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Re: [lojban] criteria for the dictionary
jongausib wrote:
If there's someday is going to be a complete, official lojban
dictionary,
Complete? Unlikely. There will likely eventually be an official
dictionary, with words selected by some criteria by whoever is editing
said dictionary (and the criteria necessarily will have to be left to
the editor, since s/he will be responsible for checking the entries and
formatting them (if such cannot be completely automated).
I think there's a need for some criteria for what jbovlaste
should contain and in which form.
I have no especial fondness for jbovlaste, since I do not use online
tools very well at all. But as it is the de facto place where word
proposals are placed, if there are restrictions, then words will not be
made. And that would be a VERY BAD thing at this point and for a long
time to come.
Right now the dictionary is rather finite, but with more contributors it
could expand to an extreme extent.
Good.
If and when it happens, then we could establish some criteria for
selecting a subset for those who want a somewhat weeded list. But that
subset should not be considered any more "official" than any other one.
Only byfy has the power at present to make something "official", they
would set the criteria. Right now, approving words are so far down the
priority list as to make the question irrelevant.
I think it's a good idea to discuss this issue now, so I don't
contribute with a lot of valsi now,
Please do so, especially if you are willing to come up with place
structures.
and then a few years later someone
delete a lot of my work, because they don't fit into some future
official template or list of criteria.
I doubt that such deletion would take place, though I don't run that
effort. More likely, if and when we get to a point where it is
necessary, words that are "rejected" would be left in the database, but
marked with whatever reason for exclusion. The only reason I see for
deleting an entry (and even then, I would prefer that it be kept, but
hidden from casual data base users) is if the same wordform has an
alternate definition which is preferred.
*Vocabulary*
1. Should we try to add lujvo for all places of each gismu as distinct
valsi, like {seldri}, {selbai}, {terni'i} etc?
That effort has already been done by Colin Fine and my wife several
years ago, though I am not sure that the data was added to jbovlaste. I
believe that the dictionary text file that I created years ago has them.
It is somewhere on the website.
2. What kind of cmene/cmevla should be added? (with no restriction this
set could be extremely large)
Let it be large. But it might be helpful if people Lojbanizing cmene
mark their entries as to the source language.
For example, we could add recommendation that you only should add cmene
that could be regarded as having a lexicographical value, like the most
common names of persons, companies, geographical entities etc. Not the
name of the street where you are living and shit like that.
The average person is not going to be a good judge of "lexicographical
value". Personal names are personal, though if there is agreement on
how to TYPICALLY Lojbanize common names, such an entry should be marked
as being the typical form.
A name belongs in a dictionary if it is likely to be used by people
other than the person who coined it AND if the referent of the name is
important enough to be understood. The referent of someone's street
name is generally irrelevant, unless it is being used as an address, in
which case it should be expressed in the language that one would find on
a street sign or a letter - which won't be Lojban until Lojbanistan
comes into existence.
3. What kind of fu'ivla should be added?
Type 3 only.
Type 4 fu'ivla are premature, and too few know how to properly make and
check them.
With ALL names of species and chemical substances and other large sets,
we are going to have a very huge dictionary.
Good.
I've been trying to translate some names of species into lujvo (the
solution I prefer), but the latin names are often not very descriptive
and/or logical, so I think one of the better solution (at least for
names of species etc, you use relative often) is to just lojbanize the
latin names into fu'ivla.
Pierre Abbat has done a lot of work on how to do this, though he
violates my dictum against Type 4 fu'ivla too often. But you can take
any of his Type 4s and add a prefix, in which case it is probably good.
You'll probably already discussed this a lot,
Not officially.
but it would be nice to have some guidelines documented somewhere about standards.
There are no official standards, and will be none for the forseeable future.
I believe
lojban standards about biology, chemistry, music theory and other
scientific disciplines, doesn't belong to the official grammar of lojban
(as little as Oxford style manual is normative for ALL kind of English
language), but still it would be nice to have such guidelines (on a
level below the official language).
IF they aren't official, they likely won't be noticed by people.
Especially jbovlaste need such
guidelines if we don't want to have an inconsistent dictionary with a
dukse of words in a possible future.
If it happens, then the problem will be dealt with at that time.
4. When is it ok to add a stage-4 fui'vla in the dictionary?
Not yet.
The only stage-4 fu'ivla I add are those which are very cultural
specific, not easily constructed as a lujvo and/or which doesn't easily
fit into some cathegory. Stage-4 fu'ivla should also be useful. CLL
says: "[stage-4] are used where a fu'ivla has become so common or so
important that it must be made as short as possible."
Yes, and there aren't nearly enough speakers to make "common" a
meaningful criterion.
Indeed, only a few *lujvo* are arguably "common", like "brivla" and
"fu'ivla"
But as long as you don't add stage-4 without cause (what's the cause of
making {konjaku} a stage-4 for example?
Someone who doesn't give a damn about the preferences of those who said
not to make such words, and someone who wants to NOT be understood,
especially by people like me who don't use jbovlaste and who therefore
will never have a clue what konjaku means.
*Form*
I think jbovlaste should have a consistent format before publishing a
printed version.
That will be up to the editor who is doing the publishing, and whatever
tools exist at the time for automating as much as possible. That cannot
be predicted at this point.
Some poor fellow would therefore have to read through
all jbovlaste and edit it into a consistent format just before printing.
But if we would have guidelines from now on already, and we all add
valsi in the same way, there are going to be less work for someone in
the future.
Not likely.
1. Form of definition
Which format do you think should be standard?
{nerkla}:
a. n_1 =k_1 enters n_2 =k_2 from origin k_3 via route k_4 using
means/vehicle k_5
b.x1=n_1 =k_1 enters x2=n_2 =k_2 from origin x3=k_3 via route x4=k_4
using means/vehicle x5=k_5
c. x1 enters x2 from origin x3 via route x4 using means/vehicle x5
Any of them are fine. The first two show how the place structure was
derived using jvojva, which can be useful for others to learn from. A
published dictionary would likely use c), with front-matter explaining
how place structures are created, with some examples. But I suspect
that particular bit of formatting is easily automated.
2. Etymology
I suggest that we don't add etymology info in the notes, but use the
"add etymology"-link in jbovlaste.
If a feature exists in jbovlaste, it is helpful to use it. But that
presumes people know that the feature exists and how to use it. Most
Lojbanists won't.
I think etymology should be mandatory for cmevla and fu'ivla, so you can
discuss which language to borrow from.
It is certainly useful. "Mandatory" implies that some authority has
mandated it, and there is no such authority.
4. Experimental gismu/cmavo
I think that's BPFK job to consider if these words ever are going to be
official. How does the procedure looks like for this?
In the far future.
No such procedures are likely to even be discussed until we get past the
stage where Robin has to be a dictator in order to make progress on the
top priority of finalizing the baseline language definition.
lojbab
--
Bob LeChevalier lojbab@lojban.org www.lojban.org
President and Founder, The Logical Language Group, Inc.
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