Subject: Re: [lojban] Baseline statement

From: Robert LeChevalier <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 04 Dec 2002 20:48:30 -0500

At 12:45 AM 12/5/02 +1100, Nick Nicholas wrote:
>Also, calling for broader input on the statement than a vote is legit;
>if a non-trivial number of Lojbanists feel we should try and convoke a
>special meeting on this, then that's certainly an option worth
>considering.

Only as a last resort. A special meeting would be extremely difficult to 
convene, and because of non-on-line members who neither know about nor 
necessarily agree with the shift towards on-line meetings, would be 
discriminatory.

>Likewise, if the board needs to make statements of
>clarification or expansion, let it.

The Board likewise has difficulties operating on-line, as we've discovered 
in the last 2 months. We can overcome those difficulties, but not 
necessarily in a timely manner wrt the voting on the policy.

>Yes, the board is trusted with day
>to day running, but if the board was collectively possessed by aliens,
>and said tomorrow Lojbanists must all switch to Solresol immediately, I
>think some here would want the opportunity to get a broader vote on the
>proposal before July...

They might want to, but they would have trouble doing so. This is not a 
statement of desireability; merely that we have a cumbersome system. I 
wrote the bylaws to be cumbersome, so as to prevent individuals or factions 
from taking over. A possessed Board could do what you suggest, but the 
members in July could boot the whole crowd. Actions can be taken quickly 
if really needed, but are checked by long-term constraints.

> Date: Fri, 29 Nov 2002 13:01:17 -0500
> From: Robert LeChevalier <[email-masked]>
>Subject: Re: Re: [llg-members] Official Statement- LLG Board approves
>new baseline policy
>
> > At 08:20 AM 11/29/02 -0500, Pierre Abbat wrote:
> >> I don't use the TLI alternate orthography, so when I write {srutio},
> >> I don't
> >> mean {sruti'o}.
> >
> > But if srutio is a valid word, then it has to be usable by those who
> > DO you
> > the alternate orthography.
>
>Not an argument. That's the alternate orthography's problem; /srutiho/
>is certainly a distinct string phonologically than /srutio/ as far as
>Lojban is concerned, and it's specious to say otherwise. (And after the
>recent kerfuffle, you should know well that arguments for Loglan
>compatibility can backfire. :-) Pierre's responded to this well anyway.
>
>What on earth is the status of the alternate orthography, anyway, that
>it should constrain Lojban phonotactics?

Part of the existing baseline. Everything in CLL is part of that baseline, 
including the reservation of specific experimental provisions (which are 
therefore "official experiments").

> --- I always thought it was as
>unofficial as the Tengwar and Estrangela orthographies. And it is
>mentioned in the same breath as Tengwar in CLL --- and under the
>heading "oddball orthographies".

It is non-standard but officially recognized, as is the Tengwar. Because 
the baseline was adopted on the book and not merely the grammar, and 
because people have been treating the book as having scriptural standing in 
Lojbanic matters, means that things mentioned in CLL have inherent standing 
that is higher than things not mentioned in CLL.

>Exigencies of the Loglan orthography
>constrain Lojban no more than exigencies of the Cyrillic orthography:
>fix the orthography, not the language.

Fixing the orthography is a baseline change.

>Give me a statement in the present baseline

Which policy version of the present baseline? That is why we have just done 
a new policy statement. The new policy statement has CLL as part of the 
baseline and in general defines the baseline in terms of specific 
documents. Earlier statements were thought to be ambiguous between whether 
it was the documents or the concepts that were baselined, which was one of 
the issues that led to the new statement (remember the issue over translations)

1996 Members meeting:
>Replacement AMENDMENT: To baseline the contents of the
> > Reference Grammar as of December 31, 1996, and all else as of June 30,
> > 1997. - PASSED.

1997 Members meeting:
> > MOVED: That LLG accept the reference grammar as submitted to the
> > printer as the embodiment of the December 31st baseline - PASSED.

>From the new statement:
>The actual baseline and freeze initially will be on the English language
>text. Translations of baseline materials to other languages as well as
>enhanced English definitions may be added to the baseline at a later date
>having been reviewed for consistency; translations need not be literal
>translations of the English. Translation of the baseline documents is
>encouraged, whether or not the translation is intended to be reviewed for
>formal incorporation into the baseline. See the policy below on LLG
>support for baseline compliance.

Nick:
> that explicitly says the
>Loglan orthography is more important than the Cyrillic in deciding what
>are allowed word shapes.

It isn't. Both are alternates to the standard orthography, and both are 
part of the baseline design.

>From the text:
>It does not represent any changes to the standard Lojban phonology; it is 
>simply a representation of the same phonology using a different written form.

> Your aesthetic judgement on srutio is no more
>binding on this issue than And's aesthetic distaste of apostrophes.
>(And provide a language-internal argument, please; if the issue truly
>is rapproachment, I dunno, Loglanise srutio as sruti&ograve; or
>something. It's not like there's that many such strings to begin with.)

I did not think I was arguing on personal aesthetic grounds, and in fact on 
most Lojban issues I am unaware of what my personal aesthetic stance 
is. My argument is based on historical policy. Historically in the 
community, type IV fu'ivla have been disparaged and in questions about the 
boundaries between fu'ivla space and everything else, fu'ivla have been 
restricted rather than spend a lot of time looking for ways to maximize 
it. This history has not been my sole doing, but extends back into the TLI 
era.

>And I find it incredible that anyone with any sense of Lojban will hear
>IPA [srutjo] and think that's a lujvo. [tj]? That ain't Lojban. You
>don't get a more clear signal of fu'ivla-hood. (Or are you going to go
>back to the primacy of writing --- and you an unabashed evolutionist!)

I'm not a fan of the primacy of writing, but the orthographies were defined 
as part of the baseline, and Lojban is by design criteria audiovisually 
isomorphic. The alternate orthographies are clearly of lesser import than 
the standard, but they do have some import, which means that they constrain 
situations which might be ambiguous otherwise.

Since there is ambiguity, the byfy could decide that the alternate 
orthography is broken, and do a Techfix. Or something else. Or nothing.

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