Subject: Re: [lojban] Loglan

From: Nick Nicholas <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 02 Dec 2002 16:33:54 +1100

>On Saturday, November 30, 2002, at 10:10 PM, Nick Nicholas wrote:

>>That Loglan is ancestral to Lojban? Sure, but that's history, it has
>nothing to do with the baseline.
>Yes it does. If things go well, the lojban baseline will also be the 
>Loglan baseline.

But the notion of a Loglan-Lojban merger is not one that should be 
resolved in this, rather technical document. It is a broader issue, 
which needs to be debated separately and widely (since it was a 
membership statement to begin with.)

>Possibility 2: lojban is not Loglan. If so, then the baseline could 
>serve to attract Loglanders to lojban if they are dealt with in a 
>respectful manner. You are underestimating the importance of emotion 
>in human decision-making.

*shrug* Being seen to be poaching is not being seen to be respectful. 
Like I said, you'd need to write up yourself what such a statement 
would look like.

>reality. Most artificial languages die due to schisms of one sort or 
>another. It would be prudent to resolve this schism, as this will 
>reassure artificial language enthusiasts that lojban is not going to 
>mutate.

But this is a different issue, and an isssue that Lojban needs to 
resolve for its own ends: the stability of the language itself. 
Saying to the Loglanists "your language is hereby our language" is 
orthogonal to any commitment that Lojban shall or shall not be 
stable. And you will note that the baseline statement says little 
about Loglan --- but a hell of a lot about stability.

>An alternative to the toggle cmavo would be some means of formally 
>describing the differences between the two languages and putting a 
>mapping of the predicates to each other on the web site. I'm not 
>suggesting this should be a high priority at the moment. Also, most 
>of this work should be done by former Loglanders, I would think.

If people want to do this, I hereby invite people to do this. I 
remind you of the TLI lawyers saying we shouldn't do this; and I 
ain't gonna do this. But why wait for an invitation, and not go ahead 
and do this anyway? If you want the LLG rubber stamp, well, we'd need 
to work out the legal issues first; and I'm not convinced they've 
gone away.

But for goodness' sake, someone bell the cat and ask McIvor or 
whoever whether we can legally do this. Then, someone find a 
bilingual and do this. And let life move on. I think this approach 
much healthier than the toggle, actually: the toggle presupposes 
codeswitching, which presupposes bilingualism, and you've said 
yourself that ain't gonna happen.

>McIvor is not on the BPFK, is he? Why not invite him?

Bob expressly wants to invite him. I didn't, and if he is invited, 
as far as I'm concerned, he's invited as a Lojbanist (or at the 
least, as someone with expertise in Logical Language), not as a 
Loglanist.

And invite? We haven't gotten that far yet. The current board 
statement says the BPFK is open to all comers. (I would prefer it not 
be, because it also has to be manageable, but we'll cross that bridge 
when we do.) So he's not disinvitable as the statement stands, 
really. I do believe I've got the authority to boot people --- and to 
be booted; I really don't want it to come to either point...

>What about tracking down those Russians? I understand that lojbab 
>has some native Russian speakers in his house. :-)

Not any more (no Russian, that is, not no speakers.)

>>So Steven, please clarify what you'd want.

>More wisdom than has been shown so far, nothing more.

Still not specific enough. Now, I want a draft brochure... :-1/2

>And by the way, thanks for your work to more lojban forward. I do 
>appreciate that.

*shrug* Sometimes, it's been fun. Not last night with Urdu and 
Chinese crashing my version of Word; but sometimes...
-- 
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* Dr Nick Nicholas, French & Italian Studies [email-masked] *
University of Melbourne, Australia http://www.opoudjis.net
* "Eschewing obfuscatory verbosity of locutional rendering, the *
circumscriptional appelations are excised." --- W. Mann & S. Thompson,
* _Rhetorical Structure Theory: A Theory of Text Organisation_, 1987. *
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