Re: [lojban] Balningau: The Great Update

Neither. Easiest is a gismu that you use, and you tend to memorize only the places that you actually use and that you hear others use. 25 years now, and I never made any effort to learn place structures systematically.

This is a thoughtless retort. The suggestion that there is truly no objective sense of efficiency, rhyme or reason to a place structure is unmoving. The idea that an efficient place structure has anything to do with memorizing gismu systematically doesn't follow.

For a language user, rather than a designer, why would you choose to memorize a gismu (place structure) that follows a common pattern but which never actually comes up in your conversation, over a useful brivla where the place structure matters?

Another retort that doesn't connect with the original statement. In fact this retort makes zero sense whatsoever. Why would anyone pick a gismu that follows a common pattern but never comes up in your conversation? What kind of question is this? I mean you're right, no one *would* pick a gismu for their speech that doesn't actually require that gismu. This is just not a thought-out reply. What does it have to do with the content of the original message?

When there is a semantic group of, say, 20 gismu

what makes them a semantic group? Such considerations were meaningful when we were trying to initially figure out place structures, But now, with the language complete, I would try to avoid grouping words semantically (as I said before, usually such "grouping" is really on the x1 of the gismu and not on the gismu itself - otherwise all words with "under conditions" places are equally a "semantic group" as all words with a type of animal in x1. But who would try to memorize all gismu with an "under condition" place?

Sometimes a semantic association might make memorizing a gismu or its place structure a little easier, but which such associations are important is purely individual.

You're not even trying. To suggest that there is no meaningful way to semantically categorize the gismu for the utility of helping us partition the work, one has to wonder what your actual intention in this reply is. Furthermore, the process is democratic and so those associations are completely open to discussion. Of course the lexicon could be organized in to many many different semantic groupings based on the weather, or what mood any such person is in. That isn't the point. We simply require a useful ordering to the work. Your reply misses the point entirely.

Meanwhile, the very first change you make to the existing gismu list, no
matter how regularizing it may seem inherently makes the language HARDER
to learn because you have potentially invalidated all prior use of that
gismu both as an individual words and as a component in a lujvo.

No.

First of all, lujvo don't change, since they mean what are defined to mean.

Who decides what they are defined to mean? Most lujvo are invented and used ad hoc with no one bothering to define them or their place structures. When their place structures are defined, as likely as not it will be by someone who did not coin the word, and perhaps someone who does not know how it has been used. This has been especially true since a distinction was realized between making place structures according to some system/rules vs more ad hoc methods (which might include basing them on arbitrary semantic groupings as you wish to do for gismu).

In reality, the meaning of lujvo is not and cannot be prescribed.

In reality. Sure, if you say so. Except that we have a dictionary where explicit lujvo place structures are created mindfully and voted on democratically. How the lujvo are formed is completely irrelevant to this conversation. Why you are incorporating the semantic categorization that we intend to use to partition the work into this retort, is any one's guess.

Secondly, when a speaker always has to skip around a place (e.g. {broda
fi ko'a} for skipping x2) because they never need that place, then that
is an annoyance.

Tough. Be annoyed.

No.

Or perhaps start using the place you've been skipping - you know: allowing the language to structure the way you think about things. The language was after all originally designed to test the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis.

This actually made me chuckle out loud. You're not even trying to create strong replies that aim at the content to which you are replying. Use places that are not relevant to the speech, just because they come earlier in the place structure? What are you even *talking about* Bob?

Which incidentally brings up another matter. To some extent, the place structures were NOT intended to reflect to most useful form for use as a bare gismu, but rather, we were trying to think about how words would be used in combination, and especially in lujvo. And we were also trying to use the place structures as a defining tool. Most people won't use "under conditions" places or "by standards" places in most of their usage. But it is useful to embed in a predicate word referring to a liquid, that the conditions determine whether it will in fact act as a liquid. And whether something is "good" or not depends on the standard (morality? or perhaps benefit), and possibly the person doing the evaluation because goodness itself is subjective. One could claim these places aren't needed because in natlangs, they seldom are mentioned. But Lojban is NOT a natural language, and we don't rely on natural language conventions if possible.

