Subject: Re: [lojban] META : Who is everyone (and what are they saying)

From: "Bob LeChevalier (lojbab)" <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 17 Sep 2001 21:35:13 -0400

At 05:07 PM 9/16/01 -0700, Nick Nicholas wrote:
>As for the ultimate success of Lojban, this is part of a larger rhetorical
>battle, which I will not do justice here. There are two conflicting goals
>for Lojban: to remain logical, unambiguous, computer-parsable, etc., and to
>be human-speakable, learnable, expressive, etc. I do think Lojban cannot
>ultimately remain rigorous in all things. Pretty much everyone does. For
>those interested in the logic side of Lojban, this will prove a failure ---
>but an interesting failure, and the extent to which logic and rigour *can*
>be maintained in Lojban is also interesting. For those not so interested,
>the logical-minded are tilting at windmills anyway, and the effort to keep
>Lojban logical is misguided as a result.
>
>That's my take; you'll hear a separate take from xod, because we're
>rhetorical adversaries on this. :-) (xod, if you think I'm caricaturing,
>please feel free to step in.) You'll certainly hear a separate take from
>Lojban Central (i.e. Lojbab, speaking ex cathedra), which is that Lojban is
>to evolve naturally, with no impediment.

No, you won't hear quite that from lojbab. Your description pretty much 
agrees with mine, except that there are more than two conflicting goals, 
and I have the job of leading the community towards all of them at once, 
which is my own windmill to tilt at.

I distinguish the effort to have Lojban "remain logical, unambiguous, 
computer-parsable, etc." in the realm of syntax, which most people want, 
from the effort to make these work in the semantic realm, when there is far 
from any universal theories of semantics that are widely accepted (and few 
with less than a PhD understand any of them), so that the effort is doomed 
to failure by the fact that we don't really know the goal. Lojban itself 
might help us understand the goal better, which is why JCB occasionally 
talked of a "Loglan Mark II" which would probably have to be designed from 
scratch by proficient (native-fluency) Loglanists because they will know 
better than us latecomers what the weaknesses in the language are.

I think that Lojban WILL evolve naturally, whether we want it to or not. I 
think that "usage will decide" in that the forms of the language that 
people use will be emulated or avoided by others based on their reactions 
to them. Thus the hardliners would have more effect on the language by 
using their hardline ideas in texts that you (especially younger) beginners 
will then learn from "by example", and make the choices that matter, 
because YOU and not us are the real future of the language, and will decide 
what it is to become.

On one extreme we have Michael Helsem, whose poetic efforts at Lojban set a 
very non-hardline extreme of usage. But that extreme clearly is NOT 
driving usage because few users emulate Michael. More of them try to 
emulate xod, or Jorge, or Nick, who each have their own styles that are 
more or less logically rigorous. At the other extreme is And, who has not 
for the most part mirrored Michael by presenting us with a usage that 
reflects his image of the language.

Nick's reference to me suggests that I think that the usage will evolve in 
ways that we cannot predict, because they are "natural". I think that 
evolution is quite predictable, and not as threatening to the hardline 
position as some fear. I think that people try to emulate the forms of the 
most respected users of a language, whether that be Shakespeare or King 
James or the Queen or your favorite TV commentator for English (or perhaps 
the rap singer or the chap down at the pub who talks a good story). So the 
best way to direct evolution is to produce respected works that people want 
to read, and which they learn language style and usage from.

(Nick used to be a strong proponent of discussing Lojban "stylistics", a 
topic he has said little about in recent years, but which I think captured 
a lot more effectively the sorts of issues that we actually face in Lojban 
usage that does the more hardline discussions dominating today. Perhaps 
Nick can elaborate more here (and on the wiki if appropriate) how his older 
concept of stylistics is the same as, or different from, what we are now 
dealing with, and maybe why he has changed his approach so strongly.

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