Subject: Re: [lojban] Official Statement- LLG Board approves new baseline policy

From: Robert LeChevalier <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 29 Nov 2002 13:19:08 -0500

At 04:41 PM 11/29/02 +0100, Arnt Richard Johansen wrote:
>I must,
>however, ask the board for a clarification on the mandate of the baseline
>compliance committee, in particular the following paragraph:
>
> > In the long term, this committee should become an independent entity not
> > under the jurisdiction of the LLG Board or membership, although the Board
> > or members might retain the right of consent to proposed members of this
> > committee. The implementation of this independence should await the
> > capability of fluent language communication on all matters regarding the
> > language, since discussion in Lojban should be a fundamental principle for
> > the operation of such an independent standard entity.
>
>This seems to imply that the committee is *not* intended to be dissolved
>as soon as the 5 year freeze has ended.

In the context of the preceding paragraph, "long term" means only sometime 
after the baseline period starts, not after it ends. The point is that the 
byfy does not necessarily disappear when the baseline is declared, but will 
still have a role.

>What is the justification for
>keeping a prescriptive body alive after the design phase of the language
>has ended?

To encourage people to follow the prescribed design. Whether they do so, 
of course, will be up to them. After the baseline period ends, the byfy 
will have no more force than various guides for the proper writing of 
English, which has no formal standards body, but people still publish such 
style guides. Since the byfy at that point would be working in Lojban and 
it would be independent of LLG, whether it continues and what it does, will 
not be an LLG matter.

A likely service such a committee could serve would be as a review board 
wherein people unsure of the quality of their Lojban skills can have their 
writings vetted. Some people don't think they can speak a language well 
until they are told that they can. But no one will require this.

>What is the *current* stance of the LLG board towards natural evolution of
>Lojban once the design phase has ended?

The Board did not formally take a stance, but the policy in effect means 
that LLG will exercise no control over the language after the baseline 
ends, which would allow natural evolution.

Note that the design phase ends when the Baseline/freeze BEGINS, not when 
it ends.

>Has the express policy of the LLG ever *been* to leave the language to its
>speakers so as to let it evolve naturally?

That has been my policy. The statement says:
> >Presuming that an active community forms, further language evolution
> >will NOT take place by prescriptive changes produced by the Lojban
> >designers.

which implicitly suggests that evolution could occur, and that it will not 
be designer-prescriptive

> I was under the impression that
>this was the case, but now that I'm trying to find official quotes to back
>up this assumption, I can't find anything. Is the policy changed in this
>matter?

No.

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