Your "semantic groupings" sound very much like your personal natural language conventions. I rather suspect that a native speaker of a language quite unlike yours would consider different "semantic groupings" more important than yours, and perhaps will find places useful that you prefer to skip, because in their native language, different assumptions about the world have shaped the meaning of words.

Bob, we're not making natlang arguments. You don't know us at all, as you have demonstrated. We speak the language every day. We talk about the language every day. We are not simply saying "Oh look at these weird places in these gismu, our poor English mind just can't wrap around their utility". Please. I invite you to search through the corpus.

You

have made someone who knew that gismu less knowledgeable (and whether
you have experienced it or not, the relearning of language changes is
among the more difficult parts of learning a new language.

They need to relearn the gismu, yes,

Why should they? And in particular, what gives a newbie like you the right to tell them that they should?

This remark doesn't deserve a respectful reply so I will simply acknowledge it being uttered.

but it will be a simpler definition.

Only according to your specific, natural-language-biased assumptions.

No Bob. No matter how much it would be comfortable for you to minimize our community and our contributions for everyone else in this thread, that is going to prove to be a very hard thing to do because you're talking about actual jbopre who are actually recognized for their regular work with the language. Only you could reply to selpa`i with accusations of natural-lagnauge biases. Really.

We've had the debate before, countless times, over place structure minimalization, maximalization, strongly regularized, etc. in cluding several times before the gismu list was baselined. Different speakers were involved, and results were, umm, inconsistent, as you can see by the fact that you find the current set inconsistent.

It is pure hubris on your part to think that you, and your group of fellow travellers are more insightful than the people who came before you.

Hubris on our part is one way to look at it. I'll say that hearing this critique from someone who has throughout this entire dialog minimized and insulted something he cannot even really perceive, being so far removed from the life of the daily lojbanist and who cannot even speak a dialect of lojban understandable by anyone having learned the language in the last 5 years is certainly not going to evoke the any feeling of legitimate and genuine criticism in us.

What an interesting demonstration is all that one can really think, as we know who we are, and we know who supports us, and it is really clear that you're speaking to the audience trying to paint us as completely out of our element. To see you attempt this coloring while all the while knowing that the very audience you speak to is mostly supportive I'll say its also a very uncomfortable demonstration - but not for us.

Also, if we also take future Lojban speakers into account,
it's more desirable (in my opinion) to hand them a consistent and
easy-to-learn gimste,

in *your* opinion consistent, and in *your* opinion easy to learn. Of course you have no actual basis for that opinion, only some untested assumptions about what sorts of things make learning easier, and place structures more consistent.

This is where you truly show that you have no idea what's going on beneath you. You believe that we are simply tinkerers who have in our own hubris and imagination have divined arbitrary changes to fit our own 'style' of Lojban. But the truth is, the IRC community is one of the most active communities Lojban has and it is the first stop for many people seeking the language for the first time. We regularly have new names showing up and we have gone through the motions of how lojban can be presented and explained to a fresh student countless times! We have fielded the same questions so often that we actually DO have a unique insight into many of lojban's qualities no only from the perspective of using to have realtime conversations with multiple participants everyday, but also to teaching others how to do exactly that.

No one buys the "selpa'i and his rag tag IRC community is just a small ignorant rebel group looking to destroy the language argument. Ask some of the people around you.

and they *won't* have to relearn anything.

Of course they will. You think you will be the last person to come along and argue for a new improved gismu list? This comes up every few years. And if we ever said "yes" to a single one, we surrender all moral authority to oppose the next dozen attempts.

We're not coming up with anything. We're executing a process in which anyone may make contributions of merit.

