Re: [lojban] Balningau: The Great Update

On Sun, May 25, 2014 at 12:03 PM, Robert LeChevalier <lojbab@lojban.org> wrote:

On 5/25/2014 2:06 PM, Dustin Lacewell wrote:

25 years now, and I never made any effort to learn place
structures systematically.

This is a thoughtless retort.

It is a truthful one.

Yes but has no bearing on the original content. That's the point.

The suggestion that there is truly no objective sense of efficiency, rhyme or reason to a place structure is
unmoving.

There may be such a thing, but you have no more access to it than I do. And I have more interesting things to worry about.

No but the collective who is invited through whatever means of invitation are possible to create a consensus to access it. You're not listening.

The idea that an efficient place structure has anything to do
with memorizing gismu systematically doesn't follow.

The idea that I give a damn about either, also doesn't follow.

It was your argument.

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?

Back in the day, I picked some 1300 gismu that had never come up in my conversation, because no one at that time spoke Lojban. A large chunk of those words were gismu in TLI Loglan, and their initial place structures were more or less the same that JCB used, except where we had a good reason to change. But JCB's gismu and place structure choice were often quite arbitrary, too.

Efficiency was never a priority.

Turns out this actually matters for lojban's proliferation.

This is just not a thought-out reply.

You expect me to spend more time thinking about this stuff than I already have?

You're not even trying.

You are right.

To suggest that there is no meaningful way to semantically categorize the gismu

I suggest no such thing. There are lots of ways, but how meaningful they are is a subjective question.

As a way to partition the work of a gimste revision, it becomes objective in how well it helps us partition the work of a gimste revision. You're having trouble maintaining the ability to keep the content of what you're responding to in mind.

for the utility of helping us
partition the work, one has to wonder what your actual intention in this
reply is.

Ridicule?

Sure, but you do a bad job when your retort completely misses the content of what you're replying to. Ridicule is only effective if it touches on some embarrassing truth. But you made a comment with no bearing to what you replied in trying to do so. Relax.

Furthermore, the process is democratic

Most of the Lojbanic world isn't involved in your process and won't be.

Most of the lojbanic world has never been involved its management and never will be. What is your point? Democracy insofar as people care about the event and its outcome. This is a practical reality, not some identified weakness in our action that is useful to your as a retort.

and so those associations are completely open to discussion.

Most people have no interest in such a discussion.

Exactly, this is explains what your immediately preceding comment lacks effect.

No.

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

Who decides what they are defined to mean?

At this point, either the person who uses one, or the person who enters it into jbovlaste or some other word collection.

You mean the "database" which you de-legitimize literally in the next comment?

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

I have never seen a published Lojban dictionary. If you refer to jbovlaste, it isn't a dictionary, but rather a data base, and I don't believe its collection has any official status.

where
explicit lujvo place structures are created mindfully and voted on
democratically.

I have never been aware of, nor involved in, any such vote. I suspect that this is true for most of the community.

It hasn't happened yet...?

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

Correct. selpa'i is hardly worth such an effort, even if I had the time.

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?

Maybe we don't speak the same language.

You don't get to avoid having the fact that your comments completely miss the content of what you're replying to with stuff like this. The statement I pointed out made no sense whatsoever.

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

Then you aren't talking about language. Lojban will never be recognized by real linguists as being a real language, if it doesn't have certain traits that they define as necessary.

Maybe you don't care. Your choice.

Again, what are you even talking about? You accused of not being able to semantically categorizing the gismu, as if we meant 'for good' rather than as a temporary guide to help us process the gimste revision by accusing us of having natural language bias which would make any semantic categorization useless and subjective as if that matters in the context we're using it.

How does Lojban being recognized by linguists as a real language have anything to do with this already irrelevant subthread of the dialog!

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.

.u'inai .ionai

.ionaidai je'a

What an interesting demonstration is all that one can really think, as
we know who we are,

You may know, but the rest of us don't.

Later you will accuse me of speaking for others. Ironic.

To see you attempt this coloring while all the while
knowing that the very audience you speak to is mostly supportive

Evidence is lacking.

There's evidence in this thread and the previous one.

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

Yes. You talk like all the tinkerers before you.

We both agree work is needed you just disagree with what. This puts on the same level as far as this goes. Its useless speech.

But the truth is, the IRC community

You are you. You are not the IRC community. You speak only for yourself.

No actually, I'm very connected to the IRC community and all who care to participate in this conversation are in a channel specifically for discussing the events here. I do most of the messaging because I'm willing to. I'm constantly in contact with everyone, like I said, cares to be involved in those discussions.

is one of the most active communities Lojban has

Yet no one is ever there most of the times I log in.

(I'm not saying that no one uses IRC; I see a long list of bots logged in, but people don't respond to what I say, so I don't bother very often.

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.

selpa'i also is not "the IRC community" and does not have any authority to speak for them.

He's there too. Engaged in conversations about this thread and the movement and everything. You're just saying stuff at this point.

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.

Good. Then no one has to bother with you.

Again not replying to the content of the thing you're replying to. I'm saying, we're not 'coming up' with a new gismu list. We're executing a process where anyone can submit contributions and input of merit.

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?

Continuing to ignore that we're not deciding anything and asking anyone who wishes to to contribute.

The process is open for anyone to make arguments for or against the
proposed changes of others or their own.

There is no process.

You don't get to change reality just by saying things. If you're interested as to what the process is you can just ask.

That you are disagreeing with the goal of
having examples justifying the design of every place in the gimste is
unproductive

We haven't managed the much smaller goal of a set of examples for every cmavo. Why worry about a larger and less important goal?

I don't see any need to "justify the design of every place in the gimste". I can freely admit that many decisions were arbitrary, and further I assert that any "justification" is arbitrary. It simply doesn't matter, because gismu are not semantically privileged above lujvo, I rather doubt that you expect to justify every place of every lujvo.

As people who are involved with the direct selling of lojban to potential interested nintadni, we do.

Bob, we care. Justifying the sensibilities of the gismu is something we're asked to do by people considering the langague *all the time*.

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.

Sounds like what I argued in response to Robin in the discussion cited by selpa'i.

I guess you don't really agree with selpa'i

I can assure you that selpa'i agrees with the motion of updating the record, prescription, description, or whatever, that we provide to new people and our selves as the codification of the reflection of modern usage is up to date.

Any prescription is only useful as a reflection of usage.

Then it is really a *description*, not a prescription. People can use descriptions prescriptively, but that doesn't make them prescriptions.

Who cares?

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

Your support is not in evidence.

You must assume everyone in the audience is blind.

I fully respect people who use the language on IRC, for doing so. But they are still not above other Lojbanists who never have done so.

Hence why we are on this mailing list and elsewhere.