I have found a couple more sources relevant to the goals of Lojban.
I realize this thread is now a bit old, but I want to add them in the interest of completeness.
The LLG's bylaws state the purpose of the LLG.
http://www.lojban.org/tiki/Bylaws+of+The+Logical+Language+Group,+Inc.
LLG is not Lojban. The goals of the LLG are not the goals of Lojban, but they may be related and relevant.
Section 1. Purpose. The Logical Language Group, Inc. is established to promote the scientific study of the relationships between language, thought and human culture; to investigate the nature of language and to determine the requirements for an artificially-engineered natural language; to implement and experiment with such a language; to devise and promote applications for this language in fields including but not limited to linguistics, psychology, philosophy, logic, mathematics, computer science, anthropology, sociology, education, and human biology; to conduct and support experimental and scholarly research in these fields as they may bear upon the problems of artificial language development; to communicate with and to educate interested persons and organizations about these activities; to devise and develop means and instruments needed for these activities; and to accumulate and publish the results of such studies and developments.
One of the things in this statement is: "determine the requirements for an artificially-engineered natural language".
This might be able to be interpreted as "determine the goals for lojban", except it does not specifically mention lojban or logical languages and these requirements would presumably also hold over constructed languages such as Esperanto, Klingon, Toki Pona, Quenya, etc. - as well as Lojban.
If this has been achieved it would also be of interest. However, I wonder if this statement is broader than intended, or if is too broad to be possible, or of the answer is equally broad and over generalized (i.e. "It facilitates communication.").
The LLG Baseline policy:
http://www.lojban.org/tiki/Official+Baseline+Statement
https://groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/lojban/conversations/messages/17203
The LLG Baseline policy mentions/references "the engineering goals of the language" as well as "the design goals for the language".
If this review results in consensus agreement that certain changes are appropriate, to be consistent both with actual usage and the engineering goals of the language, they will be incorporated as part of the discontinuity between the existing provisional baselines and the actual design baseline covering the full language.
and
If usage has established a pattern clearly inconsistent with the existing documents, but consistent with the design goals for the language, the byfy reviewers will have the power to approve changes to the baseline to reflect that usage. A critical goal is to preserve the fundamental design goal that Lojban words have a unitary and self-consistent meaning.
Mostly this raises my original question, rather than answers it. However, one goal is noted: "Lojban words have a unitary and self-consistent meaning", but I believe this isn't the only goal (I think a language to solve this one and only goal would look very different).
These references to goals also emphasises the need for Lojban to have goals, for the language to be consistent.
Lojban: You're Doing It Wrong
http://teddyb.org/robin/tiki-index.php?page=Lojban%3A+You%27re+Doing+It+Wrong
Further, we (the Lojban community as a whole) should adopt a set of goals for the language (we don't currently have those at all, just a set of design decisions from back in the day, which isn't the same thing), with "respecting how people happened to use the language" and "making sure the meaning of past usage doesn't change" being much lower on the goal list than they are now, and get on with actually fixing the language based on those goals.
Although not an official document, it is written by Robin - who would be aware of the goals if they existed.
This best answers my original question - we currently don't have official goals for the language.
Andrew / DerSaidin
On Monday, June 9, 2014 11:54:43 PM UTC+10, Andrew Browne wrote:
What are the official goals of lojban?
So out of all this, what are officially the goals of lojban?
Thanks