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 17:28:27 -0400

At 02:18 PM 10/10/02 +0000, Jorge Llambias wrote:
>la lojbab cusku di'e
> >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.
>
>Do you have a concrete example that causes you such concern?

NO, because I admittedly have NOT paid much attention to usage.

>Why would it be a problem that something I use becomes accepted?

You misunderstand. I mean that your usage being some humongous percentage 
of all usage on line, if we look for instances of some of the features of 
the language, especially the more esoteric ones, a high percentage if not 
all of them will be your usages and no one else's. I am worried that 
people will say "usage has decided", based on a couple dozen usages, all by 
Jorge. That is NOT an suggestion that the idea is bad merely because it 
has come from you (indeed the fact that you have tested something gives it 
added credibility when it is understood), but rather that we need lots of 
usage by lots of people of the features being debated, before we can say 
that usage has decided anything. Now maybe that usage is occurring. But 
my perception (which could be false) based on the Alice translation, is 
that you are still writing 90% of the Lojban text that is actually being 
written. There is a lot more such text than there was 5 years ago, and a 
lot more people are writing it, but whereas others write sentences and 
paragraphs, you write multi-pages.

This is good - it tests the language thoroughly. It can often prove that 
something does or doesn't work. It doesn't much prove that something is 
"best".

>Are you similarly afraid of innovations by other users of the language?

I'm afraid of innovations contrary to the baseline by anyone. I accept 
that they will happen (and sometimes they turn out to be good things), but 
it is a reluctant acceptance. I enjoy innovations that are NOT contrary to 
the baseline.

> > "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.
>
>{ka'enai} would seem to be the best example of that, not only
>against CLL but also against the baselined grammar, and yet used
>by many people in many contexts.

I suspect that it arose through ignorance, since there is a way to say 
it. You and And seem to be the primary innovators who KNOW that you are 
acting against the baseline.

> >As long as it is his
> >private writing, he can then decide whether to listen to them.
>
>All of my writing is my private writing, isn't it?

I said that in the context of the supposedly collaborative nature of the 
Alice translation.

> >Barring
> >Alice being called a Jorge-only project (which may indeed be happening),
> >being dialectal seems wrong.
>
>It would be unfair to the other three contributors to call it
>a Jorge-only project. Adam did a fair bit of work (about a
>chapter and a half) and Pierre and Robin did significant parts
>of another chapter, though I heavily edited those. Also Pierre
>did extensive revision of all the work. But I don't mind it
>having big red warning signs "DANGER - EDITED BY XORXES" all
>over it if that makes you happy.

%^)

It doesn't matter whose name is on it. It is whether it represents an 
attempt by a group to write in accord with a common standard or whether the 
final result represents the idiosyncrasy of one writer (whether it be you 
or someone else).

Please don't take offense - I LIKE that you use the language a lot. But 
your choices, often intentionally against the standard, scare me.

> >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.
>
>Could you remind us who the 7 members are? Is this 7-people consensus
>going to be representative of the opinions of the community at large?

Nick, xod, pc, Cowan, Nora, myself, and Shawn Lasseter. Most of the debate 
has been between xod and Nick and myself. The discussions on the list 
regarding fundamentalism and other things, though not instigated by the 
separate discussion among Board members, has contributed to that 
discussion, so in a sense everyone is being listened to.

The "consensus" that we come up with will be put to the community and will 
ultimately be subjected to some sort of ratification by the members, 
probably at the next annual meeting. So we are discussing the subject as 
representatives of the community, and not so much our own interests.

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