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

From: "And Rosta" <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 10 Aug 2001 21:32:00 +0100

Lojbab:
> Note that using the context and being cooperative is part of the 
> design. Not sure whether the Book says so, but I have said many times that 
> the obligation is on the speaker to choose usages which the listener will 
> understand given the context.
> 
> Note also that we CHOSE not to "design" the semantics

This is not in dispute. As I said, there was a deliberate decision to
design only 25% of a language. (Yes of course the "25" is arbitrary,
replace it with any figure substantially less than pi so'a.)

> >There are gaps in the language, and everyone knows this.
> 
> No, everybody doesn't know this! There are things that no one has said, 
> and that no one has tried to say. There is no particular evidence that 
> there is anything that cannot be said with the existing language design, 

Bloody hell, there's abundant daily evidence that the 25% is inadequate
and must be continually be augmented so as to allow us to say stuff.
Okay, this augmentation process is in a larger sense part of the existing
language design, in the sense that you designed 100% of a language on
the basis that 25% would be designed by you and 75% by future users,
but Nick is talking about the 25%.

> >Writing *introductory* lessons alone seems to have unearthed three or four.
> 
> It unearthed questions about HOW to say something. But I haven't noticed 
> any requirement coming from the lessons for any new design. And seems to 
> be the one who is proposing new cmavo to add to the design.

I think almost all of my proposals are for things that could be rendered
using existing cmavo but more convolutedly. You'll note also that only
about 1% of my postings pertain to new cmavo.

Anyway, new design does not mean just adding cmavo or changing the
syntax. It also means defining partially semanticsless cmavo. A
language, or at least a grammar, is a system for mapping from sounds to
meanings; and the current 25% is not such a system.

> >I
> >think everyone now also knows how these gaps are going to get filled in;
> >interminable bickering as before, but this time with some deliberate
> >attempt to set any consensus into stone by recording it with the new
> >computer tools we have. And abandoning the supplicatory model.
> 
> I never knew the supplicatory model existed, whatever it is.

That's because it was everybody else that was supplicant to you!

> It seems to me that the way consensus is set is the way that Jorge has 
> threatened: by using the language the way you think it should be used, and 
> leaving lojbab behind if he doesn't establish any alternatives in 
> usage. Consensus in English language discussion during the baseline period 
> is meaningless if it doesn't see usage.

In practise, I think this may be untrue. Take, for example, the LE/LO
distinction. We achieved a consensus through discussion, not usage,
and usage -- inadvertently rather than deliberately -- flouts the
consensus without the consensus being challenged. Instead, the usage
is seen as at fault. OTOH, Jorge uses [lo'e} nonstandardly, but has 
not won anyone over to it. The most you can say about the power of
usage is that it entrenches bad habits...

So, the way consensus is set is by the sort of debates Jorge, pc, Xod,
me, et al. have been having of late.

--And.