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

From: "Bob LeChevalier (lojbab)" <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 19 Sep 2001 18:43:31 -0400

At 01:33 PM 9/19/01 +0100, And Rosta wrote:
>#>>> "Bob LeChevalier (lojbab)" <[email-masked]> 09/19/01 01:01am >>>
>#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.
>
>I know this, and it's clear that a pioneering loglang can't foresee everything
>that needs to be zipfed down. What I mean is that even when usage shows
>what needs to be zipfed down, we then have no way to do the zipfing.
>The morphology affords us no spare class of short cmavo,

What do you think was the point/intent of the experimental cmavo space, if 
not precisely to deal with this. There aren't a lot of "short" cmavo, but 
"short" is relative here - there are 4 xVVs and 25 xV'Vs and we ultimately 
have the option of using the last few unused cmavo in regular cmavo 
space. It hasn't been made clear that there are that many Zipfean 
shortenings that are so commonly used as to warrant the shortest forms in 
the language. No doubt, if usage proved such to be the case, then 
postbaseline revision would find a few of the lerfu and Mex words that 
Jorge despises, being displaced by things that have proven more useful.

>and the Lojban
>project has not countenanced a stage at some point in the future when
>zipf adjustments are made.

Of course we have. That is exactly the sort of thing that I expect will be 
discussed after the baseline period ends (discussion not necessarily 
leading to change, but certainly considering it). I just don't want to 
discuss it until then, because we would need the usage information to make 
such decisions, and I want the decisions based on a more widespread Lojban 
use than would likely exist if we continued to talk about tinkering.

>I have, though, seen one indication of zipfing down of lujvo:
>
> tilju x1 is a pedant [Adjective pedantic] (This was made by 
> shortening the
> lujvo tilju'edu'u, which is perhaps the most 'proper' word for this 
> concept)
>
>http://nuzban.wiw.org/wiki/index.php?Slang%20gismu

That is a suggested slang term. Has it actually seen usage? I have little 
respect for wild suggestions that aren't actually used, especially since 
"terki" and a couple other old Loglan creations (there was one gismu coined 
for x1 encroaching on x2's personal "space", as I recall). We might also 
encode gismu for all the unique Laadan concepts as well by the same logic.

But proposals without actual usage to back them are empty.

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