Subject: Re: [lojban] Arbitrary baseline violations (was: zo xruti xruti)

From: "Jorge Llambias" <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 08 Aug 2002 23:42:39 +0000

la xod cusku di'e

>This is something that belongs in commentary, rather than the official
>dictionary. No gismu list should deviate in place structure: that is too
>blatant a violation, and cannot be justified as difference of translation
>opinion!

i mi noroi troci le nu ringau lo fanva se jinvi le te frica
i ji'asai mi dunda le catni xe fanva noi lamji le se zmanei stura

i la jimc cusku di'e

>Pardon a lurker opening yap, but I agree with Xod's position. The
>difference between the transitive (agentive) and non-transitive argument
>format is quite major, and machine-based applications of Lojban (not to
>mention human users) will not be able to deal with ambiguity between them.

I doubt human users will have much trouble with it. English has
the same word for both and people seem to cope well. As for
machines, the programmer will feed it whichever they prefer anyway,
independently of what the official gi'uste says.

>In the last revision campaign before baseline, it was decided that
>non-transitive formats offered the most flexibility in usage, and many
>place structures were revised accordingly. It looks like this one got
>missed. It should be taken up *AFTER* *BASELINE* *EXPIRATION*. Then you'll
>have my "yes" vote.

But what will you use until the baseline expiration? If you don't
plan to use the language until after the baseline ends, you can
afford to wait, but for people who want to start using it before
that date (sometime in the misty future), it only makes sense to
provide them with all the information so that they can make an
informed decision as to what they prefer.

There won't be any changes in place structures after the baseline
expires unless the proposed structure is the one that most people
actually use. Any changes at that point will be acknowledgement
of the status quo, not any innovations.

I don't think this particular case is a big problem anyway. I
have always used xruti without agent and haven't suffered any
misunderstanding. At worst someone might think that I got the
place structure wrong, but the meaning is generally clear. It
will be an interesting case for the official dictionary though.
What should it contain, a place structure that everyone agrees
is more convenient but which happens not to be the one written
in the 1994 gi'uste, or the official place structure even though
nobody particularly likes it? Whatever is decided won't affect
my usage, but it might affect the usage of others.

la lojbab cusku di'e

>If there is substantial agreement that it is broken, then someone write it
>up using Cowan's "techfix" format, and we can ask Robin (or Jay on the
>wiki) to set up a place for these change proposals to be
>accumulated. We'll figure out how to decide officially what to do sometime
>before the dictionary is published, probably much sooner for this one since
>it affects translation of the gismu list.

That sounds reasonable, is there a sample format available somewhere?

Much more interesting than this will be the discussion when we start
writing the cmavo definitions. Then there won't be an issue of
baselined text since hopefully everyone agrees that the ma'oste
as it is cannot be the one to be published. BTW, the translation
of the ma'oste into Spanish is complete. I left a copy in
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/lojban/files/Dictionary/
for those of you who are allergic to cvs.
I tried to be as faithful as possible in the translation,
even when the definitions in English are wrong... :)

mu'o mi'e xorxes

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