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Re: [lojban] CLL 1.1/ CLL 2.0. What is your opinion in the current situation?
la gleki wrote:
No one is stopping you from writing Lojban with all manner of
idiosyncratic experimental cmavo derived from all sorts of weird
sources. But I won't understand such Lojban, and I won't even try,
if I
am running into a lot of experimental stuff. Meanwhile, experimental
stuff is just that - experimental. It will not be included in the
formal documentation of the language, either 1.1 or 2.0, and probably
not in any teaching materials, either.
How can a language without defined system of subjunctives exists?
By existing. As most languages do.
There is no universal that I know of stating that languages must have
"defined systems of subjunctives".
Subjunctive is an important feature of Romance languages, and is found
in some other IE languages, but isn't common outside IE. The concept is
almost completely fossilized in English (so while there is such a
concept embedded in parts of the language, it isn't especially
productive and thus useful only in explaining these fossilized exceptions).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irrealis_mood
"Every language has a formula for the unreal."
That is the universal, and it doesn't require a "system".
We have da'i for an explicit irrealis marker. Others might be understood
as irrealis (.ianai) XOR and other logical constructs REQUIRE that some
of the clauses therein are false. There are other Lojban usages that
mimic some of the moods mentioned on that Wikipedia page that are
specific to other languages.
The entire novel "Alice in Wonderland" was translated into Lojban, and
it is about as "unreal" as can be. If a subjunctive was necessary for
such a translation (note that I did NOT use the subjunctive "were",
which is no longer necessary in English), we would have already had to
add it.
Subjunctives are absent in Lojban. It's not a change.
Of course it is. Adding to the language is a change. We've allowed for
ad-hoc creation of new lujvo and fu'ivla, and left space for
experimental cmavo, but there is no plan to formally adopt/approve any
of them in the near future. (brivla that see lots of actual usage will
of course eventually be added to dictionaries).
> Do you wish i presented a ma'oste with new definitions?
No.
> what would it change?
> everyone would ignore it.
I hope so.
I don't want any change to the cmavo list.
You told earlier in this thread that cmavo definitions were broken. Are
you denying it now?
No. I said that cmavo definitions did not exist. The cmavo list was
created primarily for use in the LogFlash flashcard program (as was the
gismu list). Lacking an actual dictionary for these words, when the
language was originally baselined, these lists became the effective
"definitions". But they were recognized to be completely inadequate.
I was for the longest time trying to write a dictionary, and couldn't
figure out how to significantly improve on the list. Cowan came up with
the concept of a selma'o catalog, which became CLL, as one step.
CLL was the attempt to provide the grammatical portion of the
definition, defining the selma'o. byfy was tasked with devising the
semantic definition of the cmavo, making reference to CLL as needed (and
byfy assumed the additional task of correcting CLL of its own volition).
It was NOT tasked with adding to or deleting from the cmavo list,
though likely some form of the byfy will eventually look at such
questions AFTER the existing baseline is done, and byfy has the
effective power to make changes if something in the language is so
broken that the definition process cannot be completed without a change
(this was the argument for xorlo).
It is the intent that such questions, when the come up, will be decided
through usage. So making proposals that are not reflective of actual
language usage is especially non-productive.
lojbab
--
Bob LeChevalier lojbab@lojban.org www.lojban.org
President and Founder, The Logical Language Group, Inc.
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