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Proscriptivity (was Re: Lojban is *NOT* broken! Stop saying that! (was Re: [lojban] Re: Vote for the Future Global Language))

On Sun, Jan 09, 2011 at 06:39:57AM -0500, Bob LeChevalier, President and Founder - LLG wrote:
> [this response was largely overcome by the way the thread
> proceeded, And Rosta wrote:
> >Robin Lee Powell, On 05/01/2011 16:52:
> >>Lojban is *FAR* more fully defined than Esperanto.
> >
> >Natural languages are defined by what their speakers know (or
> >do). An invented language may be defined either (A) explicitly,
> >by means of formal grammars and suchlike, or (B), like a natural
> >language, by what their speakers know (or do). Esperanto is
> >defined only (B)-wise. There are some Lojbanists, such as Lojbab,
> >who would prefer a (B)-wise definition for Lojban too,
> 
> lojbab wants both.  A revised baseline to serve as (A), followed
> by "naturalization" a la (B).

Unfortunately (I guess), the community has pretty strongly stated
its preference for not-(B) (myself included).  I've gotten to the
point that I don't *ever* want a naturally evolving Lojban, because
it will almost immediately lose all the qualities that make me want
to speak it.  The response to the "you're doing it wrong" thread
makes it clear that the (vast?) majority of the current community
feels the same way.

As an amusing side note, several of us *did* notice a drift in usage
vs. the CLL that was decently widespread: we believed that UI ru'e <
UI < UI sai < UI cai, but in fact bare UI is (semantically! :)
ambiguous.  The relevant point is that everybody who was treating it
as fixed, when shown the CLL part in question, went "Oh, I was doing
it wrong; oops" and not "Well, I guess the book is wrong because
most of us were doing it the other way".

> >>I can say anything I need to say in Lojban, modulo my own
> >>vocabulary knowledge.
> >
> >It may well be that for any meaning you want to express, you have
> >a way of expressing it and find that others will understand you.
> 
> Which is ultimately what language is all about.

Are you saying I'm fat?

> In short, until someone actually DOES produce a demonstrably more
> excellent (A), claims that it would be "easy" to do so are indeed
> both hollow and insulting.

*Thank* you.  :)

-Robin

-- 
http://singinst.org/ :  Our last, best hope for a fantastic future.
Lojban (http://www.lojban.org/): The language in which "this parrot
is dead" is "ti poi spitaki cu morsi", but "this sentence is false"
is "na nei".   My personal page: http://www.digitalkingdom.org/rlp/

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