Subject: Re: [lojban] Usage deciding (was: RE: Re: [Announcement] The Alice Translation Has Moved And Changed

From: Robert LeChevalier <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 10 Oct 2002 00:26:08 -0400

At 04:09 AM 10/10/02 +0100, And Rosta wrote:
>Lojbab:
> > > In saying this, I mean only to point out that what
> > >xorxes does was formerly generally held to constitute Right and
> > >Proper behaviour of the good lojbanist.
> >
> > I think you misunderstand what was held as "Right and Proper".
>
>Before Jboske and the wiki, innovative proposals would be posted to
>Lojban list, and you would reply firstly that the publicly visible
>existence of the proposals scares off potential learners, and
>secondly that it is pointless to simply advertise proposals on the
>list if one wanted to get them adopted and that the only way to get
>them adopted would be through force of usage. Nobody took this to
>heart more than xorxes.

OK.

>So yes, the Right and Proper conduct was held to be using the
>language in its official dialect warts and all, rather than in a
>cleaned-up dialect. But failing that, the Right and Proper way
>to propagate a cleaned-up dialect was to use it rather than
>advertise it.

OK also. But if people disagree that it is cleaner, and indeed fail to 
understand because they thinbk it means something else, which is the case 
here, this suggests that the dialectal usage has NOT been accepted.

I have long been afraid that Jorge's using an innovation might become 
accepted as a viable standard merely because he has used it a lot. "Let 
usage decide" was meant to refer to collective usage by many people in many 
contexts, so that the usage itself becomes normative rather than 
exceptional. Jorge is free to advocate his ideas through usage, but has to 
be prepared for people noticing and objecting. As long as it is his 
private writing, he can then decide whether to listen to them. Barring 
Alice being called a Jorge-only project (which may indeed be happening), 
being dialectal seems wrong. (Hmm. I wonder how we address translating 
"real" natlang dialect, like a Mark Twain story.)

>I was going to say that I think you've changed your tune, but in fact
>I think you played two not quite compatible tunes. I can't face the
>ordeal of trawling the archives to prove my point, but I would lay
>money that you posted messages that in context at least strongly
>implied that someone disatisfied with Official Lojban should not
>whinge or clamour for change but should instead use an unofficial
>dialect and let it vie with other dialects in the arena of usage.

But the collective translations aren't supposed to be one person's work 
(even though in fact they tend to turn out that way), which is why this 
became an issue. An editor is not a user, and normally editors attempt to 
standardize the language from a writer's dialectal usages.

>Whatever criteria you use to measure consensus must be peculiar.
>There was something approximating a consensus that there should be
>a baseline, but not necessarily on the reasons for it existing
>(the extremes would be that the baseline is an absolute unchallengeable
>definition of the language and that the baseline is a vacuous PR
>gimmick). If it is true that content of the baseline ever represented a 
>snapshot
>of what the consensus was at some point in time, that
>point in time must have antedated the baseline by several years,
>for in the five years prior to the baseline I don't recall there
>being any attempt to establish whether there was consensus. Rather,
>the content of the baseline was presented as a fait accompli that,
>by virtue of being a realization of antique Loglan goals, was immune
>from the need to be subject to consensus.

The Board is attempting at this moment to wrestle with a clear statement of 
baseline policy and making progress. I don't want to try to argue the 
issue in multiple fora. It is proving hard enough with only 7 of us, 
though consensus may be starting to win out.

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