Subject: Re: [lojban] Retraction, Part 1

From: "Bob LeChevalier (lojbab)" <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 20 Aug 2001 02:15:24 -0400

At 03:47 AM 8/19/01 -0700, Nick Nicholas wrote:

I will say first that if nothing else, Nick's reemergence into active 
Lojban use provides a much more productive environment for moving these 
discussions along towards possible consensus. With Nick absent, I have 
always felt that a big chunk of the usage community was going 
unrepresented. I wish that Ivan and Goran also were participating (Nick: 
could you suggest to Ivan some key pages on the Wiki that he might choose 
to comment on using his joint linguist/Lojbanist hats at his leisure - the 
Wiki might be a good thing if it provides a way that the very part-time 
Lojbanist can participate in one of our discussions and not be following 
things live - of course that also means that people have to know when and 
where such a person has been at work or people may never notice - the Wiki 
needs CVS-style traceability/logging of changes).

(Nick, feel free to add my response to the Wiki in whole or part as 
appropriate, if your comments are also posted there. I don't have time to 
write the same thing in two incompatible forums.)

>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 seems to be context missing, presumably context that will be found on 
the Wiki. It seems to me that the result of the Wiki is a side-channel 
discussion that most on the list are not privy to. I guess if it allows 
settling of issues that don't get resolved in dozens of messages on-list, 
this is a good thing. But it makes posts like this very up in the air.

>: 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,

For *gismu* there is a constraint that restricts slushing around, and that 
constraint is the place structure. I can't describe a person as a book 
unless I can fill in those oblique places.

Some gismu place structures are more amenable to slushing than others, such 
as the bear of species "Teddy".

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

This is good and important, because I think the adoption of prototype 
semantics as an overlay to the language has guided much of my philosophy 
for setting the original place structures, in particular the color words 
with their lack of oblique places rendering them amongst the most 
prototypical of Lojban concepts.

I think that the prototype semantics theory that will describe Lojban will 
differ somewhat from that used with other languages, but I don't think that 
we are there yet.

>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?

I think it should not be, not necessarily because it is *false* to use the 
phrase "lo jipci", but because absent a full context, the use of the 
veridical descriptor is *misleading*. Veridical descriptions invoke a 
subsidiary claim that the thing described really is what the description 
says it is, and if that claim is controversial amongst speaker and 
listeners, then it distracts from communication, and may even 
miscommunicate. In other words, if you and I agree that Teddy is a bear 
for purposes of the discussion, my using lo cribe will not cause problems, 
though it may invoke other aspects of bearness into our discussion (because 
if Teddy is a bear, it is fair to attribute to him any and all "ka ce'u cribe")

Under prototypical semantics as I understand it, almost anything that is le 
jipci can probably also be seen as lo jipci given enough context, so we 
need to consider why one would choose one descriptor over another, and in 
most cases that would be either to stress the nonspecificity that is often 
a characteristic of lo, and thus the interchangeability of the referent 
with other things sharing the description, OR that we are entering an 
imaginary world where the prototypical properties in which the referent 
fits ka ce'u jipci are all that matter or that we are trying to stress the 
ka ce'u jipci in constrast to other things that might be le jipci but are 
NOT lo jipci because they don't fit the place structure or the prototype 
properties.

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

It is a cukta given appropriate stretching of the place structure, but as 
with your chapter 14 example it is misleading to call it "lo cukta", which 
indeed is what you are about to say:
>I still think it is capricious and misleading to call the Web a {cukta},

... but ...
>especially in devising a {lujvo} for it intended for common use.

the moment one goes into the lujvo-making business, the capricious and 
misleading constraints fall away somewhat and all becomes fair.

Where I resist on the final sentence is the last 4 words "intended for 
common use". I don't think people should be coining lujvo "for common 
use", but rather should be coining lujvo for a specific contextual use. If 
an existing lujvo works in other contexts, then it becomes MORE commonly in 
use, but this is something that probably cannot be intended in advance.

