From nessus@free.fr Thu Oct 03 12:03:03 2002 Return-Path: X-Sender: nessus@free.fr X-Apparently-To: lojban@yahoogroups.com Received: (EGP: mail-8_1_1_4); 3 Oct 2002 19:03:01 -0000 Received: (qmail 39611 invoked from network); 3 Oct 2002 19:00:16 -0000 Received: from unknown (66.218.66.218) by m9.grp.scd.yahoo.com with QMQP; 3 Oct 2002 19:00:16 -0000 Received: from unknown (HELO mel-rto2.wanadoo.fr) (193.252.19.254) by mta3.grp.scd.yahoo.com with SMTP; 3 Oct 2002 19:00:18 -0000 Received: from mel-rta7.wanadoo.fr (193.252.19.61) by mel-rto2.wanadoo.fr (6.5.007) id 3D89D99900817EDC; Thu, 3 Oct 2002 21:00:17 +0200 Received: from ftiq2awxk6 (193.248.155.43) by mel-rta7.wanadoo.fr (6.5.007) id 3D8011E600CA4897; Thu, 3 Oct 2002 21:00:16 +0200 Message-ID: <001d01c26b10$de5ed1c0$2b9bf8c1@ftiq2awxk6> To: "lojban" , "Robert LeChevalier" References: <5.1.0.14.0.20021003113205.031bfec0@pop.east.cox.net> Subject: Re: [lojban] Re: a new kind of fundamentalism Date: Thu, 3 Oct 2002 21:11:56 +0200 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Priority: 3 X-MSMail-Priority: Normal X-Mailer: Microsoft Outlook Express 5.50.4133.2400 X-MimeOLE: Produced By Microsoft MimeOLE V5.50.4133.2400 From: "Lionel Vidal" X-Yahoo-Group-Post: member; u=47678341 X-Yahoo-Profile: cmacinf Robert LeChevalier: > While the Board is debating the question right now, my (abbreviated) > opinion is that the grammar, as defined in CLL has long been considered > complete. You said earlier that most lojbanist tend to be perfectionists who do not like to ever be incorrect. IMO the grammar is not complete enough to allow that yet. As many discussions and recognised bad or incorrect usages show, semantic ambiguity, especially in the chapter on logic, but also in some other area (quantifiers, tense...) still prevents a truly non ambiguous usage: what you say today is likely to remain grammatically correct tomorrow, but the intended meaning may become quite incorrect when some issues are solved. > I understand that Esperanto has multiple ideologies on certain aspects of the > language, but that while they are apparently significant for the people who > argue them enough that they bother to do so, the different ideologies are > largely "inconsequential" to the learner. Indeed. That was the very point I tried to express in my previous post. Jboske tinkering or specific usage has no negative impact on new learners. On the contrary this tinkering may help him to better understand some difficult points of the language, even (or mainly) while disagreeing with the proposed changes. And for those not interested in tinkering, it's simple enough to ignore the thread. But I agree that, to avoid what And calls "a tiresomely perennial source of conflict and occasional acrimony", we should discipline ourselves and use the appropriate list (something I admit to never have done). > Nick has suggested to me that there will likely come to exist multiple > dialects of Lojban, with a colloquial one and an academic one the obvious > ones that are forming. The (at least) two dialects as they are developing > share the same grammar, and the same lexicon (with some experimental > cmavo), and the meanings of the words are compatible enough that > communication between speakers of the two dialects occurs (and indeed many > speakers use different dialects at different times); we can live with this. This is a de-facto situation in multi-national esperanto meetings: because of cultural differences and/or native languages inprint, usage may greatly differ but communication is always possible, and if not, simple explanations usually suffice to enlight participants. And again, this is not a default, but a desirable feature, as it is paradoxally always a source of better long-term understanding. > In the absence of the Elephant, I think that the jboske debates are best > conducted by creating a pseudo-elephant using the wiki. I may have missed something. Could someone explain what is this Elephant? A kind of DB for memos? -- Lionel