Subject: Re: [lojban] Comments on the New Policy

From: Robert LeChevalier <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 29 Nov 2002 22:36:00 -0500

At 12:42 AM 11/30/02 +0000, And Rosta wrote:
>I support the great majority of Nick's views and the new
>policy document. Below are the points where I disagree to
>a lesser or greater extent.
>
>A. Experimental cmavo
>1. The shape of a cmavo should not determine whether it is
>officially documented. If a sufficient number of people agree
>that there should be a cmavo with meaning M, and if there are
>no available CVV cmavo for M, then N should be assigned to a
>CVVV cmavo and documented.

I think we should use the CVV and then the xVV (the reason for reserving 
xVV seems to be moot given the wide use of CVVV for experimental cmavo 
these days) before we start assigning words from CVVV.

>2. Many debates about the meaning of a cmavo, C1, come down to
>whether the cmavo should have meaning M1 or M2, where both M1
>and M2 are legitmate, reasonable, desirable, etc. The easiest
>way to settle these debates is to pick one meaning (M1) for
>C1 and assign the other meaning (M2) to a spare cmavo, C2
>(which of necessity must be a CVVV) cmavo.

It need not necessarily be CVVV. There are a dozen or more free CVVs and 
almost 30 xVVs available.

>If the current
>notion that CVV cmavo are official and CVVV are unofficial
>continues, then the debate will not be solved so easily, since
>any text using C2 will fail to parse, and many Lojbanists will
>dismiss it as nonstandard or experimental Lojban.

Many Lojbanists will indeed dismiss experimental Lojban. Others will use 
it. Whether experimental cmavo will parse depends on the sophistication of 
the parser. I suspect it would not be hard to have a parser which queries 
the user for the selma'o of an experimental word, which means that the only 
problems would be experimental cmavo that do not fit any standard selma'o.

>The solution is to make both C1 and C2 official and documented.

Believe it or not, I agree with you entirely and proposed the identical 
solution, which is allowed for in the Board's policy.

>3. The baseline should accept that future study and usage of
>Lojban will reveal the need not only for additional fu'ivla but
>also for additional cmavo (and perhaps even additional gismu and
>rafsi, as witness the problematic absence of a gismu for "intend").
>The baseline should assign existing cmavo a clear definite meaning,
>but should not be taken as permanently defining what is and isn't
>a standard official cmavo.

Then there is no freeze in the language design, and some people have 
indicated that they will refuse to learn a language that is not frozen. It 
is true that simple additions are the easiest form of change for a learner 
to accommodate, but any set of words that is expandible is not frozen (and 
if the changes are not strictly managed, then the list is not even baselined).

If the language design is so incomplete that we cannot go for even 5 years 
without adding fundamental structure words to the language, then we have to 
admit that the language design is just that: incomplete. After all, how 
many structure words have been added to English in the last *50* years?

>4. If the only objection to the above is that it should be possible
>to tell from a cmavo's shape whether it is experimental or official,
>then a portion of CVVV cmavo space should be defined as official
>(but not necessarily used) and the rest as experimental, just as
>is currently done with CVV space.

If that were made necessary by the lack of sufficient CVV space, the byfy 
has the power to do so - that would be a "fix" to some specific problem - a 
lack of cmavo space to resolve a definition question. But I don't think 
there are enough cmavo in question (I hope there aren't) that this would be 
needed.

In the long-term, after the 5 years, what you say will be necessary. Usage 
will determine that certain experimental cmavo should be retained because 
of their usage, and if that is the case, then the usage itself will mandate 
that we keep the CVVV that exemplified that usage.

>B. Zipfeanism & Lojban's serving its speakers
>1. The design of Lojban is such that, quite unnecessarily, it is
>difficult to be both concise and logically precise. John has often
>said "The price of infinite precision is infinite verbosity", but
>this does not apply to logical precision, since it is finite. It
>would have been quite possible to design Lojban so that it was more
>concise, but concision was never a design goal.

Zipfean concision was indeed a design parameter, since JCB talked of it 
extensively (and that was my standard for identifying design parameters).

>However, most Lojban
>users care a great deal about concision and it is a major factor
>influencing their usage. "Saving syllables" is important to most
>Lojbanists. At the moment there are very few Lojbanists who care
>about Lojban being precise, but I predict that as more Lojbanists
>become comfortable with elementary logic, more Lojbanists will yearn
>for a Lojban that is both precise and concise.

Perhaps. I yearn for a Lojban that isn't changing at a rate that is 
noticeable on a month to month basis.

>2. It is natural in language that high frequency words and phrases
>get shortened. Low frequency words can be short, but high frequency
>words tend not to be long (even if they look long in writing, they
>are likely to get shortened in speech). Lojban acknowledges this;
>it is the rationale for the rafsi system, and for the notion that
>there should be a rough correlation between a lujvo's length and
>its frequency. But Lojban has no way to shorten high frequency cmavo
>or cmavo sequences.

That is a statement of fact in the design.

>4. I therefore predict that as more people are both jboka'e (caring
>about usage) and jboskepre (caring about precision), the antizipfeanism
>and longwindedness of Lojban will be felt more and more acutely. The
>more competent a Lojbanist is, the more acutely the problem will be
>felt.

Then no doubt we will have to address it if and when it happens. Sounds 
like a good topic for the post-baseline all-LOjban discussion, since the 
competent Lojbanists will be the ones capable of discussing it.

>5. If Lojban is to serve the needs of its speakers (above all, the needs
>of those who actually use it and know it thoroughly), it must be willing
>to change in a planned, organized, designed way. **Instead of committing
>itself to a baseline freeze (i.e. a policy of No Change), the LLG should
>have the policy of No Change Without Consensus.**

That is (more or less) the policy for the byfy work, bearing in mind that 
there is unlikely to be consensus to "fix" what is not broken. After the 
byfy is complete, then there will be a freeze. If you do not accept the 
necessity for a 5 year freeze, then you should indeed vote "no" on the 
policy, because there is no resolution that would satisfy both you and the 
proponents of a freeze. I can pretty well guarantee that there will be no 
consensus on a policy that does not include a freeze.

Opposing a long-term freeze entirely is not merely objecting to a detail, 
but a disagreement with the thrust of the policy as a whole.

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