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Re: [lojban] Re: {le} in xorlo

Lindar wrote:

4. Why can't we use a common-sense rule? I see things like plibu
(generic word for external genitalia) and vlagi (word for vulva
[female external genitalia])... so we have an obvious redundancy and
consistency flaw (being that we have a consistency set up from remna
to pinji to ganti regarding gender specification. Get rid of vlagi.
There was an explicit decision made NOT to eliminate redundancy in the gismu list. There were lots of reasons, including that such consistency wasn't a design consideration. anti-sexism got involved in this particular case; the opinions of the few women involved in the project got especial respect when it came to making sure we had the words needed to talk about such things. (Laaden had an influence on the language design at one point, and the UIs you dislike are another fallout of that influence.) 


It's -extremely- obvious stuff like that which we need to just remove.
No. It is stuff that you don't think you need, that you don't use. Removing things is not something we want to consider. 


Another, yet different, example is of "mabla" wherein nobody (of whom
I know) uses the standard definition (something like "x1 is a
derogative use of x2" or something stupid like that), and pretty much
everybody else uses it as a swear (x1 is stupid/bad/detestable/shitty/
etc.), so why don't we just skip formalities and change the
definition?


You are making an argument from usage %^)

That may happen some day.  Now is not the time.


I'm sorry that I don't have too much insight on the issue
of cmavo, but the one that apparently has held the byfy back several
years or whatever I fail to see as a problem. "Without intent" is my
strongly believed and fully uninformed definition of ".ai nai".
There can be an informed definition, but I think this one is arising from someone else who (like you with vlagi) sees an inconsistency and wants to fix it. It isn't necessary. 


Honestly, I mabla-ing hate most UI in the first place (mostly because
they're overused and made endlessly complex by newbies using
ru'ecaisaise'iwhatever so I know precisely how happy/annoyed you are
on a scale of one to a thousand including decimal places into the
millionths,
They are exploring an aspect of the language that fascinates them, and which is very different from most natlangs. It may not be something that interests you, but everyone has their own interests. 

> but I have no idea what they're actually trying to say

because they forgot to use a damn gadri and accidentally a whole
tanru),
Maybe they weren't trying to express a predicate relationship or identify a "thing", but merely to express their emotions in a way that they cannot in other languages.
One would think that someone like you who apparently want to see more art and music usage of Lojban would find the attitudinals important. Not only to they suit the emotive expressiveness of the arts, but their usages tends to be more malleable to fit into a rhythm or other poetic structure than the strictly-penultimate-stressed brivla. 

> They have absolutely no practical use other than being a stupid toy

ci'o do mabla leka kelci
Others don't consider art to have any "practical use", and would view your urge to have people participate in the art and music and video community, the way you view their choice to use UI 

> I'd work on simplifying some of the language for

stupid people like myself as I still have absolutely -no- idea what
"ce'u" does,  what "pseudo-quantifier binding a variable within an
abstraction that represents an open place." or 'lambda' is supposed to
mean,
I can't help you there. When I teach that stuff, I do it by example, not by trying to explain it. It isn't all that hard, if you don't try to understand the formalities.
In the case of ce'u, it is about filling in the places of words that have "leka" in their place structure, and sometimes other abstractors. The leka abstraction has at least one place therein which has the value of another sumti in the bridi relationship, and ce'u identifies which one. Defining it allows people to be precise, while speaking in a natural fashion (because in many cases you can leave the ce'u out).
The logicians who use the technical terminology are trying to decide the hard cases before someone asks about them, and there are some hard cases. In the case of ce'u there is an entire subbranch of math called lambda calculus that deals with such hard cases, and it shows up in programming language design as well. 

> and I'm scared to death of anything I haven't learned that is

apparently "non-veridical" because I read in the dictionary that it
means something like "a lie", which clearly means I have no
understanding of what the hell it means or how to use it (like "voi").
In real life language use, people use words to mean things other than their strict denotation. Lojban allows someone to make that distinction explicit
When "The White House announced yesterday that ...", it is not the case that any blabi zdani expressed anything. It was rather a person or bureaucracy issuing the announcement, and "The White House" is being used as a non-veridical descriptor of that announcement issuer.
If you look at usage in natlangs a lot, you'll find this sort of thing crops up all over the place. The classic Loglan/Lojban example might refer to a transvestite saying: 

le ninmu cu nanmu.
The transvestite isn't really a woman, but is being described as one. It isn't "lying", just "conveniently describing".
One cannot see a mathematical point or measure a 0-dimensional moment, so almost all English usages of "point" or "moment" are non-veridical. If you tell someone to wait a moment, the moment is up before they have processed the language. "mokca" will usually be used for a somewhat longer but relatively short period of time.
And how does one make "true" statements about unicorns, elves, fairies? One doesn't, but describes them as such and relies on the listener's cultural knowledge and imagination to make it clear. 

lojbab

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