I thus agree with Helsem that there should be MANY words for concepts, not 
one "intended for common use" word. This is the ultimate manifestation of 
pc's ancient dictum about letting a hundred flowers bloom (which dictum I 
recently ran across in the early JL, I think it was JL2, in which he first 
applied it to Loglan/Lojban).

>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.

Lojban is a language which scorns philosophical presuppositions that stem 
from the words or grammar of other languages. But since we have a 
bootstrapping problem, we necessarily describe the language using the words 
and grammar of other languages, and must filter out those presuppositions 
whenever it seems useful to do so.

>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.

I remain uncertain why there is such an issue. It seems that people 
nowadays want there to be a default explicitly defined for everything in 
the language that can be ellipsized, whereas the norm of the language is 
that all features are optional, with no true "default" other than what is 
indicated by context. If you don't want to trust to context, be explicit - 
but at no time in the history of the language has there been an intent to 
have a ellipsized form default to anything (in the case of measurements, 
the default value of li pa crept in as a solution to a particular problem, 
and I have been troubled ever since by what JCB called an elegant solution 
which in some ways violated the context-based nature of the language; in 
the case of LE quantification it seemed impossible to clarify what these 
meant without "default" quantifiers, and here again there was at one time a 
lot of debate about the default values and even whether there should be any).

>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. :-)

I can use ce'u in multiple modes, and believe I did use ce'u above 
correctly by both others' standards and my own to specifically highlight 
that the x1 place was being focused on. I think that most ce'u usage 
either explicit or default has a clear place that is being filled in. But 
when I talk about "ka melbi" meaning the abstraction "Beauty", I BELIEVE 
that I am NOT focusing on any specific place, but rather could be inserting 
ce'uxitu'o in each place of melbi, as well as in any 
appropriate-for-context modal places.

>***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).

Remember that some of us haven't yet gotten that far. To the extent that 
you wish the new book to set and add to standards for the language, you 
will have to be prepared for it to take a while. Cowan's refgrammar 
existed as draft chapters for 3 years before it was settled enough to be 
published, and we STILL made a lot of last minute corrections and people 
are still finding errata. Your ce'u chapters haven't existed more than a 
couple of months.

> 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.

Good.

>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.

I will remain agnostic until more people actually look at it with this 
question/intent of yours in mind. If it is controversial, it should be 
eliminated in a book intended to serve as a standard or should be noted as 
controversial. If people think that ce'u SHOULD be discussed in a 
beginning textbook, but controversy remains, then the best approach is the 
honest one - to describe what you understand as the "best" approach, with 
specific note that usage has not yet settled whether this is correct and 
that the user should be prepared to see writings that don't conform to the 
patterns that you are teaching.

Doesn't a good linguistics textbook, when teaching about a controversial 
aspect of theory, give the author's point of view but also cite important 
differing opinions, at least by reference? Why shouldn't a language 
textbook do the same?

>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.

I think this will likely be necessary, if only that we cannot decide 
whether there is a majority opinion that can effectively taught and should 
be taught until it is laid out textbook style just what it is that you 
propose to teach about that opinion.

In other words, you get to write the "record" and not wait for pc. %^)

>5. zi'o
>
>{zi'o} was indeed proposed in my day; for all I know, it was proposed by
>me.

It came up as a result of Bruce Gilson's Voksigid, as I recall, which more 
or less questioned whether any places are metaphysically necessary for any 
bridi concept.

It paralleled a similar issue that was applied more to lujvo instead of 
gismu - that of "lean lujvo".

Given prototype semantics, the only constraints on the meanings of words 
are those imposed by the place structures. Those who argue for fewer 
places and for removing places are seeking to invoke a broader, less 
constrained prototype. But the use of zi'o seems to stress precisely those 
constraints we are trying NOT to invoke, which seems contrary to the point, 
and thus botpi with zi'o ends up implying "bottle even though it doesn't 
have a cap" rather than "bottle whether it has a cap or not"

>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.)

