Re: [lojban] selma'o Documentation (or, rewriting the CLL?)

While there are problems, I don't think this is as bad as you are making it out to be. Xorlo did not change syntax. The cmevla-brivla merge (if that is semi-official now) makes a minor change in syntax; basically LA works the same as LE did to begin with, which is pretty much exactly what you would expect. Perhaps we could compile a list of the completely new selma'o that actually get used in practice.

I know I in particular have made a point of trying to use existing selma'o with my coined cmavo. Four of my cmavo in JVS have a selma'o I made up, two of these cmavo being in the same selma'o. Details:
{jai'a} was made for fun because I saw a use case for it, but it is only useful in the same way that {jai} is, and is much less frequently applicable.
{no'oi} and {po'oi} were made for symmetry back when I was actively working on fancylojban-ish stuff. We don't really have the brivla to make good use of them right now, and I doubt we will anytime soon.
{ju'ei} is quite useful when it is desirable, but that is infrequent. Indeed I can't think of a situation where I would want to use {ju'ei} in a literal translation of well-written English, because in English this is either bad style or simply unintelligible.

My remaining nine cmavo all use official selma'o, specifically ZO, ME, LAhE, NAhE, KE, XI, ZOhU, LE. I would strongly encourage people with ideas for cmavo to try to twist them into existing selma'o if at all possible.

The unofficial selma'o I have actually seen a fair bit in chat: ZOhOI, LOhAI/SAhAI/LEhAI, MEhOI, ZEhEI. The rest? Easily able to be ignored for a long time, in my view.

mi'e la latro'a mu'o

On Sun, May 10, 2015 at 1:14 AM, Spheniscine <spheniscine@gmail.com> wrote:

So I faced a problem: One could look up what a cmavo is supposed to mean, and see the selma'o it belongs to. The problem is that there is no current reference as to what the selma'o mean, and its syntax; little things like whether {na'e fetsi mlatu} refers to a cat that is non-female or something that isn't a female cat (turns out, it's the first. To express the second, you need {na'e ke fetsi mlatu [ke'e]}, or {na'e fetsi bo mlatu}). And sure, one could use the ilmentufa parser, but that won't tell you about the little details like the possible different functions of certain selma'o like BO and NAI, depending on position. I also wanted very rough correspondences of certain selma'o to common parts of speech like "prepositions" "articles" etc., which you can't find on a simple search. Of course, I do realize that these correspondences are in fact very rough, and that the selma'o resist any strict classification to those terms, but I wanted there to be at least a starting point.

So then, I brought up the idea of writing a documentation for the selma'o; after some encouragement, I started this wiki page: http://mw.lojban.org/papri/lo_selma%27o_ca%27irvei_(selma%27o_Documentation)

However, I soon ran into a second problem - defining the Lojbanic metalinguistic terms that we keep throwing around, like {selbri}, {sumti}, {tanru}, and of course, {selma'o}. You can see the results of my attempt on that page; I just ended up tying myself in knots defining each term in terms of other terms. This won't quite do; they need to be defined from the ground up, and a mere glossary is not quite sufficient for that.

So then I got to thinking... that's what the CLL is supposed to do, right? {la selpa'i} even pointed out a page in the CLL that has much the same function as my page was meant to be for: http://lojban.github.io/cll/20/

But the problem is that the CLL is fossilized; it has not been updated in years, maybe decades. It does not reflect the various reforms over the years; not the cmevla-brivla merge, not any of the new cmavo or selma'o, not even xorlo. It's also not reflected any changes and tightening in meta-linguistic terminology; it uses {cmene} instead of {cmevla}, for example.

Of course, though, this "new CLL" has to be on the Wiki, and able to be edited to reflect any future reforms; otherwise it's just end up like the current CLL, or Loglan before it. It can't belong to me, to la gleki, to la selpahi, or anyone, but everyone.

{.ie pei doi ro do}

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