Subject: [lojban] Re: a new kind of fundamentalism

From: Robert LeChevalier <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 04 Oct 2002 09:58:58 -0400

At 10:32 AM 10/4/02 +0200, Lionel Vidal wrote:
>Robert LeChevalier:
> >>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.
> >But it remains grammatically correct. It may not successfully communicate
> >(because of the semantics issue) but it isn't "wrong".
>
>Ok, it depends of what you mean by 'correct'. It sounds funny to me
>nonetheless, like a sign of very twisted ego, to be more sensitive of the
>grammatical correctness perennity of one's writing or saying, than to the
>intented meaning.

People are sensitive to criticism, and learners get more than most. "I 
don't understand you" is not as insulting as "you said that wrong", in any 
language (for one thing it implies that the failure may be on the part of 
the listener and not the speaker).

I have long believed that, other than accent, children's advantage in 
learning new languages is illusionary. The real problem adults have is 
that they are self-conscious about mistakes, and that they place higher 
stakes on correctness of communication for both status determination and 
information explain. A kid can say things a little wrong, be understood 
anyway (whether or not he is corrected) and move on. And adult finds any 
error or failure a little frustrating.

> >Finally and most importantly for one key Lojbanic purpose, linguists
> >respect such usage-based norms and evolution and do not much respect
> >prescriptivism. So long as prescribers have significant clout over the
> >language, we will have trouble gaining respect as a language (and
> >community) worthy of serious linguistic investigation.
>
>I agree, precription is too strong a word in the case of jboske though,
>proposal sounds better to me.

Even proposal has a problem, in that it implies a change. "Idealization" 
is better, especially in that many of the ideas discussed by the jboske are 
really things that should go into a 2nd generation Lojban created from 
scratch by those already fluent. Or even better: "analysis" - analyzing 
how Lojban differs from an ideal logicalization of language is 
linguistically interesting yet does not imply that the language design 
people are using is "wrong" or that it is liable to change as a result of 
the analysis.

>The point was that you seem afraid that the tinkering of some would
>prevent newcomers,

Yes.

>and yet you speak of an already existing
>community of users large enough to make the language evolve
>by usage (oh, sorry, that was Invent Yourself's argument).

And indeed he and I disagree on this. I think that the community of users 
is still far too small and too non-fluent to "let the language go" 
completely, though we have definitely been moving in that direction. When 
the current volume of Lojban List (and the technicality of the discussion) 
can be maintained entirely in Lojban, then we likely have such a community.

>IMO, in Lojban actual status and usage, tinkering is quite harmless,
>and as was said earlier "inconsequential".

We want it to be inconsequential, and it is becoming less of a worry than 
it was 5 years ago. In addition, the debaters are becoming a little more 
aware of the effect of saying something in CLL is "wrong", and thus choose 
more politic wordings.

>Invent Yourself:
> >There are students who are using the language at a low level, and there
> >are people who have publically stated their refusal to learn the language
> >towards fluency. They decide themselves, not me!
>
>Ok, but what is the link between that decision and the relevance of
>their proposals?

The argument is that someone who does not really know the language fluently 
cannot really understand the impact of their proposals, and indeed may be 
proposing something that is already built into the language. Some of And's 
cmavo proposals have turned out to be things that are already in the 
language (though they may take a couple of words to say what he would like 
to say in one word, the capability is at least already in the language).

>Besides, this is highly subjective topic: I remenber
>And writing he was more interested with ingeneering than fluency
>and yet his recent postings in Lojban show nice lojban usage.

And has certainly grown %^)

If you read his postings of 5 or more years ago, however, you will find 
that he was posting without that mastery of usage, and he left an 
impression that he is still living down.

> >But the more contributions come from outside the using body,
> >the more it is engineered, and the less it is evolving "naturally". Of
> >course, when a language is barely in existence, and nobody yet uses it,
> >only one of those options is possible.
>
>There is no such thing like "natural" evolution in linguistic. Even the
>definition or the pace of what you call "natural" drift is very variable,
>from a couple years (in some pidgin creoles) to centuries to become
>visible to users.

Even so, the kind of linguistic evolution that is "accepted" by linguists 
tends to be that not consciously imposed. More importantly, the kind of 
linguistic evolution accepted by speakers tends to be that which occurs 
within the community, whereas outsiders imposing (or even suggesting) ideas 
bear the negative associations of "imperialist". How do the French 
(especially the Academy) feel about English "suggestions" being 
incorporated into French?

>In a sense, everything is "natural" and any user has a "prescription power"
>on its language, consciously or not.

Yes. But should NON-users have a prescriptive power through their 
analysis, as opposed to their usage?

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