I think it has always been the case that a few people, unhappy with certain 
specific places on the gismu, have championed the use of zi'o to point out 
that unhappiness. I am not sure how much usage zi'o has really seen in 
all-Lojban discussion, but suspect that it is far less than occurs in 
discussions about place structures and semantics out of language. As such, 
it is useful for emergency use, and it will probably be useful for 
discussing lexical semantics in-language.

>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.

go'i .i'e

>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.)

OK.

>It's now also
>looking like the second understanding interprets {le ka mi xendo} as "my
>property of being kind",

Without context specifying that I am focusing on any other place.

>and the first as "my being kind (to others)", read
>as a property of the others

That may likely be the most common interpretation IN CONTEXT where a 
specific ce'u place is needed.

lo danlu cu zmadu lo zergau le ka mi xendo

clearly has an elliptical ce'u in x2

But I maintain that there are some usages of ka broda where one does NOT 
focus on a particular place, and these usages are the prototypical concept 
of ka. I also think that there is a difference between these usages and 
du'u broda but have a harder time making that difference clear. (I note 
here that pc made the difference clear in his record posting, which I 
respond to separately). Since du'u arose as a manifestation of a specific 
bridi relationship between the bridi and its expression as le sedu'u, I 
find it hard to think of du'u as a generalization. du'u deals with 
concrete and filled in bridi, whereas ka without ce'u is the one way in 
which we can talk about what makes a bridi true in an *abstract* sense 
WITHOUT filling in all the places, while still acknowledging that they 
exist. I thus think of du'u as much more akin to nu than to ka.

>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,

It is grammatical. It is merely a question of what it means, which may be 
hard to express in English. The refgrammar was first and foremost about 
grammar and not about meaning.

>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.

There are no consequences unless people insist on consequences.

>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.)

I don't agree that there are ANY errata in the refgrammar. If there are 
mistakes, then ignore what the refgrammar says, but do so in usage and at 
peril of being misunderstood. If everyone IN LANGUAGE agrees to be 
understood a certain way when using a certain expression, then the 
refgrammar is trumped by usage, and I will not be justified to complain (at 
least not in English).

>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.

And I say that the way to "fix" this is to use the language however you 
choose, then write the lessons based on usage and not based on the 
refgrammar, but then say up front that you are basing the teaching on 
actual usage even where at times it may violate the refgrammar and then 
indicating when you teach the specific item that you are not teaching in 
accordance with the standard, but rather in accordance with usage. This 
then leaves it to each new student to decide for themselves between the 
standard and the usage, knowing that they differ. If they choose to follow 
existing usage, then so be it.

>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.

Not quite. I am saying that nothing binding can be decided under these 
circumstances PERIOD, because we are not in a mode of deciding things in a 
binding way.

Put another way, I have in part fought for 2-3 years to keep some decisions 
from being accepted because I knew intuitively that you as the most skilled 
speaker of the language would disagree with them, even where I was not sure 
what the right decision would be. You should be involved in decisions 
about the future of the language, and so should Nora, and Goran and Ivan 
and a whole bunch of others, and it simply is not possible in short order 
for everyone to visit the site of controversy at the moment and make a 
momentary decision that might be right or might be wrong.

NONE of this necessarily needs to be decided prescriptively. The fact that 
we've gone for years not deciding it and the language and user base 
continues to grow should make this clear.

And faced with this, I will not be railroaded into accepting a new mode of 
even more rapid decision-making that attempts to be binding on those of us 
who do not participate.

