Subject: RE: Re: Well I guess you do learn something new every day...

From: Nick NICHOLAS <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 9 Aug 2001 14:49:58 -0700 (PDT)

OK, now this is getting into peroration :-) , but:

xod says:

> > Not going to partake in the latest And-Lojbab tiff, partly
> > because of what
> > I'm going to say in the next email, partly because I'm now
> > conflicted
> > between logicist and pragmaticist approaches to the language. But
> > I can't
> > let this pass without comment:
> I hope these two approaches can converge.

There is no intrinsic reason why they can't. Indeed, the 'convention'
system used in The Book (and prior to it) is as good a way of any as
achieving it.

> > (a) The misunderstanding between PC and xod that led to the Great
> > Attitudinal Flamewar of 2001 was anything but evidence of people
> > communicating effectively in the language. I am not being
> > facetious here, either.

> That misunderstanding was based only on a single cmavo, "dai", and my
> usage, though possibly non-standard, was logical and was understood by
> some Lojban readers. With that context it doesn't sound like a big deal.

Well, I don't want to go into it again. I would say, though, that the
misunderstanding was not that surprising, and that what this shows is that
the usage of {dai} needs some elaboration. It may need it through example
sentences, through formal definition, through ten years of usage, or
whatever. But to me, it doesn't look quite ready for primetime yet.
Whether or not that's a big deal --- well, once again, that's an ideological
question.

> I don't want my lack of dexterity at Lojban to reflect upon Lojban itself.
> The fact remains that we don't know what fluent Lojban will sound like,
> and thus we don't know how complete the language is: how different will
> that fluent usage differ from the examples in the Book?

I certainly don't want to cast aspersions on your usage; it would be
pretty brassy of me, since I had the prestidigitation but not the
persistence to keep speaking Lojban. :-) The point is, I think, that we
will get the Two Lojbans, like we've already discussed: formal and
colloquial. Colloquial Lojban, because humans are a tolerant bunch,
especially in spoken communication, will allow all sorts of things, and
will not test that much of the logicist content of Lojban --- people just
won't attempt it. Formal Lojban is still a worthwhile thing though, I
think most people agree --- otherwise, they wouldn't have signed up for
Lojban, formal or colloquial, in the first place. But I now do not believe
that all the gaps perceived in Formal Lojban can or should be filled by
usage in Colloquial Lojban. (If there's a problem with termsets, I doubt
spoken Lojban will ever resolve it, because I doubt spoken Lojban will
even bother with them all that much.)

That said, I'm inclined to count Lojban written with deliberation as
Formal; I'd call Colloquial what gets spoken, and what gets written
without deliberation (IRC, some e-mail.) And since there's plenty of
written Lojban around, it too develops patterns of usage and convention,
which feed back into colloquial usage.

So the gaps do get filled, one way
or the other. I guess I'm just saying we need to keep looking for them;
and I don't think they're going to get filled the way people assume
they're going to get filled. I think it won't be amorphous Invisible Hand
(spoken usage); and it won't be Edict (the time for that is clearly past.)
It will be a clumsier combination
of debate and usage among Lojbanists of good will, with occasional
steerings away from contradicting existing baseline. (Arguably, that's
what's just happened with {vo'a} and {fa'a}.)

And the exchanges are going to keep being testy and frustrating; but I
think the community is now maturing enough that something can be extracted
out of them in the end, most of the time.

-- 
== == == == == == == == == == == == == == == == == == ==
Nick Nicholas, Breathing {le'o ko na rivbi fi'inai palci je tolvri danlu}
[email-masked] -- Miguel Cervantes tr. Jorge LLambias