Subject: RE: [lojban] registry of experimental cmavo

From: "And Rosta" <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 18 Jul 2001 03:26:45 +0100

Lojbab:
> At 06:04 PM 07/17/2001 +0100, And Rosta wrote:
> > > I think that there is little point in bothering to come
> > > up with short forms before we see that people are using the long versions
> > > for something.
> >
> >This is idiotic. It is already abundantly clear that given the choice of
> >(a) saying exactly what one means however longwinded the current resources
> >of Lojban make it, or (b) saying approximately what one means, but saying
> >it succinctly and in accord with the style biases built in to the language,
> >99% of people choose (b).
>
> The point is that, unless we have some (a) usages, we have no evidence that
> anyone even WANTS to say "(a)" as evidence to justify the short forms.

Not so. You have the evidence of other languages, which indicates what
people want to say. You have the very proposals themselves. And as I
explained, you're not going to get (a) usages, except by known perverts
like me. Furthermore, this doesn't necessarily have anything to do
with what people want to say; it has to do with how people want a
loglan design to be. And finally, "we" don't need evidence that "anyone"
wants the proposed new forms; such evidence would be justification
only for changing the official language, and the official language is
not going to change through design.

> The short forms we did put in the language were justified based on natlang
> usages.

Based on inevitably imperfect understanding of natlang usages. So
some perfectly ordinary natlang usages can be rendered in Lojban only
with much longwindedness.

> We don't have nearly enough Lojban usage especially of the sort of
> obscurities being referred to, to justify adorning the language with more
> baroquenesses in order to handle the once in a blue moon when someone would
> wish to use them.

First, the things on my list were highly practical, not obscurities.
Second, these adornments do not have to be justified by usage.
Third, they are no more baroque than the average Lojban construction.
Fourth, had they -- hypothetically -- been part of the official documented
language I am sure plenty of them would have seen at least as much usage
as other similar official constructions.
Fifth, you yourself have said you have little idea about what people will or
won't want to use, and it is certainly the case that official Lojban is full
of stuff it's hard to imagine people wanting to use, and full of short
cmavo and simple constructions that express relatively useless meanings that
don't justify the shortness and simplicity.

> Every rule in the language has to be taught and learned in order to be used
> and useful. The language is already straining at the limits of what is
> easy to teach, and we don't even have usage examples on which to base
> teaching of these new ideas, merely the idea that they might be useful.
>
> At best, they would be in the back chapters of the most advanced textbook
> anyway.

They surely should be nowhere within any official textbook, because it
would violate the baseline and the pledge that when the baseline expires
the language will almost certainly not be revised.

> >And this is hardly surprising, since these 99% of people have as their
> >main goal successful *communication* (i.e. being understood), with a
> >style as elegant as possible.
>
> Elegant in Lojban need not be defined as "brief".
>
> > And since, as we know full well from natlangs,
> >it is not necessary to be longwindedly precise (or even, it is necesssary to
> >not be longwindedly precise), in order to be understood, longwinded things
> >will see no usage because nobody wants to say it badly enough to put up with
> >the longwindedness.
>
> Alternatively, no one will want to say it badly enough to learn yet another
> cmavo and grammar construction as an exception to the norm.

I don't think it likely that many would learn or use unofficial language,
because
of its unofficialness.

> But as you know, I have little interest in (but
> >not little goodwill for) Lojban usage (or in parole in general) but much
> >interest in Lojban design (and in langue in general), and hence I am
> >interested in cataloguing hypothetical improvements to the design.
>
> I know, and we have every interest in getting people to *stop* thinking in
> terms of Lojban design and hypothetical improvements to the design. Thus
> we are by nature forced to be in opposition. I am obliged to oppose you on
> principle while being fully committed to your right to do so despite by
> opposition.
>
> Isn't my job fun?

(I had thought we had had the last of these debates years ago, when the
baseline came in. But maybe the debates stopped just because they made
me lose interest for a couple of years.)

I don't really want to exercise my right to do stuff despite your
opposition. But I'm not sure what it is that you oppose.

I maintain that there is a difference between the Lojban spoken by the
community -- "jbobau be da" -- and a gerna of a virtual variant of
Lojban, which may or may not ever get used -- "jbogerna be zi'o bei zi'o",
this last being of course the thing that interests me. I can't tell whether
you don't understand this difference, or whether you understand it but deny
that it is real. I find it hard but not impossible to believe that you
would like discussion of loglan grammar to cease, so as not to create an
illusion of instability in the language.

--And.