Subject: RE: [lojban] registry of experimental cmavo

From: "Bob LeChevalier (lojbab)" <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 18 Jul 2001 01:35:13 -0400

At 03:26 AM 07/18/2001 +0100, And Rosta wrote:
>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.

We're past that point; the language design is done. If people want to 
design a new loglan, they can go ahead and they are welcome to use Lojban 
as a basis, but I don't expect to be a part of it. And I really think that 
we don't know enough about loglan usages to design something new that would 
be any improvement. It has been said several times that there may someday 
be a Loglan mark 3 (if Lojban is mark 2) which is designed solely by 
native-fluency Lojbanists who by their skill levels will understand far 
better than any theoretician what the language needs.

> > 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.

The average Lojban construction, I expect, will be far less baroque than 
the stuff that is written now, much of which is translations of elaborated 
English literature. We know that about half of Lojban grammar is 
baroqueness that was added because it was consistent with the rest (like 
the varieties of converters) or because it had an application to some 
problem that JCB or we specifically foresaw.

>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.

In other words, none, because large chunks of the language haven't seen usage.

> > 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.

I didn't say "official textbook"; I said "textbook". My point is that 
people won't use what they haven't learned, and much of the baroqueness in 
the language is not used precisely because we have no idea how to teach 
it. The refgrammar and now Nick's work have both made significant advances 
in teaching things that I thought were unteachable, but Cowan was not 
trying to teach so much as to document, and I thought Nick was only 
tackling existing usage (not having read the lessons, I can't say 
otherwise, but the last round of comments seemed to indicate that his book 
is not pushing beyond what has been settled by usage).

> > 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.

Look at how much interest there is in lists of unofficial cmavo, and how 
the moment the subject is brought up, new proposals appear. The conlang 
community is full of language tinkerers, as the enormous family of 
Euroclones should prove. Lojban could still splinter into a bunch of 
unofficial Lojboclones, though I am obliged to fight it.

> > 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 think anything was settled last time %^)

I don't really want you to lose interest this time either. But you've 
caught me at a sensitive and high stress time because of impending LogFest 
and Nick's book. At other times, I might have skipped answering your post 
entirely, but I am watching closely for topics that need to be discussed at 
LogFest, and issues that need membership decisions at the annual meeting, 
and your discussions go right to the heart of LLG policy as well as being 
the expressed concerns of a new member who will not be present at LogFest 
except by proxy.

>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.

At this point, any attempt to systematically catalog or discuss changes or 
proposals for changes. If something spreads because people use it and 
other people pick it up from that usage, then I can live with it as being 
natural language evolution. If something spreads because someone makes a 
proposal (in English nonetheless) and others collect these proposals into a 
site of unofficial Lojban changes, then before the baseline period ends the 
unofficial site will become the true (non-)baseline which everyone works from.

>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 understand it, accept that it is real, and live in great fear that others 
will decide that they enjoy tinkering with the design more than they enjoy 
the thought of learning the language as it was baselined.

>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.

I wouldn't exactly put it that way, but it is close enough to the 
mark. Discussions of changes of any sort in English are the biggest threat 
I can imagine to the baseline concept. Not merely because of "an illusion 
of instability" (though that could happen) but because it changes the focus 
of much Lojban intellectual activity away from using to talking about the 
language, because it sews dissent into the fabric of the community (which 
has been a problem for every other conlang that has achieved much of an 
audience), and because it changes the focus of the baselining process away 
from that highly desired natural evolution I mentioned a couple paragraphs 
back.

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