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

From: Robert LeChevalier <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 02 Dec 2002 11:23:18 -0500

At 11:04 AM 12/2/02 +0000, And Rosta wrote:
> > There are some areas of the language (like Mex) that simply haven't seen
> > enough usage at all to get useful statistics. If one argues that therefore
> > nothing in Mex should ever be monosyllabic, then one is arguing that there
> > should not be a Mex, since there is in fact no usage that demands a
> > Mex at all
>
>I don't follow your reasoning. I would argue that only high-frequency
>cmavo deserve monosyllabicity.

I don't agree, so our problem may be basic disagreement on assumptions.

>Anyway, I definitely think that nothing
>in the never-used portion of Mex should be monosyllabic.

Which is a surefire way of making sure that Mex would never be used. If it 
takes lots of syllables to say even the simplest thing, people won't be as 
likely to use it.

>I have the sense that everyone who has become active in Lojban in
>recent years is a newcomer, not an old Loglander returner.

Probably. We weren't likely to get many old Loglanders as long as TLI 
could project a robust image (and they projected a lot of image; JCB was 
good at making relatively little progress seem like more was going on than 
really was happening - but then I did the same in the early days of LLG, so 
what I should say is that "what seemed like a lot of activity, but really 
wasn't compared to even the slackest periods nowadays").

But JCB is dead; Alex Leith, his successor, is dead. Bob McIvor is still 
quite alive, but is old enough that no one should expect many more years of 
support from him. And TLI is pretty much at the bottom of its leadership 
barrel. There are a few more Loglanists who know the language moderately 
well, but probably none who speak it as well as Jorge, who managed to 
impress JCB with his skill in Loglan before he died.

Answering both you and Nick:
I think that TLI is likely to fade away in the next 5 years, whether we do 
anything or not, and the language version may or may not survive if the 
organization goes away. But if we present a good face, then the Loglanists 
will be willing to come over and try Lojban; whereas if we come across as 
arrogant, they won't be likely to do so. If TLI dies, it could be that 
many of them would respond to a polite "We are reaching out to the Loglan 
community, seeking your support for a reunited Loglan/Lojban effort, one 
that will honor JCB's legacy by showing the world the fruits of his 
efforts. We've made some provisions to make the learning-transition from 
TLI Loglan to Lojban a little less painful, and you have our demonstrated 
commitment that Lojban will not be changing so that relearning will never 
again be an issue. We invite you to join us (and ideally: we have the 
consent and encouragement from the TLI leadership in making this overture 
to you. They recognize that Lojban is the future of Loglan, and we want 
you to be a part of that future.)

> The old guard have more of the force of a dead weight,

Gee, thanks for the vote of confidence! Should Cowan and I resign now? pc 
already did.

>an impediment, and
>it is the voices of the likes of Adam, Craig, Jordan, xod, Robin and
>(horribile dictu) Jay that we should be paying the most attention, as
>most representative of the future of Lojban. AFAIK, Michael is the
>only Lojbanist over 40 who is actively and publically producing
>Lojban text. Furthermore, we can see in these young Turks a dynamism
>in trying to move Lojban forward, in sundry ways, that is in marked
>contrast to the current inertia of the oldies who in the days of their
>own youngturkhood founded Lojban, and I expect it won't be long before
>the new generation take over the board and decide to forget about the
>old guys who were forever stating the conditions under which they would 
>refuse to learn Lojban without ever showing signs of a real intention
>to learn it.

Are you a parent?

The history of the project has been one where most of the work has been 
done by college students (and recent graduates who aren't yet established 
in their careers) and retirees, because the people in the middle have 
careers and families to raise. TLI Loglan is heavily weighted towards the 
older people and retirees, and JCB wasn't too good in later years at 
recruiting college kids, which is why they don't have much new blood. I 
made my strongest effort at recruiting the next generation, to ensure that 
Lojban would survive me, and clearly it will. But, God willing, I have 30 
good years left, and my kids will be grown in only a few. Then I'll have 
the time and todays' college kids won't (though with effort we'll be 
getting new college kids).

But if people don't want me to hang around ...

>If setting in place the preconditions for possible future changes to
>the language will improve the lot of future Lojbanists, but alienate
>people who at some time in the past said they might learn Lojban but
>haven't, I will vote for giving future Lojbanists freedom of
>manoeuvre, and if that leads to you not bothering to learn the language
>that will be sad, but probably would amount just to giving you an excuse
>for not doing what you wouldn't have done anyway.

Those that refuse to learn the lessons of history are condemned to repeat 
them. There are MANY artificial languages that have failed. I contend 
that my vision has gotten us into a rare position of potential success, so 
one would think that people would give me a little benefit of the doubt 
that I am leading us in the right direction.

But if people reject my vision, I won't do as JCB did and fight to the 
death of the language to keep control.

>The closest analogy from natlang experience would be to 'correct' the
>writing of foreign learners (of, say, English) without being stylistically
>prescriptive. That's a very difficult exercise. In reading a text
>written by a foreigner we can fairly easily identify what is plain
>ungrammatical, and we can identify stuff that a native speaker wouldn't
>say, but it's very hard to separate out from that the stuff that is
>bad for semantic reasons.

I question that in natural languages it is meaningful to say "bad for 
semantic reasons". Natural languages as well as artificial languages are 
humpty-dumpty: words mean what we want them to mean, and if communication 
occurs then the semantics is "correct".

> > >I agree that deleting these cmavo is quite a radical step, but it is
> > >also a refreshingly honest one
> >
> > It is not a practical one, unless you know someone who wants to buy several
> > hundred copies of CLL that would suddenly be worthless. We made a serious
> > commitment to NOT changing the language, and backed it with a $17,000
> > investment which has not yet been repaid. And while it might be honest,
> > there also might be hundreds of potential Lojbanists that would go
> > elsewhere, for fear that in another 5 years we might be "honest" again and
> > throw out a bunch of stuff that they've spent time learning
>
>Must we pander to irrational fears?

