From lojbab@lojban.org Sat Oct 05 12:42:37 2002 Return-Path: X-Sender: lojbab@lojban.org X-Apparently-To: lojban@yahoogroups.com Received: (EGP: mail-8_2_2_0); 5 Oct 2002 19:42:37 -0000 Received: (qmail 67836 invoked from network); 5 Oct 2002 19:42:37 -0000 Received: from unknown (66.218.66.217) by m14.grp.scd.yahoo.com with QMQP; 5 Oct 2002 19:42:37 -0000 Received: from unknown (HELO lakemtao04.cox.net) (68.1.17.241) by mta2.grp.scd.yahoo.com with SMTP; 5 Oct 2002 19:42:36 -0000 Received: from lojban.lojban.org ([68.100.206.153]) by lakemtao04.cox.net (InterMail vM.5.01.04.05 201-253-122-122-105-20011231) with ESMTP id <20021005194236.HPPT1315.lakemtao04.cox.net@lojban.lojban.org> for ; Sat, 5 Oct 2002 15:42:36 -0400 Message-Id: <5.1.0.14.0.20021005152209.03248b50@pop.east.cox.net> X-Sender: rlechevalier@pop.east.cox.net X-Mailer: QUALCOMM Windows Eudora Version 5.1 Date: Sat, 05 Oct 2002 15:44:53 -0400 To: "lojban" Subject: Re: [lojban] prescription & description (was: RE: Re: a new kind of fundamentalism In-Reply-To: References: <200210031456.KAA05429@mail2.reutershealth.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"; format=flowed From: Robert LeChevalier X-Yahoo-Group-Post: member; u=1120595 X-Yahoo-Profile: lojbab At 02:51 PM 10/5/02 +0100, And Rosta wrote: >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'. Lojban "prescription" to me is any statement about how the language works or should work that is not based on specific experience that it HAS worked that way (when used by competent users of the language). I would distinguish this from "speculation" ("what would/might it mean if X were said in Y context", or the more common "how would/might I say Z" (for non-Lojban expression Z). The primary place where people run into the prescriptive/descriptive dichotomy is in a dictionary. A prescriptive dictionary would define the words in accordance with the language design, and not care whether the language has actually been used that way. A descriptive dictionary would avoid including any word without an actual usage cite, and the definition is interpolated from that actual usage. (In the case of lujvo, this would mean that most lujvo would have only 1 or 2 place; jvajvo are inherently prescriptive.) A descriptive dictionary would include definitions that covered actual usage even if they don't match the prescription. xruti would therefore be polysemous, having xorxes's place structure as well as the standard one. Fully descriptive would merely say which was used more, not that one was considered "standard". A prescriptive dictionary of Lojban would never show polysemy, because Lojban words are not supposed to display same. Since the Lojban design avoided prescribing semantics; I am not much bothered by semantics discussions, except when they might actually contradict some wording used in the baseline documents (including CLL). By policy I can rule all such semantics pronouncements as "speculations", as defined above. >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. I don't think that is true for dictionaries. >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. Which is precisely why we are not ready to move from prescription to description. There is not yet enough usage to "let usage decide" most questions. >For another thing, >the question of which dialect of Lojban is 'Standard Lojban' is >not settled, Any dialect that strictly matches the baseline documents is "standard" regardless of its semantics properties OTHER THAN what is defined in the baseline documents. >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'. I don't know that I've called any discussion "prescriptive". Discussion isn't by nature prescriptive. lojbab -- lojbab lojbab@lojban.org 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