From lojban-out@lojban.org Thu Oct 03 15:29:08 2002 Return-Path: X-Sender: lojban-out@lojban.org X-Apparently-To: lojban@yahoogroups.com Received: (EGP: mail-8_1_1_4); 3 Oct 2002 22:29:07 -0000 Received: (qmail 67545 invoked from network); 3 Oct 2002 22:29:03 -0000 Received: from unknown (66.218.66.218) by m9.grp.scd.yahoo.com with QMQP; 3 Oct 2002 22:29:03 -0000 Received: from unknown (HELO digitalkingdom.org) (204.152.186.175) by mta3.grp.scd.yahoo.com with SMTP; 3 Oct 2002 22:29:04 -0000 Received: from lojban-out by digitalkingdom.org with local (Exim 4.05) id 17xEW7-0004hW-00 for lojban@yahoogroups.com; Thu, 03 Oct 2002 15:32:23 -0700 Received: from digitalkingdom.org ([204.152.186.175] helo=chain) by digitalkingdom.org with esmtp (Exim 4.05) id 17xEVX-0004hB-00; Thu, 03 Oct 2002 15:31:47 -0700 Received: with ECARTIS (v1.0.0; list lojban-list); Thu, 03 Oct 2002 15:31:46 -0700 (PDT) Received: from manyas.bcc.bilkent.edu.tr ([139.179.30.24]) by digitalkingdom.org with esmtp (Exim 4.05) id 17xEVS-0004h1-00 for lojban-list@lojban.org; Thu, 03 Oct 2002 15:31:43 -0700 Received: from localhost (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by manyas.bcc.bilkent.edu.tr (Postfix) with ESMTP id 317C712B79 for ; Fri, 4 Oct 2002 01:28:06 +0300 (EEST) Received: from bilkent.edu.tr (ppp148.bcc.bilkent.edu.tr [139.179.111.148]) by manyas.bcc.bilkent.edu.tr (Postfix) with ESMTP id F281112B53 for ; Fri, 4 Oct 2002 01:28:02 +0300 (EEST) Message-ID: <3D9CC5A7.2080901@bilkent.edu.tr> Date: Fri, 04 Oct 2002 01:33:11 +0300 User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:0.9.8) Gecko/20020204 X-Accept-Language: en-us MIME-Version: 1.0 To: lojban-list@lojban.org Subject: [lojban] Re: a new kind of fundamentalism References: <5.1.0.14.0.20021003064510.03166ac0@pop.east.cox.net> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii; format=flowed X-Virus-Scanned: by AMaViS snapshot-20020300 X-archive-position: 1881 X-ecartis-version: Ecartis v1.0.0 Sender: lojban-list-bounce@lojban.org Errors-to: lojban-list-bounce@lojban.org X-original-sender: robin@bilkent.edu.tr Precedence: bulk X-list: lojban-list X-eGroups-From: Robin Turner From: Robin Turner Reply-To: robin@bilkent.edu.tr X-Yahoo-Group-Post: member; u=116389790 X-Yahoo-Profile: lojban_out I won't include Lojbab's post for space reasons, but it is fundamentally correct. There isn't such a sharp distinction between natural and constructed languages as one may think (Modern Turkish, Greek and Hebrew are examples of partially-constructed natlangs) but Lojbab's point that language drift occurs in different ways in conlangs and natlangs is valid. Natlangs evolve by people coining new usage without thinking about it - primarily in vocabulary, but also, more slowly, in syntax (e.g. the blurring of the distinction between stative and action verbs and quasi-Altaic final negative in Teenage American English - "I am so believing this, not"). Conlangs evolve by people having ideas about what the language should do - the closest parallel in natlangs was the move to Latinise English (e.g. by banning split infinitives). Lojban may eventually start to evolve in the way natlangs do, but that can only occur in a genuine way when there is a large body of quasi-native speakers, and this cannot happen if people start tinkering with the language. There may be some innovations that could be made in the grammar, and there may be call for some new gismu and cmavo (in fact, space has been left for that), but now is not the time. Personally, I have enough trouble keeping track of the the grammar that exists to even start eploring its more rarified possibilities, and I have never found a concept that I was unable to coin a lujvo for (admittedly, some of those lujvo were pretty long - but the same applied when I tried to translate "descriptive fallacy" into Turkish). On the subject of fundamentalism, the CLL is the ultimate authority on Lojban usage, not. The ultimate authority is the BNF grammar + the gismu list + the cmavo list. The CLL simply exists to make this understandable to carbon-based life-forms. Incidentally, I was talking to a philosophically-inclined computer scientist some years back about Lojban. His comment: "You've got a BNF grammar? That is so cool!" robin.tr -- "We do not imprison ourselves with laws, or impoverish ourselves with money" - Iain Banks Robin Tunrer IDMYO Bilkent Universitesi Ankara 06533 Turkey www.bilkent.edu.tr/~robin