Subject: prescription & description (was: RE: Re: a new kind of fundamentalism

From: "And Rosta" <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 5 Oct 2002 14:51:48 +0100

John:
> And Rosta scripsit:
> 
> > As I've said to you before, I can't make any sense of the
> > descriptive/prescriptive dichotomy when it is applied to an invented
> > language that is still in the process of coming into being. So while
> > I agree that Lojban is not like a natlang, it follows, pe'i, that the
> > descriptive/prescriptive distinction is largely vacuous.
> 
> I don't grasp what you don't understand. From the viewpoint of Lojban
> Central looking outwards, it can do one of two things: say how people
> should use Lojban, or say how (in its experience) people do actually use
> Lojban. For Lojban Central you can substitute any other single point.

You correctly characterize hardcore prescription, as involving
statements of the form "one should (not) say X", but there is virtually 
no hardcore prescription in Lojban. Even in English it is largely
restricted to retired colonels writing to complain to broadcasters
and newspapers.

Less hardcore in English are statements of the form "You should write
in Standard English" but there is not even much of this in Lojban
culture either, and what prescriptivism of this sort that there is
tends to come from the Fundamentalists.

The crucial case is Lojban analogues of statements of the form
"X is (not) Standard English", which to people who do not ordinarily
speak Std E may feel like prescriptions. It is statements like this
that Lojbab calls 'prescription'. Such statements are usually
descriptive yet are not usually based directly on usage. In practise,
descriptive statements about a language are hardly ever based on usage.
If the statement is made by an accomplished speaker of the language, 
they are based on the speaker's own knowledge. If the statement is 
made by someone who is not an accomplished speaker, they have 
consulted accomplished speakers and asked questions like "What does
X mean?", "Does X mean the same as Y?", "Can you sensically say
X?". Pure usage issues tend to feature only in grammars written
for foreign learners, who not only want to learn the rules, but 
also want to learn to speak/write so that they don't sound like
foreigners. So when it comes down to the statement "X is (not) part
of Language Y", it is descriptive if based on the idiolects
of Y's speakers, and prescriptive if not.

But it's here that the applicability to Lojban breaks down. For
one thing, Lojban does not have a body of accomplished speakers;
we are all learners of a foreign language. For another thing, 
the question of which dialect of Lojban is 'Standard Lojban' is
not settled, so that even if we did have accomplished speakers
of a dialect of Lojban, we could not take it for granted that
their dialect was Standard. The fact is, for an invented
language, the counterpart of description of natlangs is invention
or stipulatiion.

> I can say descriptively "And's translation of 'The People United' uses
> ka'enai". 

That would be a description of my usage. It would not be a 
description of Standard Lojban.

> Or I can say prescriptively, "And ought not to use ka'enai,
> for the Lojban grammar does not allow it."

That is indeed prescriptive, but such statements are rare. Some
Fundamentalists do say "You should not use X, because it conflicts
with the baseline or (as with experimental cmavo) in some other
way falls outside what is specifically sanctioned by the baseline".
And I sometimes say "You should use sentences whose meaning is
the same as the meaning you intend to communicate". But none of
these sorts of statement dominate the discussions that Lojbab
calls 'prescriptive'.

The statements that do dominate the discussions are of the form
"X is (Standard) Lojban" or "X should be (Standard) Lojban, even
though the matter has not yet been decided" or "X should be
(Standard) Lojban, even though it conflicts with what has been
decided". These are not statements that attempt to police usage;
they are acts of invention and stipulation, the invented language's 
counterpart of description.

> This is really no different from the case of "'Different' is commonly
> completed by 'than'" vs. "'Different than' is an obnoxious barbarism."

In some ways it's different, in other ways it isn't. 

I think it's more instructive to compare the following:

(1) "People commonly say 'We was'"
(2) "'We was' is not Standard English"
(3) "You should never deviate from Standard English"
(4) "'Less people' is bad English (or: not Standard E)"

(1) is clearly descriptive. (3) is clearly prescriptive. 

(2) is descriptive. (4) is prescriptive, because it conflicts
with the reality of the idiolects of Std E speakers. For an
invented language that has not been creolized into a natlang,
this distinction between (2) and (4) cannot be drawn, and
all grammatical statements are necessarily of this type
indistinguishable between (2) and (4).

> I also don't see what the completion of the enterprise has to do with it.
> The more incomplete the language definition, the fewer the number of
> prescriptive statements available. I cannot say "One ought to use 'fyt'
> to mean '1' in Piat", because I don't know the Piat numerals.

This is true. The relevance of the completedness comes when you
want to say how to say '1' in Piat. There is no grammar you can
consult. There is no body of native speakers you can consult. 
You have to invent the way to say '1', or in some similar way 
'discover' it within the internal logic of the language. You're
being neither descriptive nor prescriptive (because you're not
trying to police usage or making statements that conflict with
the true facts of the Piat language).

Xod:
> > #If it happens by prescription (and most of the jboske discussion is
> > #inherently prescriptive), then it is NOT like a natlang.
> >
> > As I've said to you before, I can't make any sense of the 
> > descriptive/prescriptive dichotomy when it is applied to an invented 
> > language that is still in the process of coming into being. So while I 
> > agree that Lojban is not like a natlang, it follows, pe'i, that the 
> > descriptive/prescriptive distinction is largely vacuous.
> 
> The difference is Usage! We call it definitely prescription when the
> authors are not users of the language. Except for Jorge, the jboskeists
> stubbornly refuse to drive the cars they enjoy tinkering with. If there is
> a distinction or a split, it is singularly the fault of those people and
> not the jboka'e, who always welcome more speakers, especially ones so
> educated and capable.

This is all reasonable enough, except that calling it 'prescription'
doesn't make it so. You may wish to have a term to denote statements
made by nonusers (or, shall we say, infrequent users? or people
whose quantity of usage is only a tiny proportion of the quantity
of their discussing?), but it is unhelpful to expropriate for this
purpose a term that usually has a different meaning.

> I also think that proposed conventions and cmavo are received more
> smoothly from people who have encountered troubles during their own usage.

They're received more smoothly from people who have used the language
a lot. A lot of my proposals arise from troubles encountered during
my own usage. One paragraph or even one sentence is often enough to
make a trouble evident.

> Although the process of jboske may require high-level concepts, the
> resolutions (singular or multiple) are consistently never reduced to
> comprehensibility for the unwashed slobs. This convinces naljboskepre that
> jboske is a fruitless waste of time. Can you blame them?

No, and I for one don't blame them at all. I just object to naljboskepre
unconstructively participating in jboske by making contributions that
say jboske is a fruitless waste of time. 

As for reducing resolutions to comprehensibility, this needs to be
done through cooperation by both sides. Those trying to explain would
have to strive to make the resolutions comprehensible, and those 
trying to understand would have to strive to understand and make the
effort to ask for clarifications where necessary. 

The naljboskepre should also realize that jboske results in greater
understanding but not always greater agreement. It is not a factory
for making decisions or even resolutions. Resolutions emerge just
when the greater understanding happens to lead to greater agreement.

--And.