Subject: Re: [lojban] word for "www" (was: Archive location.)

From: Robert LeChevalier <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 11 Sep 2002 16:59:32 -0400

At 11:56 AM 9/11/02 -0400, Invent Yourself wrote:
>On a parallel note, it's interesting that the people who were around when
>the notion of lujvo was being developed have a quite different
>understanding of the intent behind lujvo than those who came much later in
>the game. Poor communication?

Remember that the person who developed the idea of lujvo is dead, and most 
of the stuff wherein he defined the concept exists only on paper. Only 
Loglan 1 exists on line of JCB's defining documents
http://www.loglan.org/Loglan1/index.html
and his discussion of lujvo in that book basically says that they 
("complexes" in his words) are words that are neither "primitive" (gismu) 
nor borrowings (fu'ivla) and which have a "defining metaphor" (i.e. tanru), 
and he states that there is a preference for making a lujvo over making a 
borrowing if one is plausible.

Thus discussion of "Zipfean" influences on lujvomaking require one to go 
back to the pre-Loglan 1 documents, and to discussions thereof in "The 
Loglanist". Some of these kinds of discussions may be in JL and in the 
early years of Lojban List.

JCB placed far less importance on predictability of place structures; the 
concept of dikyjvo rules was first suggested by Jim Carter in 1992-3 and 
elaborated by Nick at that time. Both the predictability of patterns of 
meaning and avoidance of malglico were things JCB placed little importance 
on, which is why he made a lujvo equivalent to nanmygasnu for the concept 
"to man a ship". Predictability of meaning was pretty much a Lojban 
innovation, with a limited adoption by TLI thereof in 1990
http://www.loglan.org/Articles/complex-making.html

I think that the attitude in recent years has been rather than to force a 
particular concept of lujvo on Lojban users, that we should stick to our 
principles and simply encourage people to use the language. Something that 
gets expressed as a lujvo then is a lujvo. Thus a Helsem-ism is as much 
Lojban as a dikyjvo. I intended to do no "weeding" of usage, and my 
standard for the dictionary was always intended to be to try to include 
words of all kinds but especially to include those that had met some 
arbitrary level of usage (the requirement being that they had to be 
well-formed and have a definable place structure).

If a print dictionary has a smaller set of words than we have definitions 
for because of the costs of print, I still intend that there exist an 
online dictionary which will be unabridged and possibly continuously 
evolving. Whether Jay's project will meet the needs for the online version 
I can't say, since I've never quite grasped what he is trying for.

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