Subject: Re: Baseline statement

From: Nick Nicholas <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 6 Dec 2002 18:09:14 +1100

cu'u la xorxes.
> I understand that the Lojban community as a whole is very
> pro-freeze, so I raise the anti-freeze voice more than I would
> be inclined to in a more neutral environment. I value stability
> but I don't like sacrosanct and unquestionable rules. If something
> is broken, it should be fixable. I'm against declaring things
> not broken by definition.

Well, we've said it, so we won't go through it again. We know this to 
be a minority view, and that it likely will not prevail. I do not want 
in any way to sweep this dissent under the carpet; but we both know the 
lay of the land. Still, the freeze is five (more) years, and 
negotiable; after that, anything can happen, and we'll revisit this 
issue. I fully expect there will still be experimental cmavo coined 
during that time.

John said conservatism should be a tendency, not an argument in its own 
right --- i.e. that fundamentalists will need to say explicit why the 
status quo is a good thing. I'm inclined to raise the bar higher for 
grammar than for cmavo, and for stuff inside CLL than outside it.

> As for seals of approval, the whole thing is so inpractical
> that it is probably not even worth objecting to. Are we really
> going to set up a comission to which one can submit texts for
> review?

"Lingve kontrolis" is regarded as a good thing in Esperanto, and is 
used at the discretion of people. It's not institutional, and is done 
at publishers' discretion with volunteers. Maybe we should look for 
institutional parallels where something like this does happen. Doesn't 
the Hebrew Academy do something like this?

It may be impractical; we're merely proposing it as something to happen 
in five years' time. If no such body arises or survives, then there 
shall be no baseline-compliant judgements, so there shall be no 
baseline-compliant texts; and we're back to untrammelled evolution, and 
the rejection of fundamentalism after the freeze. If you want the 
language to stay as it is after the freeze, you will feel the 
obligation to help out in the language gendarmerie (I won't think of it 
as a police). If not, not.

This is liable to abuse and nastiness; I haven't regarded it that way 
as it has been practiced in Esperanto, but I admit it's practiced much 
more low key in that language (with the exception of the occasional 
moral panics like -atismo/-itismo, and the undercurrent of WWZD -- What 
Would Zamenhof Do?)

I thank you for your good wishes for the BPFK itself, and certainly 
hope to work with you in it. I disagree with you on the issues of 
conservatism; I do not disagree that a BPFK without you in it won't 
have much authority.

(And yeah, I'll be looking forward to proving you wrong on this or that.
:-) You'll get the same chance, although since I'm a weathercock, you 
may not get the same satisfaction out of convincing me. :-)

---
DR NICK NICHOLAS. [email-masked]
FRENCH & ITALIAN, UNIVERSITY OF MELBOURNE, AUSTRALIA.
In Athens, news spreads fast: they know everything as soon as it 
happens,
sometimes before it happens, and often without it happening at all.
--- Jean Psichari, _My Voyage_. http://www.opoudjis.net