
(2) : a systematic means of communicating ideas or feelings by the use of conventionalized signs, sounds, gestures, or marks having understood meanings
communication
(3) : the suggestion by objects, actions, or conditions of associated ideas or feelings <language in their very gesture — Shakespeare>
(4) : the means by which animals communicate
(5) : a formal system of signs and symbols (as FORTRAN or a calculus in logic) including rules for the formation and transformation of admissible expressions
only at definition 5 does your definition appear, and it is lower than
animal communications in list. And yet I've known lots of linguists who
don't consider computer languages to be language (nor animal
communications).
Indeed some don't consider pidgins to be "language", and artificial
languages are dismissed as are computer languages.
I also refer to Lojban "bangu" which also requires communicative usage.
bangu is not the tanru for "sign-system". If my use of English
"language" is malylojbo, it wouldn't be a first time.
> The Lojban language itself is a failure as a logical language,
Not as JCB defined the phrase. The trouble is, to the linguists I've
dealt with (excepting you, since you just self-identified as one in
another post), Lojban is not YET a success as a language period, and
won't be a language until it has a native speaker community.
I've been able to talk with some such people and bring them around to
ways that they might consider Lojban linguistically interesting without
being a proper "language". But it always requires demonstrable and
probably fluent usage for communication.
--
Bob LeChevalier lojbab@lojban.org www.lojban.org
President and Founder, The Logical Language Group, Inc.
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