This one I also learned a long time ago, luckily schooled by other Lojbanists. The original set of rafsi assignments was based on word frequencies and usage of gismu in proposed lujvo up through 1991. I did a nice systematic study and assigned rafsi to give the shortest and best words based on the then-current list.

In 1994 after much more usage, I did the same analysis, finding that a couple hundred rafsi should be reassigned. But the list was baselined, so I put it to a BPFK like committee. They rejected most of my proposals, and I am glad they did. Try reading any pre-1994 Lojban, and you'll find it rather hard, simply because a few percent of the rafsi changed.

Now envision your future Lojban student trying to read any of the megabytes of Lojban text in the current corpus. You want to throw out 25 years of usage history by hundreds instead of just 5 years of history by a couple dozen.

This argument is simply not a genuine one. MUCH of the corpus is already 'thrown out' by xorlo and other factors. How does adjusting some broken gismu constitute "throwing out 25 years of usage history"? Doesn't that sound scary everyone? If we remove traji3, the entire corpus history is... gone!

What the gismu are about remains
the same, and some details which most people never even got familiar
with are adjusted. The practical impact is much less drastic than you
make it sound.

The practical impact is that the resistance to revising the gismu list every time some new reformer like you comes along goes away. And old Lojban text in invalidated to some unknown extent. And the result isn't really any better than the old list because people shouldn't be wasting their time memorizing all of the gismu place structures

Again, the assertion that you should not memorize all the gismu is not a retort that follows from the desire for quality and consistency in gismu definitions.

(there is somewhat more limited benefit to knowing all gismu at the keyword level, and most or all of the rafsi, because it tells you how the wordspace is filled and how rafsi-space is filled and thus makes it easier to decode a new lujvo that you don't know the meaning of. If you know the rafsi for sralo, you won't accidentally interpret that rafsi as meaning something else, and since rafsi space is so crowded, knowing some of the rafsi makes it enormously easier to learn the rest, merely by elimination.

No such factor motivates place structure memorization. You learn them by using them, as you need them.

The simpler and the more consistent the gimste, the higher are the
chances for the average person to learn Lojban and the more pleasant it
is to be a user of this language, I believe.

Those claims are merely that: claims. Unsupported by actual evidence.

Experience, both my own and those of other jbopre I interact with. We
use the language daily,

Whoopie. Anecdotal evidence based on personal experience. Let me know when a linguistics journal accepts your paper based on that "experience".

This a joke.

and making slight adjustments in gismu place
structures results in a big increase in pleasantness of use. This may
not be the case for you, but it is for some.

And why should your personal aesthetics preferences count more than mine?

The process is open for anyone to make arguments for or against the proposed changes of others or their own. In some cases usage can already allow us to predict how some of the changes will go.

And it is important that this be so, because too much semantic emphasis
on the x1 risks losing the predicate nature of the language.

But they are not limited to x1. And they couldn't be, since Lojban
sometimes puts the experiencer in x2 and someimes in x1. We are able to
look past x1 and figure out what a gismu is about.

Sometimes. And sometimes the semantic experiencer is in x3 or x4 or x5. And probably in some lujvo, in x8.

And it is just as fundamental to understanding Lojban conceptually that a beginner be able to cope with an experiencer in x8 as in x1 or x2. (Of course a beginner is far less likely to run into such a word these days.)

Only someone who doesn't care about the on-going proliferation of the language would say something like this. Knowing how the grammar works in a general way and being able to 'cope' with an actually cumbersome gimste are completely different qualities a beginner should possess but I'm certainly not going to advocate for the latter. In fact, we're going to try to improve that situation.

That way it becomes much easier to get related gismu to align.

All gismu are "related".

Why should some "align", and not others

For example, all the gismu about emotional states could go together.

They could. But what about the words that you don't recognize to be
about emotional states

I think we can agree that {klama} is not an emotion, whereas {badri} is.

klacni (or maybe klaselcni) would probably be an emotion (the emotional reaction to going somewhere, which reaction might be dependent on the route and means). It might or might not have a place structure similar to badri. cricni is even more recognizably an emotion (English gloss "loss") and even more likely to have a different place structure. But we aren't going to try to systematize all lujvo that are used to talk about emotions, so why do so for gismu.

