From a.rosta@ntlworld.com Fri Nov 30 19:16:46 2001 Return-Path: X-Sender: a.rosta@ntlworld.com X-Apparently-To: lojban@yahoogroups.com Received: (EGP: mail-8_0_0_1); 1 Dec 2001 03:16:47 -0000 Received: (qmail 70702 invoked from network); 1 Dec 2001 03:16:46 -0000 Received: from unknown (216.115.97.167) by m2.grp.snv.yahoo.com with QMQP; 1 Dec 2001 03:16:46 -0000 Received: from unknown (HELO mta07-svc.ntlworld.com) (62.253.162.47) by mta1.grp.snv.yahoo.com with SMTP; 1 Dec 2001 03:16:46 -0000 Received: from andrew ([62.255.40.10]) by mta07-svc.ntlworld.com (InterMail vM.4.01.03.23 201-229-121-123-20010418) with SMTP id <20011201031644.RAFO10846.mta07-svc.ntlworld.com@andrew> for ; Sat, 1 Dec 2001 03:16:44 +0000 To: Subject: RE: [lojban] Re: To clarify... Date: Sat, 1 Dec 2001 03:15:57 -0000 Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Priority: 3 (Normal) X-MSMail-Priority: Normal X-Mailer: Microsoft Outlook IMO, Build 9.0.2416 (9.0.2910.0) Importance: Normal X-MimeOLE: Produced By Microsoft MimeOLE V5.00.2615.200 In-Reply-To: <9u70k5+vicc@eGroups.com> From: "And Rosta" X-Yahoo-Profile: andjamin Tinkit: > --- In lojban@y..., "And Rosta" wrote: [...] > > It's interesting that there is such near-unanimity (among those > > who care about design issues) that the morphology is a disaster > > and that shorter gismu and no rafsi would have been a much better > > solution. It's this sort of thing that leads me to believe that > > had the development of Loglan/Lojban been allowed to be driven > > primarily by design issues rather than by the wish to reach a > > stable and usable form as quickly as possible, the language > > would nonetheless have tended to progressively stabilize as > > the optimal design -- objectively arrived at through the consensus > > of rational minds -- was progressively approximated ever more > > closely. > > Very interesting. My initial desire was to keep the morphology but > redo the gismu, rafsi, and cmavo so the rafsi and cmavo could be > regularly deduced from the gismu. Now this is sounding much better, > but unfortunately lojban is sounding more broken :(. I think John > Cowan mentioned that the morphology isn't even fully debugged, which > further makes it seem in doubt. Any loglan that is to be sufficiently usable and stable to acquire a community of users MUST perforce be 'broken' to some degree. New ways will always be found to improve the language, however many improvements you make. And both Lojban and Classical Loglan had the declared aims of acquiring a community of users. Lojban has never claimed to be perfect. It does, though, embody the fruits of the labours of very many very intelligent minds, so even in its 'broken' design it is nonetheless of great value. So yes, Lojban is 'broken', but this is by deliberate policy and by the will of the vast majority of Lojbanists, and there is no false advertising that claims anything to the contrary, so there is no point in *complaining* about it. However, a minority of Lojbanists are interested in design issues, so one can still discuss purely hypothetical changes to the language. --And.