From a.rosta@lycos.co.uk Sat Oct 05 06:51:37 2002 Return-Path: X-Sender: lojban-out@lojban.org X-Apparently-To: lojban@yahoogroups.com Received: (EGP: mail-8_2_2_0); 5 Oct 2002 13:51:37 -0000 Received: (qmail 85276 invoked from network); 5 Oct 2002 13:51:37 -0000 Received: from unknown (66.218.66.218) by m4.grp.scd.yahoo.com with QMQP; 5 Oct 2002 13:51:37 -0000 Received: from unknown (HELO digitalkingdom.org) (204.152.186.175) by mta3.grp.scd.yahoo.com with SMTP; 5 Oct 2002 13:51:37 -0000 Received: from lojban-out by digitalkingdom.org with local (Exim 4.05) id 17xpOe-0003xJ-00 for lojban@yahoogroups.com; Sat, 05 Oct 2002 06:55:08 -0700 Received: from digitalkingdom.org ([204.152.186.175] helo=chain) by digitalkingdom.org with esmtp (Exim 4.05) id 17xpO0-0003wo-00; Sat, 05 Oct 2002 06:54:28 -0700 Received: with ECARTIS (v1.0.0; list lojban-list); Sat, 05 Oct 2002 06:54:27 -0700 (PDT) Received: from mailbox-7.st1.spray.net ([212.78.202.107]) by digitalkingdom.org with esmtp (Exim 4.05) id 17xpNo-0003wM-00 for lojban-list@lojban.org; Sat, 05 Oct 2002 06:54:17 -0700 Received: from oemcomputer (host213-121-68-128.surfport24.v21.co.uk [213.121.68.128]) by mailbox-7.st1.spray.net (Postfix) with ESMTP id BF021254A5 for ; Sat, 5 Oct 2002 15:50:12 +0200 (DST) To: Subject: [lojban] Re: a new kind of fundamentalism Date: Sat, 5 Oct 2002 14:51:51 +0100 Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" X-Priority: 3 (Normal) X-MSMail-Priority: Normal X-Mailer: Microsoft Outlook IMO, Build 9.0.2416 (9.0.2910.0) Importance: Normal In-Reply-To: <3D9CC5A7.2080901@bilkent.edu.tr> X-MimeOLE: Produced By Microsoft MimeOLE V5.00.2615.200 X-archive-position: 1916 X-ecartis-version: Ecartis v1.0.0 Sender: lojban-list-bounce@lojban.org Errors-to: lojban-list-bounce@lojban.org X-original-sender: a.rosta@lycos.co.uk Precedence: bulk X-list: lojban-list From: "And Rosta" Reply-To: a.rosta@lycos.co.uk X-Yahoo-Group-Post: member; u=122260811 X-Yahoo-Profile: andjamin Robin.tr: > 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. Are there any current examples of actual tinkerings that present an actual impediment to the emergence of a large body of quasi- native speakers? > 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. Doubtless this is true for the Naturalist school and its dialect; I think we can all agree on that much. [in another message: > Think HTML. Microsoft and Netscape came close to destroying HTML as a > standard. As I understand it, HTML is considered to not be a very good standard, so its demise would be a good thing in some ways. > Let's play around with what we already have, then cautiously propose > some changes much later, when we have a large community who are familiar > enough with "standard Lojban" to propose changes based on informed > opinion, and a history of trial and error in using the language (count > me out on both counts!). Effectively nobody is currently proposing changes that conflict with the baseline. Here and there people point out desirable changes (e.g. changing {rei} to {xei}), but not with any attempt to get the change made official. > 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). The (non)availability of semantically equivalent lujvo is hardly ever a criterion for evaluating the utility of cmavo. > 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. Technically, the BNF 'grammar' is more like a grammaticality-checker than a true grammar. That is, it will tell you whether or not a string is well-formed Lojban, but it won't tell you what it means. --And.