Subject: Retraction, Part 1

From: Nick Nicholas <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 19 Aug 2001 03:47:54 -0700

Not enjoying this, but things have to be cleared for PC's record, if
nothing else, so here goes.

WARNING: Long and self-important. I don't see what *more* I've got to lose,
so I won't apologise for this any more than I've already done.

In addition, this email was drafted while I had the impression the {ce'u}
business was unresolved and unresolvable. John's weighing in may solve
this. It may not. For the record, and overriding anything else I say here:
I will not insist on using {ka} as I have done. If a clear way of using
{ka} and {ce'u} is shown to me (and it just about has), then that is what I
will use henceforth.

So:

1. I retract the hierarchy se papri < cukta < se tcidu < cukta

The characteristically Lojbanic pedantry of Pierre and Xod in pointing out
the error to the hierarchy proves my point, in fact :-) : there is in the
Lojban community a feeling that there is a 'right' and a 'wrong' gismu for
certain concepts. This is not the same as for natural languages, where
prototype semantics would allow things to slush around. Nonetheless,

2. I retract my statement that Lojban does not like prototype semantics.

To be clear: I myself like prototype semantics (in natural language
linguistics --- where my predilections are rather different to my Lojbanic
ones.) And I do not think Lojban as is makes it *easy* to express yourself
in terms of prototype semantics. But if the refgrammar says that a teddy
bear is indeed a bear, then I don't have much of a leg to stand on. Whether
And's notions on how prototypeness can be formally considered part of
Lojban hold, is something I will not decide tonight. :-)

***LESSONS QUESTION***

Lesson 14 currently says in an exercise that the 'chicken' Zhang is
building out of pretzels should not be described as {lo jipci}, but {le
jipci}. Should this now be eliminated?

3. I retract my statement that the Web is not a {cukta}.

I still think it is capricious and misleading to call the Web a {cukta},
especially in devising a {lujvo} for it intended for common use. But I can
find no statement, official or otherwise, that says that the
presuppositions inherent in the words of the gismu place structure (e.g.
"author = agentive existing human or humans") are binding. I will not use
it, but I am tired of arguing against it. As I've said in a previous email,
it's not up to me now anyway.

4. I retract my proposal that the default place for {ce'u} be x1, filled or
not.

I recall And in the past month saying "if anything has been settled by
usage by now, it's this." My recall is pretty bad, it's now seeming; and
And certainly no longer holds this opinion. It has also generated such
outcry on the Wiki that I cannot justify retaining it in the lessons, even
as a suggested option.

After drafting this, I received John's two emails on {ce'u}; and since I
still hold on to the supplicatory model :-) , I retract even more
explicitly: I have attempted to reconcile {ce'u} to the old manner of using
{ka} (with 'filled' places, as we understood it in the early '90s -- i.e.
as equivalent to {nu} and {du'u}.) This will not fly, I was wrong, and I
shall no longer promulgate this error.

(Now you've only got Lojbab left to convince. :-)

***LESSONS CHANGE***

I am personally vexed that the outcry against the 'filled places' proposal
was not raised during the three months the lesson has been available for
public review (though admittedly it was stated only tentatively there). But
whether I'm vexed or not is not the point; the point is that this issue is
not uncontroversial (indeed, it's almost uncontroversially wrong), and
cannot be spoken of as it has been. The issue of filling {ce'u} places will
therefore not be raised in the lessons at all. If enough members of the
community say so (I will deem 'enough' to be And plus two more), the entire
section on {ce'u} will be eliminated. If not, I will attempt to write a
revised lesson section, outlining what now seems to be majority opinion,
and will solicit people look at it carefully, to make sure I get it right.

5. zi'o

{zi'o} was indeed proposed in my day; for all I know, it was proposed by
me. My understanding nonetheless was that it was treated as an "emergency
use only" sumti, whose use was discouraged, in favour of using the "right"
gismu (or, as has correctly been pointed out here, brivla.) My attitude on
this hasn't changed; but this is yet another matter that I cannot claim to
finalise on my own, as it is now in community hands, and there is no
official dictionary to pontificate on it. The Refgramm, p. 157, does use
the "use another gismu" line, but does not really discourage {zi'o}. You
will not find {zi'o} much used immediately after it was proposed, but that
does not mean people aren't going to start using it.

6. ce'u

Not going to argue pro or con; I'm now past caring, and as usual I take
Cowan postings very seriously. (Whether I should is another matter.) But
some general observations on things that arise out of this.

6a. The twa {ka}rbies

We now have two understandings of {ka} abstractions. One is that {ka}
abstractions always have a {ce'u} place (Raizen, Rosta, xod, now Cowan);
the other is that they don't (lojbab, pre-1995 usage.) It's now also
looking like the second understanding interprets {le ka mi xendo} as "my
property of being kind", and the first as "my being kind (to others)", read
as a property of the others --- or alternatively, as tantmount to {le du'u
mi xendo}, and not actually a property at all. (And and John still differ
on this, though I suspect they won't for long.)

As I'd originally written in this email, if it can be stated (as it just
has been by And) that the example phrase Refgramm 11.4.4 {le ka do xunre cu
cnino mi} is wrong, and should have been {nu}, then a major shift has gone
on in how {ka} is understood by a significant part of the community, and we
have serious consequences for the community. Furthermore, this definitely
invalidates much existing usage, and the Refgramm contradicts itself on the
issue. But if even the author of the Refgramm phrase believes he was in
error, and the entire community agrees to treat this as an erratum, then
this hopefully blows over (although I am not confident that there won't be
repeats.)