The Wiki is just another forum besides Lojban List. Indeed Nora pointed 
out that there is a negative in that it splits people between two forums 
and there is obviously context lost when reading only one of them - better 
that we stick to one forum. One the other hand I see a positive thing in 
the Wiki in that unlike messages on the list whose explicit context is only 
that text which is quoted, the Wiki preserves the context 
indefinitely. This can allow even intermittently active Lojbanists like 
you and Mark Shoulson and Ivan and Colin and Veijo to get involved when you 
can and to drop out when you cannot, knowing that on any topic the context 
of the discussion can be preserved indefinitely. That would be a positive 
thing IFF the Wiki is not seen as a place where decisions are made in a 
binding manner and cannot continue to evolve whenever someone new drops in 
with a new insight. Now it seems to me that the Wiki by its nature will 
operate thusly because there is no real way to stop a late comer from 
inflicting a contrary opinion on the mass of what has come before, in which 
case I have nothing to fear and you are overstating its "bindingness".

> This does not make sense to me. If {ce'u} is to be decided on by 
> community consensus

Maybe it shouldn't be "decided", simply used.

>--- 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.

Of course. So use it.

>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.)

But of course there is nothing stopping them from doing so. The Wiki 
remains open to change indefinitely. Indeed, given some recent comments it 
seems that someone sufficiently antagonistic to what is written on the Wiki 
can simply erase it and anonymously replace it by something new, and the 
whole world may never know until it happens to discover that the Wiki reads 
differently from what they remember. This is something that does not warm 
the cockles of my baseline-managing heart.

>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.

But I can and I will. And anyone else can and will. I furthermore REFUSE 
to make any significant decisions in LESS THAN a year. The baseline period 
is expressly intended to allow 5 or more years for usage and consensus to 
make decisions, not "right now in time to make Nick's deadline before he 
gets drawn off into non-Lojbanic projects". We can't do that, even for 
you, and we shouldn't try.

>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.)

LLG has no policy on what Lojbanists do in using the language, so long as 
they are
*using* it. Lojbab (as distinguished from LLG) is not of a mind to 
encourage LLG to make a policy on this issue. Lojbab also thinks that the 
question of "right" and "wrong" are inappropriate for issues that the 
community in good faith disagrees upon. I have no alternative but to trust 
the community of Lojban users, since without you there really is no 
language; therefore you cannot do "wrong" even if you act in my opinion 
erroneously.

>(b) are they to be discouraged?

I will not discourage ANYONE from using the language in any way. You and 
others including Michael Helsem will know how Lojban Central felt about the 
accordance with standards of many of Michael's usages when he was writing 
his "purple Lojban". But while I might have complained about the 
perfection of his Lojban, I tried to make sure it was clear that it was a 
matter of personal aesthetics. I welcomed his attempting to use the 
language, and I continue to do so.

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

No decision has been made, nor is there any plan to make a decision before 
some appropriate writer of an "official source document" chooses to do 
so. The bottom line is that we are moving at a crawl towards documenting 
the standards; I see no reason to add to our burden by committing to 
document the non-standard as well as the standard. If a writer wishes to 
document something nonofficial like the alternate orthography or rafsi 
fu'ivla in the refgrammar, then that is fine. In both of those cases the 
refgrammar makes clear that they are options that have a less-than-official 
standing.

>(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.)

We have always found it easier to add to the language as opposed to 
changing or deleting. The period from 1992 to 1997 was largely one of 
official addition with virtually no change other than the 1993 reassignment 
of rafsi (and there you will recall YOU argued successfully against change 
whenever usage had established a particular rafsi in your mind. Few other 
times in the last decade involved something deleted from the 
language. This was in contrast to 1991 when gumri was eliminated as a 
gismu despite it being established in Nora and my mind (as two of the most 
predominant users of the time).)

>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.

Sounds like a good reason to skip the brouhaha and the absurdly detailed 
exegesis and get on with using the language, perhaps with both ways being 
used by their respective proponents and both remaining intact (your 
description of the above does not give any reason why both forms could not 
have persisted in the language indefinitely, nor why they could not be 
understood by each other. Nor do you explain how Esperanto survived from 
1887 to 1950 with such an "important" issue worthy of such strife unresolved.).

>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.

