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Re: [lojban] the future of Lojban's leadership



On Wednesday, September 10, 2014 at 9:16 AM, And Rosta wrote:

There are three forces that potentially shape and define what is to be deemed correct:

1. usage
2. official codification
3. logic (mapping between phonological and logical forms), consistency, regularity, unambiguity, integrity

& possibly a fourth:

4. unofficial consensus of opinion (or of influential opinion)

(4) is important for English, maybe not for Lojban.

All can conflict. Which trumps which? For me it's 3>2>1. For Bob I hope (because it's a position I can respect) it's 1>2>3. What do you think it is?


Alex Burka, On 10/09/2014 15:32:

I think it's 3>1>2 for me, although I'm not exactly sure of the
distinction you're drawing between "usage" and "consensus". And to
keep 3 above 1, you need 2 to be able to slowly adapt to 1/4... so it's
intertwined.


I meant (4) as a consensus of opinion that is independent of usage, an opinion about how people ought to say stuff but not necessarily about how they actually do say stuff. You could say 4 is an uncodified body of lore.

Gleki Arxokuna, On 10/09/2014 14:35:>

For me it's 2. codification > 3. logic > 4. consensus > 1. usage
although 4. defines 1. and partially 3.


Okay. I can square that with some of what you say. But you also said that what is codified should be based on usage -- which surely conflicts with 3>4>1. And you also decried changes to the codification (because it causes some people to abandon the language) yet also criticized the adoption of xorlo on the apparent grounds that it has not been codified (in a new reference grammar), implying that were it codified, you would not decry it.



                 More importantly, we have the history of dozens if not hundreds of
                 conlangs whose usage has not spread because people wouldn't stop
                 fiddling with the language design.

             I think you'd be hard-pressed to identify these dozens if not hundreds of conlangs whose usage would have spread if people had stopped fiddling with the language design.

        He won't. I can confirm his words. I've got a lot of people from
        Russian group who immediately stopped learning Lojban when they
        learnt that CLL was no longer valid.

    Bob was talking about conlangs not conlangers.

Usage of conlangs depends on users i.e. conlanger (although i
preferred to use "conlanger" for the term "inventor of conlang")


Yes, I agree that is what 'conlanger means'. I thought you had meant "[Bob] won't [be hard-pressed to identify these dozens if not hundreds of conlangs whose usage would have spread if people had stopped fiddling with the language design]" but because you didn't really substantiate that and instead talked about conlang users, I thought maybe you had misread "conlangers" for "conlangs".

But I think I see now what you meant. You cited a diminution in the use of Quenya in response to new information emerging about the diachrony of its invention, so I infer that you mean that many conlangs -- dozens if not hundreds -- if published and never publicly revised would attract users, regardless of whether their creator wished or intended that to happen. History proves that this is generally not the case; only exceptionally does a published conlang attract users, even when the published codification never alters. But Bob and implicitly you seem also to be saying that failure to attract users constitutes some kind of absolute failure as a language.

--And.

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