Subject: Re: [lojban] Re: non-core translations

From: Robert LeChevalier <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 06 Aug 2002 00:03:38 -0400

At 05:14 PM 8/5/02 +0000, Adam wrote:
>Of course, that is all in order; however, I don't think that those
>clarifications and translations should be considered part of the
>baseline. Non-English translations aren't going to be part of the
>baseline anyway,

I am not sure that this is correct. The final dictionary baseline will 
include as much as we can afford to include (for example, I noticed today 
that the Esperanto keyword list was in the working directory for the 
dictionary), and non-English lists that have been thoroughly checked by 
multiple Lojbanists would seem to be worthwhile candidates. (Indeed, 
depending on how we publish the dictionary, less thoroughly checked lists 
might be included if they are suitably annotated as to their level of 
confidence. Something similar is what we were contemplating for lujvo 
lists, if I recall Nick's "spec" - which Cowan says he will be typing 
in. I have presuming Nick's "dictionary spec" as the consensus standard 
for the dictionary - not that anything was done on the dictionary between 
the time when we wrote the spec and the last LogFest).

> > However, inasmuch as the LLG did in fact have well-defined ideas in mind
> > when writing the gismu list, and simply failed in some few cases to
> > express themselves clearly, it behooves the LLG to correct these
> > misunderstandings and let the community know which competing
> > interpretation was intended.
>
>But the corrections cannot be considered part of the baseline, if we
>want to say that the list of gismu sitting on lojban.org is
>baselined, and not the list of gismu in lojbab's head.

I think you are misconstruing the baseline. I have to respect the wishes 
of the members that we hold to the baselines of the different pieces that 
are posted on the web site, but until we have a hard-copy dictionary, there 
are some who will not take baselining seriously (there are some who 
consider that the only proper baseline would be one entirely written in 
Lojban, but I don't think we have the wherewithal to do that yet).

There is no doubt that "the list of gismu sitting on lojban.org is 
baselined", but the question is whether "the list of gismu" includes the 
exact English text of the definitions. The 1994 baseline included only the 
words themselves, the keywords, and the rafsi assignments. There was 
general consensus that the 1997 baseline of the "language design" froze the 
place structures (I lost that fight), and that my job thereafter was 
editorial and production, and not making authoritative changes.

I posted earlier today that I thought that requiring consensus for changes 
proposed and documented in accordance with the "techfix"es that Cowan used 
in the period between baselining the formal grammar and baselining the 
reference grammar, is the proper way to constrain against major changes 
before the book is published. I believe that Cowan agrees with this. I 
don't think very much substantial change could pass the consensus test, but 
some clarification might. If people feel that the diff listing on my 
working copy of the gismu list exceeds a level of change acceptable to the 
consensus, then of course my version won't count.

Cowan notes that the changes that might be introduced by the sort of 
changes I have been making are an order of magnitude less than the 
ambiguity inherent to translation of the gismu list to a different 
language. If we have good translations suitable for inclusion in the 
baselined dictionary, by including them in the baseline (we'll worry about 
how to publish whatever we have when we have a document ready to publish 
that meets the spec), we free Lojban from its English-based limitations and 
make it easier for my original idea to be fulfilled which is that the 
meanings of the Lojban words be determined by usage and not the definitions 
in a particular language on a piece of paper.

http://balance.wiw.org/~jkominek/lojban/9703/msg00012.html
is the official baseline announcement, which says the following about the 
lexicon:
>LEXICON STATUS AND BASELINE
>
>While the Lojban language design is considered complete, the Lojban
>dictionary has not been completed. As a result, the existing lexicon
>(consisting of the gismu (root words), cmavo (structure words), rafsi
>(root affixes for compounding) assignments, and some lujvo (compound
>words)) is only loosely covered by this baseline. Preliminary forms of
>each segment of the dictionary are available electronically (via our FTP
>and WWW sites), making a design baseline feasible and meaningful at this
>time.
>
>The final baseline of the lexicon, and electronic publication of the
>dictionary is scheduled for 30 June 1997, approximately 6 months from
>now. Lexical items used in the reference grammar are of course frozen
>by the current publication and baselining of that document.
>
>The major purposes for the 6 month delay are
>
>- to provide an opportunity to verify the dictionary text for
>consistency with the rest of the baseline;
>
>- to standardize and clarify incomplete definitions of cmavo and lujvo.
>
>The amount of documentation change and editing required to complete the
>dictionary, which is the baseline description document for the Lojban
>lexicon covered therein, requires that we not call that document "final"
>at this time. The 6 month delay was therefore approved by the
>membership of LLG voting at LogFest (our annual meeting) last summer.

(And in fact the dictionary was not published on 30 June 1997, and the 
lexicon final baseline was never declared. I have been presuming that we 
need agreement that the dictionary is "done" in order to declare that 
baseline. "Done" will probably be defined as either the completion of the 
"mini-dictionary" when we have money to publish it in print, or the 
completion of whatever meets Nick's "dictionary spec" for on-line 
publication, whichever comes first.)

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