Subject: Re: [lojban] (from lojban-beginners) pi'e

From: Logical Language Group <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 14 Sep 2001 21:12:17 -0400

At 04:33 PM 9/14/01 -0700, Nick NICHOLAS wrote:
> >In day-month-year, how do you refer to an event happening during a certain
> >year? It seems you don't. The lessons avoid this by naming years. So this
> >year is {la renonopananc.} and the next year is {la renonorenanc.} and the
> >next year is {la djimbab.}, or might as well be, because cmene are not
> >analyzable.
>
>Conversely, of course, in YY-MM-DD, how do you refer to a date? ("This
>happened on the 24th.") The answer is tu'o, right? Or indeed, even no
>number at all. So:
>
> This happened on the 24th. This happened in 1971.
>YY-MM-DD. fasnu de'i li pi'e pi'e 24 fasnu de'i li 1971
>DD-MM-YY. dasnu de'i li 24 fasnu de'i li pi'e pi'e 1971
>
>... and it's already obvious which one would be more useful, I think.
>
>Woah. In fact, I think {de'i li 1971} is such a big win, and {de'i li pi'e
>pi'e 24} is so clean, that I'm prepared to opine here, as with {ka}, that
>the existing convention is broken, long live the new convention.

Except that, since it IS a change to the baseline (given the written place 
structure of detri), and cannot be claimed to be an "error", since we knew 
about the standards when we last went around on the issue before the 
baseline, you will force us to adopt a procedure for a formal change to the 
baseline, something I have been strongly avoiding because if we have such, 
we probably won't have a baseline because lots more changes will be 
proposed that I have staved off by arguing "baseline".

Now maybe we shouldn't be hamstrung by the baseline if enough people want a 
change, but part of the reason for having a baseline is to hamstring those 
who would change by fiat. (If you evolve a change through usage, of 
course, I cannot argue with you).

lojbab
--
lojbab [email-masked]
Bob LeChevalier, President, The Logical Language Group, Inc.
2904 Beau Lane, Fairfax VA 22031-1303 USA 703-385-0273
Artificial language Loglan/Lojban: http://www.lojban.org