Subject: RE: [lojban] za'e "postnex"

From: Robert LeChevalier <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 26 Jan 2003 13:34:31 -0500

At 03:53 PM 1/26/03 +0000, And Rosta wrote:
>Lojbab:
> > >So the official convention is that they are metalinguistic, parenthetical
> > >and subject to no further conventions
> >
> > Metalinguistic, yes. But I don't see how that restricts anything dealing
> > with quantification or scope
>
>It doesn't prevent you making metalinguistic statements about quantification
>and scope. But if you try to establish conventions, you subvert the
>Standard dialect, according to which there are no special conventions
>applying to sei phrases.

Where does the standard dialect forbid the establishment of 
special/unofficial/informal conventions regarding anything besides 
grammar-parsing?

>Unofficial conventions should be used only
>where the dialect fails to supply any interpretation.

As I noted, in Mex we explicitly EXPECT that there will be unofficial 
conventions that override the parsed operator precedence.

Dating way back to when Athelstan was still active, we discussed 
metalinguistic conventions that might be useful/necessary to writing Lojban 
skaldic poetry; I believe it is in an old JL issue.

I can imagine a Lojban poet metalinguistically redefining any semantics he 
chooses. One creative translation of "If wishes were horses, then beggars 
would ride" would metalinguistically redefine a Lojban brivla normally 
meaning "wish" to instead mean la'e zo xirma.

> > I don't have any idea why you would think that anything in Lojban isn't
> > subject to additional conventions, should a group of speakers decide to
> > adopt them, provided that they can communicate what they are, and provided
> > that the text parses
>
>I would think this because if they established additional conventions
>then they would be establishing a new dialect, since a dialect is
>defined by a body of conventions. So nothing prevents a group of
>Lojban speakers from adopting additional conventions -- that is
>precisely what underlies a lot of jboske and Academic Lojban -- but
>one cannot add additional conventions to Standard Lojban and still
>end up with Standard Lojban.

If the conventions are marked and do not contradict some immutable parts of 
the language, I have no problem with such additional or overriding 
conventions. An experimental cmavo itself marks a non-standard 
convention. I may not like and I may not understand most of your 
experimental cmavo, but I don't consider their use to be a violation of the 
Lojban standard, especially since such experimental cmavo are explicitly 
permitted. (There is some problem when an experimental cmavo would require 
a new selma'o and thereby a variant grammar, a situation on which the 
standards intentionally remained silent).

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