Subject: [lojban] Re: The Future Jbotreya (was: Why linguists might be interested in Lojban (was: a new kind of fundamentalism))

From: Invent Yourself <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 9 Oct 2002 12:52:06 -0400 (EDT)

On Wed, 9 Oct 2002, Robert LeChevalier wrote:

> At 11:12 PM 10/8/02 -0400, Invent Yourself wrote:
> >On Tue, 8 Oct 2002, Robert LeChevalier wrote:
> > > You can detect incompleteness.
> >
> >Is Lojban incomplete?
>
> Yes. The jboske discussions that result from "How do you say X"?" indicate
> this. (Not the fact that they exist, but the fact that often there is no
> ready answer.)

Aren't you conflating the incompletion of the language with the ignorance
of the students? Or are you using some tricky philosophical result such as
"if a language is defined on paper and no one speaks it, is it really a
language?"

> > > In terms of current Lojban, my guess is that a level 4 person, when
> > > confronted by ANY "how to say it" question that is worthy of weeks of
> > > jboske debate would know the answer off the top of his head, and it would
> > > be unarguably correct. (A level 5 speaker could come up with multiple ways
> > > to say it and explain the pros and cons and nuances of each in terms that
> > > everyone would recognize as unarguably correct
> >
> >Isn't it exciting to imagine such a thing?
>
> Yes. But I don't expect to see it in this generation.

That's not the spirit!

-- 
Before Sept. 11 there was not the present excited talk about a strike
on Iraq. There is no evidence of any connection between Iraq and that
act of terrorism. Why would that event change the situation?
-- Howard Zinn