Yes. Because you are being quite effective at stimulating those 
fears. The arguments you've used have been heard before, and before the 
language changed, and the fears proved real. Loglan has had waves of 
learners who disappeared every time the language underwent a 
revision. Usually about 3/4 of those who did the work on the revision 
stayed and no more than 10% of the rest.

>Nobody can have spent time learning
>the unintelligible cmavo, since there is nothing to learn.

It is not whether they have learned them, but whether they trust the 
community to leave the language alone long enough for them to learn 
whatever the language is.

> > The whole area of alphabets and lerfu is tied up with Mex. We cannot say
> > how useful Mex will be, but it certainly will not be useful if we make it
> > more difficult to use
>
>Avoiding making mex harder to use is not a good reason for not making the
>rest of the language easier to use.

I disagree.

>I am proposing (and I think Jordan is
>too) that mex and other stuff that has never seen substantial usage be
>made more longwinded so that future generations of fluent lojbanists can
>decide where shortwindedness can most efficaciously be applied.

Whereas I think it likely that future generations of fluent Lojbanists will 
do the RIGHT thing and start over from scratch to design Lojban Mark II, 
based on the experience of Lojban over a couple of generations.

> > >As for disyllabics that currently clamour for monosyllabics, I personally
> > >crave them for {du'u} above all, and also {lo'e}, {le'e} and perhaps
> > >{ke'a} and {ce'u}
> >
> > I don't crave ANY change to any cmavo that I already know and use. I want
> > the bloody language to stop changing long enough for me and others to
> > really learn it and BECOME skilled speakers
>
>Perhaps this is partly because you don't use the language much

Guilty.

>and partly because you use it without scrupulous regard for meaning

Correct. I don't accept that debates over semantics will establish 
meaning. Communicative usage will establish meaning. Lojban has a defined 
grammar, but the semantics will (or at least SHOULD) be defined through usage.

>and so say things
>like {le nu} when {lo'e du'u} would be more correct.

It wouldn't be "more correct" because there is no official semantics to 
that phrase, and since I do not accept your jboske debates on lo'e as 
having any meaning, and thus haven't he vaguest idea what "lo'edu'u" means.

>But I also concede
>that you have always advocated a static Lojban design over an improved
>Lojban design.

Yes.

>But I have the impression that within Loglan/Lojban there
>has always been the more whorfian Conservative faction and the more
>logical/engineerist Progressive faction.

No. Indeed, I think in the older TLI community, it was the Whorfians who 
were progressive, while what passed for logical types were 
conservative. But in truth there were no "factions" in part because JCB 
did not allow there to be factions. You were either in JCB's faction or 
you were persona non grata.

In the brief (4 year) period of community-run TLI, factions over the course 
of the language did not develop. The minimal factionalization was over how 
the organization would be run and it did not emerge until after JCB started 
to try to take back control.

>Lojban was founded by Conservatives,

No. Lojban was founded by people not aligned to any of your factions, and 
I continue to reject them. It was founded by someone who was committed to 
certain design principles. Once beyond those design principles, I daresay 
that I was a good deal more "progressive" than most of you.

>but it never advertised itself as the Conservative alternative to
>Progressive Loglan; it advertised itself as the thriving and publicly owned
>alternative to the moribund and privately owned Loglan. So I don't think
>it is fair to argue that Lojban is intrinsically Conservative.

It also advertised itself as committed to language stability, to the 
elimination of the "moving target", to getting the language DONE and out of 
the hands of the endless fiddlers.

> > >Regarding the existing experimental cmavo, I suppose we could have a
> > >poll about which, if any, we would like to make official. But I
> > >would prefer to get rid of the notion of officialness
> >
> > That rejects the idea of a baseline
>
>No it doesn't. The baseline would list the cmavo that have a defined
>meaning, and would treat all other cmavo as undefined (which is how
>most current 'official' cmavo are), but not as unofficial. An unfrozen
>baseline could add new definitions as they are decided upon.

NO!!! The first and foremost consideration of a baseline is that it is a 
snapshot of the language design at a current point. That snapshot receives 
the full organizational support and does not change while the baseline is 
in effect. (Note that what people actually do may differ from what the 
organization supports, depending on how much control the organization has 
over the community).

A freeze is a guaranteed minimum amount of time when changing the baseline 
is not even deemed appropriate for consideration.

> > >and instead
> > >simply say that the mini-dictionary fixes the meaning of the cmavo it
> > >lists. A proper syntactic parser should not have the mahoste built
> > >in to it, but should instead take input from a community-maintained
> > >mahoste that can be updated with cmavo not listed in the mini-dictionary
> >
> > Then write one
>
>I have (collaboratively) written one for cmavo that are not in the
>official mahoste. It is on the wiki. It is easily adaptable (with
>about 1 minute's work) by anyone writing a parser to take input from
>a mahoste.

Write the parser then. No one else is likely to do so. The official LLG 
parser is Cowan's parser.

>The real issue here is whether we can tell at this stage what set of
>cmavo future Lojbanists are going to find most useful,

We can't.

>and whether we
>should allow future Lojbanists to determine for themselves which
>cmavo they require.

We can't stop them; nor can we affect what they do and how they go about it 
(imagine JCB thinking 25 years ago that he could have any significant 
effect on what the community decides now - OTHER THAN the fact that I 
committed us to following his design principles).

All we can do is determine the starting point, and that is all I care about 
doing. The future post-freeze language will take care of itself, and 
nothing we do now will prevent it from doing so.

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