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Re: [lojban] Logos Initiative

On 9/16/2014 5:36 PM, TR NS wrote:

On Tuesday, September 16, 2014 1:39:34 PM UTC-4, lojbab wrote:

    On 9/15/2014 2:22 PM, TR NS wrote:
     > I don't see how a fork can be avoided. I think it's become very
    clear
     > that Lojban, pretty much as it is presently documented, is how the
     > language is going to stay. The persons in charge give some
    service to
     > change by "usage" and potential consideration of proposals after
    full
     > documentation of the current language is complete. But how many
    decades
     > are we to wait for that to happen?

    I think we are closer than you imagine.  Robin is working on the next
    edition of CLL this week, and I am reasonably sure it will be out when
    we need it next year.

    The consideration of proposals could take a long time, or relatively
    little.  If the proposers document their proposed changes in the
    form of
    change pages to CLL, it makes it fairly easy to consider those changes
    and incorporate them relatively quickly (as well as to understand how
    minor or major a given proposal is).

I have no doubt little will change.


I expect a fair number of minor changes, and more additions.


And I have it one good authority. I
have read though a large portion of the mailing list archives and your
position is clear "absolute commitment to the baseline".
Which doesn't mean much when it comes to formal changes to the baseline as part of the intended process. It also presumes that my voice will be dominant/decisive in such a decision process. I doubt it. 


    If the language is essentially complete and well-documented, I hope and
    expect that the pressure for change will fall off.  Right now we have
    15-odd years of accumulated but undocumented change proposals.  After
    they are decided, then one would hope that new proposals would come
    at a slower rate.


That apparently has been the plan all along.

"That is (and always has been) the intent as approved by the Board of the
present, and I will support such myself in the future, but the decision
will be up to the voting members at that time, as to what LLG will or won't
do.  I have little doubt that once we have a solid Lojban-speaking
community, there will be no more need for a formal freeze/baseline than
Esperanto has, and the language prescription will have approximately the
same force that the Fundamento has on Esperanto - keeps in mind the core of
the language as it originated, but actual usage often deviates in minor
ways from Zamenhof's designs.  The community itself will be the real
normative force, and not the prescription."(http://mail.lojban.org/lists/lojban-list/msg02689.html)
I think I still hold to that statement, but the LLG community and voting membership have both expressed a strong commitment towards keeping a prescriptive standard. And as I said, the decision will be made by them and not by me. 


    If they don't, then any project that you come up with is
    just as doomed as Lojban to the same fate.

I think you have it all wrong. Change is inevitable
It is, and I acknowledged it. But I want that change to be more or less like natural language evolution; i.e. not planned by a group of tinkerers trying to "improve the language", but simply used until it is accepted through familiarity. 


and I think you just
squandered ten years that could have been spent directing that change
and perfecting the language.
I could not have either directed changes OR perfected the language. My time for such has passed. 


Instead you spent the time doing everything you could to keep change at bay.


Until the documentation is done that will help serve as a normative force.


And it is woefully wishful thinking, to
believe that CLL 2.0, "to be published in a couple of years at most",
will bring a watershed of speakers (thanks to all your efforts at
stability)


That is where you are most clearly wrong.
Loglan/Lojban has accrued new speakers over the last few decades strictly by word of mouth. We have avoided any sort of promotion of the language because we did not have the materials that people expect a language to have.
If CLL version 2 is accepted as a new standard, we produce a dictionary from jbovlaste and the new results, and update Nick Nicolas and Robin Turner's textbook to the current language, we then have the needed materials. We probably would also formally publish some of the texts and translations. Then we make our first serious effort to promote the language, and Lojban will grow much more quickly. 


My belief is the opposite. If you want to attract people to this
language you have to make it so damn good that people can't help
themselves.
Alas, what some of the tinkerers thing is "so damn good" is anything but to other people.
What will attract people is a body of other people actively using the language, materials published in the language, possibly including stuff not otherwise available (original works in Lojban). People USING the language, and not arguing about changes to it is what will make things seem "so damn good". You apparently don't realize how demoralizing it is to most people to read about yet another suggested change, and it is a turnoff simply to see changes being the primary discussion topic on the mailing list. "So damn good" necessarily has to mean "no one wants to keep tinkering with it" 


They got to look at it and immediately go "Damn! I'd be a
fool not to learn this."
That would happen if people saw a way to make money learning and using Lojban, and probably not much else. Wisdom has one learning stuff that one can profit by. English has largely become a "world language" because of British and American economic dominance, not because it is "so damn good" as a language. 


     > Besides, starting a new project also allows us to take a step
    back and
     > reconsider things that would simply not be possible otherwise.

    You'd be surprised as to the sort of things that were "reconsidered" in
    prior iterations.  Look at guaspi and Voksigid for prior efforts to
    reconsider Lojban.

I have looked at those. Any tonal language (IMHO) is doomed from the get
go.
That is probably because you aren't Chinese. And there are a lot more Chinese than English native speakers. 

lojbab


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