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

From: And Rosta <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 18 Sep 2001 17:52:15 +0100

pc:
[much interesting personal detail snipped]
#I took early retirement to get away from students and for the pay 
#increase that it involved.

You took early retirement with a pay increase?! Me green green
green with envy!

#I am, I guess, a hardliner with glorky tendencies, which I suppress 
#rhetorically and professionally. I think that Lojban is spelled out much 
#more thoroughly than it is generally given credit for (by And, say) and that 
#it is the business of users to bring to light these spells and apply them.  
#Thus, I tend to automatically reject any claim that we need a new locutionto 
#say something, since I think there is already a way to say it in Lojban (the 
#2500 year history of applying logic has covered more cases than have been 
#brought up yet, so I generally think we can manage what comes along).  

I certainly agree that anything that be said in ordinary predicate logic
can be said in Lojban, and that most claims that we need a new locution
in order to say something are mistaken. If there is a need for new locutions
it is to make some existing but cumbersome expressions less longwinded.

On my claim about Lojban being unspelled out, it clearly is many many
times better spelled out than any other invented language has ever been,
but a grammar is a rule system that defines sentences as form--meaning
pairings and I do believe that it is therefore massively incomplete, even
setting aside the gismu and lujvo. For example, try going through the
mahoste and identifying those cmavo whose meaning is both clear and
uncontroversial -- there are very very few. 

--And.