From lojbab@lojban.org Tue Sep 18 17:04:53 2001 Return-Path: X-Sender: lojbab@lojban.org X-Apparently-To: lojban@yahoogroups.com Received: (EGP: mail-7_3_2_2); 19 Sep 2001 00:04:46 -0000 Received: (qmail 46687 invoked from network); 19 Sep 2001 00:04:46 -0000 Received: from unknown (10.1.10.27) by 10.1.1.221 with QMQP; 19 Sep 2001 00:04:46 -0000 Received: from unknown (HELO stmpy-5.cais.net) (205.252.14.75) by mta2 with SMTP; 19 Sep 2001 00:04:50 -0000 Received: from bob.lojban.org (60.dynamic.cais.com [207.226.56.60]) by stmpy-5.cais.net (8.11.1/8.11.1) with ESMTP id f8J04mK72775 for ; Tue, 18 Sep 2001 20:04:48 -0400 (EDT) Message-Id: <4.3.2.7.2.20010918195452.00de2610@pop.cais.com> X-Sender: vir1036@pop.cais.com X-Mailer: QUALCOMM Windows Eudora Version 4.3.2 Date: Tue, 18 Sep 2001 20:01:33 -0400 To: lojban Subject: Re: [lojban] META : Who is everyone (and what are they saying) In-Reply-To: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"; format=flowed From: "Bob LeChevalier (lojbab)" At 06:36 PM 9/18/01 +0100, And Rosta wrote: >Lojbab: >#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. > >There are several reasons why I write so little Lojban, but there is one >reason >in particular why I don't try to influence others' usage through my own. This >reason is that there is no mechanism for abbreviation, for creating more >concise locutions that do not increase vagueness. There is no 'Zipf valve' >-- no mechanism for shortening locutions whose length is not appropriately >proportional to their frequency. The problem is that Zipfean processes usually only work once we know that we will be using an excessively long formulation, and until you use something a few times, we don't know what excessively long formulation needs to be Zipfed in that we can't see what the repetitive pattern is that we are trying to abbreviate. The abbreviations we do have, like soi and sei and many of the UI like po'o, we were able to predict from natlang patterns, but you are posing new abbreviatable patterns possibly lacking parallel in the natural laanguages. lojbab -- lojbab lojbab@lojban.org 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