Gismu are NOT semantically privileged in Lojban. They are morphologically privileged in having rafsi, but not in any other way. And most people learn a lot of gismu relative to lujvo when first starting, but that is likely an artifact of how the language was designed. I rather suspect that Robin's kids recognize or attach significance to gismu vs lujvo, and you probably shouldn't either, but no one has written textbooks that reflect this fundamental truth.

None of this is relevant whatsoever. We're talking about fixing some small things on gismu that already exist.

As part of the revision, I would also like to define each gismu well
enough that we can come up with examples filling *every* sumti place of
every gismu.

That would be an interesting but probably unproductive challenge.

Then you aren't aware of one of the most common requests by beginners I
hear. They want examples, they want to know how to use a gismu. (to
which you will reply again "it's used how people want to use it")

I am quite aware of the requests of beginners. I have after all been teaching the language longer than anyone else. And, I don't reply that way. If someone is a beginner, I wouldn't be trying to explain the language using gismu that you don't know how to use. Beginners aren't going to be able to use the whole language with facility.

Do you feel that your response actually connects with the content of what you're replying to? That you are disagreeing with the goal of having examples justifying the design of every place in the gimste is unproductive rather than exceedingly legitimizing and of much utility to jbopre at any level is astounding, really.

But even ignoring that, if some people want a strongly prescribed language and others do not, we have a fundamentally intractable contradiction, and cannot please everyone. So we follow the concepts under which the project was started and under which it has survived 25 years

Lojban as language used by actual people, is inevitably a language that changes naturally adapting to the needs of the users as those needs arise and inspiration provides workable solutions. The idea that lojban can ever be truly prescribed can in no way ever be enforced or otherwise implemented. Any prescription is only useful as a reflection of usage. Both for current speakers but also for transferring that usage to new speakers as a pathway for integration and compatible speech.

Funny, that's exact motivations behind our efforts. To bring the language up to date with modern usage and if your own remedy is the dogma of uselessly tautological busy work as demonstrated by its unexecuted state, then be surprised not that people demand a set of actually working materials.

If prescriptivists want to prescribe up a storm, they can try, but not as part of LLG, and we would prefer that they not try to pretend that they are working on Lojban. (Again, we have no way to stop someone from doing so, but we certainly won't offer help or encouragement.)

In the context of actually having some LLG support this is ironic.

I can't please your ilk, and I'm not inclined to try, even if I didn't have that LLG members' motion directing me not to do so.

You got yourself onto the TLI Academy (JCB's likely turning over in his grave about that) - they accept the possibility of prescribing everything. Good luck over there.

I just can't even begin to understand your disposition.

Afterall, who, if not the community of users, keeps Lojban alive?

*You* aren't the "community of users", and you and your friends are only a tiny subset of that community, if what you are using still fits the label "Lojban". Lojban has stayed alive for many years before you came along, and will stay alive just fine without you, and might even do better, since more people will understand that we aren't going to support or even cooperate with every splinter group that announces itself.

You know what? We are the community of users. As much as any other group of users can say they are. A tiny subset? Sure we maybe a relative small amount of *regular* users but we have the first say in how MANY people experience the language for the first time. Everyday I watch conversations discussing in detail the specifics and nuance of the entire range of grammar features and lexicon definitions. I see people of varied skillsets teaching each other lojban going to great lengths to illuminate for each other its many concepts and conventions. I see people producing and collaborating on lojban works from translations to tools all the time.

Lojban stays alive in large part BECAUSE of the efforts of this community to maintain it from the practical reality and not some completely disconnected banal nostalgia of yesteryear's hopeless agendas. Ask some people around you if they agree.

I didn't get involved the last time, but why do you think I care enough about your opinion to bother?

lojbab

Its clear you don't.