Subject: Editorial comment

From: Nick NICHOLAS <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 18 Jul 2001 17:50:24 -0700 (PDT)

I'm putting these thoughts out preparatory to Logfest, where I think some
policy has to be discussed. Discussion is welcome, but if you reside in
Fairfax VA, you will have plenty of time for rebuttals at Logfest, and you
still owe me a paragraph on tense --- which I deem higher priority.

Jay has commented that there might be room for a second set of lessons,
providing more of a ramp up to the ref grammar. I concur; there are a lot
of topics that are not covered in the lessons (which are meant to be
putatively introductory), or are covered only cursorily.

My concern now is that, as is becoming obvious, the ref grammar is still
much too underspecified, so I would contend there is in fact a place for
lessons ranging *beyond* what is covered in there. A language in which
"John and I at least know what it's used for" can be said of *any* of
its constructions (let alone {fa'a}) is still, I'm afraid, not ready for
prime time. The kicker here is, most of these things *can* be cleaned up
and made ready for prime time, without redesign or tinkering, but simply
by someone strapping down the 'oracles' and documenting what has been
used or said on the mailing list (or in camera --- or in the oracles' own
minds.) (Whether this happens in lessons-format
or dictionary-format or reference-grammar-format is not really relevant,
as long as it's done.) I can't say
I'm confident that this will happen soon, though, and I won't be the one
to do it anyway.

And I must say, I'm agreeing more with And than, say, xod, these days ---
which comes as a surprise to me. The point of Lojban is that it be held to
some standards of logical and linguistic explicitness, above all else. If
that isn't the point, then it forfeits its pretensions of being a logical
language; and if I want Espreranto, I know where to find it. (At least
Esperanto is maldotco, rather than malglico.) If the 'thousand flowers'
are to do the job of filling in underspecified details of the language,
without any steering from a prescription more complete than is currently
available, then who is to say what is malglico and what is merely
thousand-flower Lojban? Who is to say "zbasu" shouldn't be used for
factives, just as "madzo" was in Loglan?

{.i mi sruma le du'u la xod. ka'e danfysku le sedu'u
na sinma da poi tavla fi la lojban. gi'enai tavla ba'e fo la lojban
.i ku'i fau lenu mipezu na birti djuno
ledu'u makau se smuni su'o sampu stura selsku pe la lojban. zi'enemu'u
lu mi tirna le .ianai cradi li'u .e lu mi fa'ani'a bacru li'u kei
mi na kakne lenu ge tavla bau la lojban
gi jai to'e galfi la lojban. lo norlogji bangu
.i mi djica lenu mi tavla fo lo logji bangu .u la lojban.
.i lenu catne skicu loi pujeca na'e se skicu cu curmi lenu
mi tavla fo la lojban.
poi mi ka'e birti le ka ke'a cajeba logji je satci kei
voi steci la lojban.}

I am not saying the language should still be tinkered with, and people
know well my commitment to stability for a language community to prosper.
What I am saying is that there can be no baseline-like stability without a
fuller specification of the language than we have. Because the gaps still
being found, in many instances, involve not stylistic preference but core
grammar issues, this specification has to be prescriptive in those
instances rather than thrown over to
usage. And my confidence that we will see such a specification any
time soon has been eroded. (I have heard nothing about the Dictionary
since I made my proposals in April, for example.) Being prescriptive,
this is not something that can be solved by a collaborative dictionary
effort --- laudable though that proposal is; this is something that *has*
to come out of Lojban Central.

As to the lessons and their level of pitching, we now have a 150p. and a
250p. book. It should be obvious that the notion that 400p. of material
(even in paperback format) be sent out to anyone at all who makes an
initial casual enquiry about Lojban is pure folly. The initial chapter
of the _lojban mo_ book (the brochure) as a standalone is all they should
be getting. Then the intro booklet, and only then any lessons. Yes, you
can send out just the Mini-lesson (or what I know think is its
equivalent, Lessons 1-3); but that hardly begins to teach you Lojban, so
noone serious about Lojban is not going to end up getting Lessons 4-15
anyway.

-- 
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| "One must first know that traditionally a Japanese bus has carried not ||
| only a driver but one or more young girls who stand in the aisles and ||
| sell tickets, announce stops, and in general console the passengers for||
| the inadequacies and discomforts of this transient world." \
| --- Roy Andrew Miller, _The Japanese Language_, p. 251 \
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\[email-masked]|||||||Transient Passenger||||||Nick Nicholas||||||||||
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