And the absurdly long baseline period that I committed to (5 years from 
whenever) is my promise to never rebuild the Sistine Chapel nor to allow it 
to be torn down while someone tries to rebuild it without me. If someone 
wants to build New Rome, more power to them. But I would prefer that they 
build it in Lojbanistan employing native-speaking workers so as to avoid a 
Tower of Babel.

People who cannot live with this lack of constant Sistine Chapel rebuilding 
need to find another pursuit or another environment, because it is the one 
thing that I am committed to hostility towards at this stage in the language.

>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.

What? "Schism"? I think this is not the sort of dispute over which schisms 
are made. And while I have strong preferences for one approach on this 
issue, I am not prepared to provoke schism over it. That was JCB's thing - 
agree with him or leave, not mine.

As for two camps not agreeing what a property is, I say "so what". pc has 
made clear that in the world of academic logicians there are entire schools 
that cannot agree on a whole variety of issues. Yet the edifice of formal 
logic has not tumbled and the intellectual schisms are invisible to those 
outside the academic community, and are thus of less importance than the 
existence of two antagonistic political parties in American politics (which 
I am reasonably sure is QUITE visible outside our country, but hasn't torn 
the US into pieces *yet* %^).

I also say that much of the dispute hinges on such words as "property" 
which cannot be described Lojbanically using English words that 
inaccurately reflect the Lojbanic meaning. The dispute is being lost in 
the translation.

If things ever die down enough that I'm willing and able to propose and 
promote the approach to resolving issues that we started to talk about at 
LogFest, and maybe we can start amicably start resolving some of the issues 
by example. But I will not be railroaded into action, when I'm overloaded 
and over-committed as it is, and when there are so many other "critical 
issues" being debated to focus on something new.

>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.

But that mutual intelligibility will be strained for only so 
long. Language is about communications and not theoretical purity. Those 
versions of Lojban which are not understood will not survive. Usage will 
nourish some of those thousand flowers while others will wither, but if we 
don't allow then to initially bloom, then we choke off the possibilities in 
favor of a quick and hasty decision. And I thus answer that if we had made 
a bunch of decisions back in 1991 and managed to write a dictionary and 
textbook back then, there would be no ce'u, no tu'a or jai, nor a bunch of 
other things that have greatly enhanced the language. Maybe if we give it 
a little more time, without insisting on decisions, we WILL reach consensus 
on a small number of fairly consistent options if not a single one.

Furthermore, I think the limited proof of my approach is that Nick Nicholas 
virtually disappeared from our community in 1994, and reappeared in 2000 
and spoke Lojban and was understood, and understood Lojbanists who spoke to 
him, without having read or participated in 6 years of debate and 
evolution. While your usage was not the same as xorxes or xod, you do 
speak mutually intelligible Lojban. I see no reason to expect the next 6 
years to see as much change in the language as the last 6, in ways that 
would seriously affect mutual intelligibility.

>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.

It won't be "blocked" in the sense that anyone from LLG Central will go up 
and erase whatever has been said on the Wiki. The most powerful act we can 
do is to ignore it, and lack of time on the part of the limited denizens of 
LLG Central will make this the default situation anyway.

And this I think is important to understand. As usage increases, the 
number of such issues will increase and not decrease. Your anecdote showed 
that Esperanto survived over 60 years of "millions" using the language, 
dozens of dictionaries and reference grammars that went into copious 
details, and STILL came up with an issue you consider comparable to the 
ce'u/ka issue in its risks and damage to usage. Lojban Central isn't 
capable of adjudicating all disputes forever, and I don't mean to try. We 
aren't a Lojban Academy, and like the Communist state it would be ideal if 
we could wither away. An insistence on official pronouncements on all 
issues and of official recognition and support for One True Lojbanic Path 
is beyond our human capabilities. I will learn to trust the community as a 
whole to become the new Lojban Central that will bless or condemn usages 
based merely on whether they understand them and use them. Others need to 
do so as well. We really have no other option.

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