From lojbab@lojban.org Sun Dec 01 17:55:12 2002 Return-Path: X-Sender: lojbab@lojban.org X-Apparently-To: lojban@yahoogroups.com Received: (EGP: mail-8_2_3_0); 2 Dec 2002 01:55:12 -0000 Received: (qmail 27188 invoked from network); 2 Dec 2002 01:55:12 -0000 Received: from unknown (66.218.66.217) by m7.grp.scd.yahoo.com with QMQP; 2 Dec 2002 01:55:12 -0000 Received: from unknown (HELO lakemtao04.cox.net) (68.1.17.241) by mta2.grp.scd.yahoo.com with SMTP; 2 Dec 2002 01:55:12 -0000 Received: from lojban.lojban.org ([68.100.206.153]) by lakemtao04.cox.net (InterMail vM.5.01.04.05 201-253-122-122-105-20011231) with ESMTP id <20021202015513.GGCG1248.lakemtao04.cox.net@lojban.lojban.org> for ; Sun, 1 Dec 2002 20:55:13 -0500 Message-Id: <5.1.0.14.0.20021201201912.032a52c0@pop.east.cox.net> X-Sender: rlechevalier@pop.east.cox.net X-Mailer: QUALCOMM Windows Eudora Version 5.1 Date: Sun, 01 Dec 2002 20:47:47 -0500 To: lojban@yahoogroups.com Subject: RE: [lojban] Loglan In-Reply-To: References: <5.1.0.14.0.20021201172713.03162550@pop.east.cox.net> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"; format=flowed From: Robert LeChevalier X-Yahoo-Group-Post: member; u=1120595 X-Yahoo-Profile: lojbab At 11:28 PM 12/1/02 +0000, And wrote: >Lojbab: > > From what I have gathered based on McIvor's comments to me, JCB would > > oppose any sort of baseline. JCB would have agreed with And that the > > language should just keep changing as people come up with new ideas. It > > was the community that wanted a version of the language that (would be > > official and) would stop changing. Hence the baseline policy that I came > > up with in response to the couple dozen Loglanists who wrote to me write > > after I started trying to get the Loglan community back together (which > led > > to Lojban) > >In the light of recent terminological clarifications, I gather that JCB >and I would favour a baseline, but oppose a baseline freeze. The Naturalists, >on the other hand, might oppose a baseline tout court, or at least see it >as an irrelevance. No. JCB was a perpetual prescriptivist with an evolving AND informal prescription. His Academy had no limits on what it could change, when it could change it, or on the scope of the changes (in theory, his Academy could have adopted the Lojban design in toto as a language change), but he personally had a veto on any Academy change. A baseline procedure means that the changes are controlled and documented, and that the documents are maintained to reflect the baseline so that all users have a single reference point from which to base their usage at a given time. Because of "trade secrecy" and earlier general sloppiness, there was never a single language definition in play throughout the community, and indeed arguably never a single language definition at all. (At the time I started working with JCB on updating the Loglan dictionary in 1986, I found no less than 4 mutually contradictory "standard" gismu lists in use BY JCB - contradictory as to what words were on it, sometimes how they were spelled, how many places they had etc. The first issue of JL reports on my attempts to resolve this - JCB rejected any such effort.) People would submit Loglan writings to pc for inclusion in The Loglanist, written in dialects anywhere up to 3 years old, and they would be printed, sometimes with comment indicating something new, which is how many of the changes were promulgated. Other changes were proposed, discussed seriously in the publications, but never adopted (and no reason given) so that you could not assume that seeing it in TL meant that it was part of the language (or that it was NOT part of the language). I understand that things got better, I suspect in part because of our example. But I'm not sure whether, before JCB's death, anyone but McIvor and perhaps JCB had a current definition of the current language and KNEW it was current including all decisions of the Academy (and it was never "complete" by my non-semantic standard, much less yours which demand some semantics clarification). In any event L1, and L3, the two major language documents on their website, do not agree with each other and the current language. A baseline change, post CLL publication (our equivalent to L1) would require change pages for CLL. So no, I don't think that JCB even understood a baseline, much less favored one. lojbab -- lojbab lojbab@lojban.org 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