Subject: Re: [lojban] morphology

From: "Bob LeChevalier (lojbab)" <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 02 Dec 2001 08:38:43 -0500

At 12:18 PM 12/1/01 -0500, Pierre Abbat wrote:
>There will have to be some sort of arbitration about new brivla, to prevent
>one new word from getting two incompatible meanings.

No, there doesn't HAVE to be such an arbitration. There is a RISK if there 
is no arbitration that different people will come up with different 
meanings, but that risk will exist even if there is arbitration, because 
not all users will read and follow the dictates of the arbitrators (look at 
all the unofficial gismu that people use; inevitably there will be a conflict).

There has been a debate since the early 80s about whether there should be a 
Loglan Academy. TLI has one; LLG does not. French has one; English does 
not. It seems to be an ideological thing whether people want there to be 
someone with the authority to tell them what to do.

The status quo is that Lojban will have no academy. We will produce a 
baseline dictionary, but it makes no pronouncements on any word that is not 
in it, and the likelihood now is that it will primarily have words that 
have seen significant and agreed upon usage. We have no restrictions on 
anyone else producing unofficial dictionaries or lists of brivla with their 
opinions, but there is no mechanism for arbitrating if two unofficial 
people disagree. The only time when there is arbitration therefore is 
whenever there is an official dictionary edition put out that will include 
a particular word, and that arbitration counts only insofar as the official 
dictionary is considered a prescriptive standard, which is doubtful once 
the baseline period ends.

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