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

From: Robert LeChevalier <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 10 Oct 2002 17:46:08 -0400

At 07:03 PM 10/10/02 +0000, Jorge Llambias wrote:
>la djorden cusku di'e
>
> > > {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.
> >
> >ka'enai is not an example of that. There are not enough speakers
> >of lojban for usage to decide *anything*.
>
>Ok. I meant that it is the closest thing we have towards usage
>deciding something against the baseline. It cannot be attributed
>to any single user, since everybody discovers it naturally by
>themselves.

The far older examples of this (which really isn't usage deciding, but just 
a common error that needs to be learned), are the needed ku in JOI 
connection of sumti, the embedded "la" in a name, and the omitted "cu" or 
other terminator before the selbri.

But most people accept that these are errors, even if the result is 
understood anyway. It soulds like you are claiming that ka'enai is being 
insisted on even by people who know it won't parse. That is a bad sign, IMHO.

> >So Lojbab needn't worry that your changes to the language will be
> >adopted (that is, unless you start writing learning materials ;P)
>
>I have written a few introductory pages in Spanish and posted
>them to the ideolengua mailing list (the Spanish version of conlang).
>Should I have submitted them to the LLG for censorship first? :)

The language design is in the public domain. What you "should" do and what 
you "must" do are two different things, and largely subject to your 
personal values, but also hopefully by what is necessary for the language 
to succeed. If the language is going to grow, I'd rather not see it schism 
before there are a thousand speakers. The propensity for people to 
factionalize worries me, and people insisting on idiolects that contradict 
the baseline do as well. But I've had many years to get used to you, 
Jorge; you're just another cross that Lojbab will have to bear %^)

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