Subject: Re: Why we should cancel the vote or all vote NO (was RE: Official Statement- LLG Board approves new baseline policy

From: Nick Nicholas <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 1 Dec 2002 14:52:58 +1100

Heh. Rebellion. Cool. :-)

Speaking ex cathedra as bypyfyky jatna :

The reason I requested a mandate is that what we are proposing is way 
too important to be left to Board fiat. (In fact, I wanted membership 
approval; Bob then trumped me with seeking community approval.)

If there is stuff in the proposal (and a lengthly and complex proposal 
it is) that people feel the need to object to, and a substantial number 
do, then we have not done our job right.

And that's OK. We then go back to the drawing board until we do. The 
point is not that the board have its way or demonstrate leadership or 
whatever. The point is that the board do what the membership approves 
of it doing.

I know why Bob is reluctant to redraft the document: it was painful to 
get to the point where any statement was draftable at all. (The major 
period of arguing, between me and xod, took a couple of weeks and got 
quite acrid, as you might expect.) But I'd rather we go through more 
birthing pains, than that we produce a plan unacceptable to the 
community.

I will not accept being yelled at for doing a cabal effort, as I said 
on the wiki. But I'm not going to avoid that by operating in a 
cabal-like fashion. If the community feels strongly that they cannot 
accept this document in toto without further discussion, then I do 
encourage them --- ex cathedra as Commission Chair --- to vote no. 
Because only when the statement matches what the community wants can I 
feel it safe to continue with my work.

That said, I happen to disagree with much of the specifics of what And 
proposed. Which shouldn't come as a surprise. But it is imperative that 
he be allowed to raise his views, and have them acknowledged. So let's 
start the discussion.

Further responses.

Prescriptivism.

There is indeed a subtle shift going on in the position on 
prescriptivism. Bob has and continues to believe in untrammelled 
natural evolution; xod pretty much does as well. I believe (as Nick 
Nicholas, Lojbanist) that planned languages never evolve naturally, and 
(as board member) that many Lojbanists will want a body around to say 
whether their Lojban matches a 'standard'. These Lojbanists can profit 
from a body of language lawyers. The rest can ignore it. The BPFK can 
fill that role, although such a decision should be made at the time, 
not now; we are merely raising the possibility now. That's a status 
similar to English and prescriptivist, as Bob said; the prescriptivists 
will probably not have as much force as they do in the Esperanto 
Akademio (although even there, the Akademio frequently ends up having 
to catch up with changes wrought in other quarters.)

The shift is that formerly, all calls for a Lojban Academy were 
repudiated. Now, it's being allowed that a Lojban Academy might be 
around for those who want one, as arbiters of 'standard' Lojban --- but 
not that it should have any binding force on the community. That is why 
the LLG is explicitly dissociating itself from any such body: it will 
not operate on LLG's behalf.

Loglan.

This topic proved controversial as well. As I have already said on 
jboske, I repudiate any notion of continuity between Loglan and Lojban. 
That repudiation is not LLG policy, and the Board did not change its 
position that Lojban *is* a continuation. But I do object to any 
meaningful offer of compromise towards Loglan. Individual Loglanists 
can come along to the BPFK --- as Lojbanists. My only interest in any 
proposal anyone makes to the BPFK is whether it betters the interests 
of Lojban as an autonomous language: whether it improves the chances of 
a rapprochment or not is immaterial to me.

In short, I as BPFK Chair regard Loglan as irrelevant to my job 
(although I have no animus towards individual Loglanists coming along); 
and the baseline statement as I understand it is not contingent on 
anything that happens in or is said by the Loglan Institute --- which 
makes them irrelevant to our baseline as well.

And: Experimental cmavo

If a sufficient number agree that a cmavo deserves to be official and 
documented, so it should be --- but the phonotactic distinctiveness of 
cmavo that have not yet attained that status has served us well, and I 
would fain it continue to. If we are running out of CVV space, we can 
still go to xVV. (I don't want to make that statement right now; I'd 
rather wait till we see how many exptal cmavo are looking like becoming 
official, first.) If we run out of THAT, then we can add a delimited 
area of CVVV. I am not envisioning mass addition of new cmavo, though, 
and sanctioning going into CVVV implies that we will, I do not wish to 
be bound by that now. But if we decide to disambiguate through two 
cmavo, then it would be my understanding that both cmavo should be 
official.

Whether future cmavo or not should be added is a matter for the 
post-baseline board. I don't like the implications of "we shall 
prescribe into being new cmavo", but I don't see why that determination 
needs to be made now.

And: Zipf

And, I hate to relay fundamentalist hatemail, but I have to. I have no 
confidence in a priori determinations of Zipf necessity, nor that we 
have enough usage yet to make such determinations even a posteriori. I 
will not consider frequency of usage as the only valid factor for 
introducing a new cmavo. I am not as confident as you about the 'saving 
syllables' imperative. I believe the fundamentalist imperative will 
trump the zipfean imperative (noone in Esperanto ever says "de l'" -- 
even though it is in fact officially sanctioned.) And I doubt you'll 
get many takers for No Change Without Consensus. So I stand my ground 
on this.

And: Baseline

I assume what you mean is, the baseline encompasses semantics as well 
as syntax. I whole-hearted agree, but I do not understand what the 
statement should concretely say to assert this, and I would have 
thought it was obvious anyway.

And: Unintelligible cmavo

We will go with the supplicatory model before we decide we don't know 
what a cmavo is. The current statement of the baseline does not allow 
cmavo deletion, because all cmavo are documented in CLL, one way or 
another. To erase cmavo would be a major techfix, and I am opposed to 
such ventures on principle.

At the very most, if noone has ever ever ever used lau, I might accept 
turning lau into say xu'e, and releasing lau. But for a one syllable 
cmavo to be necessary for something Zipfeanly, it has to be something 
so urgent and obvious, I'd have thought the heavens would be clamoring 
for it by now. In my book, xa'o and mu'ei are the only ones even close 
to this (with mu'ei endangered by sumtcita ka'e); and they're not that 
close.

--
Dr Nick Nicholas, French & Italian, University of Melbourne, Australia.
http://www.opoudjis.net [email-masked]
"Most Byzantine historians felt they knew enough to use the optatives
correctly; some of them were right." --- Harry Turtledove.