In my opinion, the way to 'fix' this, then, is to promulgate it loud and
wide in the lessons, which should explicitly say that you *shouldn't* say
{le ka mi xendo} for "my kindness". I will wait for the dust to settle
first, however.

6b. You snooze, you lose

Lojbab complains that nothing binding can come of discussion on {ce'u},
when he and others with an opinion have not had time to peruse the list
discussion and Wiki. This does not make sense to me. If {ce'u} is to be
decided on by community consensus --- be it in debate, or usage, or
whatever --- Lojbanists are not going to wait for other absent Lojbanists
before attempting to work out these things. If you live by 'natural
evolution', you die by it too. Assume everyone on the list and the Wiki
magically decides tomorrow to start using {ce'u} in the same way (and that
way doesn't contravene the baseline --- untested waters, since the LLG has
been reticent until now to speak of errata). If such a decision is made,
then the people who weren't there for the decision can no longer protest it
when and if they get around to it: it will have become the usage of the
active language community, and a descriptivist cannot but follow it. Those
"left out" can only counter it by using it their own way, and having the
two ways duke it out in the marketplace of open ideas. (Something I believe
will not work: see 6d.)

As a general point, this stands, whatever the specifics of {ce'u} or
whatever else comes up. If a norm forms without you now, you cannot protest
it a year later. You snooze, you lose.

6c. Baseline and added places

Lojbab reiterates that change to cmavo place structures will not be even
considered while the cmavo list is baselined (e.g. from 1994 to 2001 + 5 +
however many years from now the dictionary is done --- e.g. possibly as
late as 2020.) I thus have a question.

If a cabal of prominent Lojbanists* decides tomorrow to use an x2 for {ka}
in their writings, as recently independently suggested here,

(a) is their Lojban wrong? (I am speaking with respect to the
'descriptivist' stance, though I guess what I'm really asking is LLG
policy.)

(b) are they to be discouraged?

(c) is such usage not to be documented in an official source, even as a
used variant?

(As an added unhelpful remark, I now consider {se du'u} sacred: in my own
understanding of baselines --- as opposed to any understanding that has
anything to do with the LLG :-) --- you can add places, but you can't
subtract them.)

*I am not using "cabal of prominent Lojbanists" in the sense recently
posted on the Wiki in [Lojban Cabal] and [baseline] as --- a move I do not
think constructive, btw; the language of [Lojban Central] was rather more
temperate --- but in the sense of "A group of Lojbanists of good faith"
that I described to xod in our own Cabal :-) at Logfest.

6d. An Anecdote from Esperanto

In the '50s, a massive brouhaha erupted in Esperanto on whether compound
tenses were to be interpreted in terms of time (atismo) or aspect (itismo).
The atistoj based themselves on logic (estis -ita = Lojban {pupu}), and on
their native language instincts (most of them spoke Germanic). The itistoj
based themselves on Zamenhofian usage (estis -ita = Lojban {puba'o}), and
their native language instincts (most of them spoke Romance and Slavonic.
Zamenhof spoke the latter.)

After twenty years of absurdly detailed exegesis of Zamenhofian
translations of Hans Christian Andersen, much recrimination and outrage,
and something like a hundred published books, the itistoj seem to have
carried the day.

The real consequence, however, is that now noone uses compound tenses any
more. Everyone uses affixes and adverbs instead, which are much less
ambiguous, and not at all contentious.

I have never bought the 'natural evolution' model of Lojban, and this is
why. Natural languages evolve gradually, by "invisible hand" causation, and
usually with minor points of grammar to adjust. Artificial languages (used
by much smaller, and much more self-aware communities) want the Sistine
Chapel rebuilt, and they want it now. When it doesn't happen, avoiding the
construction henceforth is actually the least that can happen.

What I think the example from Esperanto teaches us is that, if consensus is
not reached on a debate with incommensurable viewpoints, then the result
will not be that usage will one day imperceptibly and organically fix this.
When the two camps can't even agree as to what a property is, I don't see
how "sufficient usage" will fix anything: one camp uses cmavo X their way,
the other uses it their way. The best that can happen, I pessimistically
and unconstructively predict, is that new Lojbanists will see the
controversy, balk, and avoid using cmavo X at all. The worst that can
happen... well, you know what the worst is; to name it would only be
inflammatory.

I suspect the answer to this is the old "let a thousand flowers bloom". I
recall And's objection to this, and myself doubt we have enough water to go
around for ten. And a hardliner (but I suspect, not only a hardliner) does
not think that "When 20 or 50 people can state independent opinions it will
be better still." What this "hardliner" thinks it will mean is 20 or 50
Lojbans, with strained mutual intelligibility. I will be overjoyed to be
proven wrong.

Whether or not this applies to {ka}, I still do not know. Like I said,
we've never had errata before, and I have a strong suspicion this
clarification may be blocked as violating the baseline. On this, too, I
will be overjoyed to be proven wrong.

Nick Nicholas, TLG, UCI, USA. [email-masked] www.opoudjis.net
"Most Byzantine historians felt they knew enough to use the optatives
correctly; some of them were right." --- Harry Turtledove.