Balningau: The Great Update

[Dustin Lacewell]

This message is an announcement and an invitation.

An effort will begin shortly by a number of jbopre, for which this announcement

speaks, that pertains to the systematic review and, where deemed necessary,

revision of the entire gimste.

We expect a lot of varied responses to this effort.

The response we expect to receive the loudest is the one that denies the very

legitimacy of the endeavor. We have considered how to approach the community

regarding this agenda and the conclusion was to formally approach the

mailing-list, Facebook and IRC communities regarding the status-quo regarding

the policies related to lojban's maintenance.

You can view the result of this approach in this thread:

https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/lojban/_juGorRhWtI

We implore you to carefully review the progression of discourse and consider for

yourself what may be concluded from the positions put forth there. The outcome

is not much different than what we expected when we submitted the original

message, at least in terms of pushback. The amount of explicit support and

advocacy was incredibly encouraging and reaffirming.

The conclusion, as far as we are concerned, can essentially be characterized as

a mix between a simplistic resolve that "somebody 'just' needs to pick up where

we left off!" and long historical digressions about why things are gridlocked in

the first place. The suggestions provided for removing that gridlock have been,

to be clear, deemed unreasonable and not worth their weight in practical value.

Consider the character in proposing that those with the will to work on the language

first carry out the lengthy agendas gone unfinished for more than 10 years,

including puzzling suggestions to do things like finish a CLL reflective of

decade old Lojban, only to subsequently replace it with a modern one.

Be certain that we have *heard* these outlines for how we should be spending our

efforts, considered them, and decided we have no intention of carrying out such

tautological efforts as prerequisites to our own. To speak plainly, we simply

are not interested. We have far more practical things to do that are directly

related to dealing with making the lojbanic prescription more immediately

reflective of modern lojban for the benefit of its current speakers and the

sensibilities of those finding the language for the first time, every day.

ta'onai

The first of those efforts is the aforementioned revision of the gimste. We, and

those who decide to participate, will be systematically visiting each gismu in

the gimste and applying modern sensibilities and usage to their place

structures. This includes changing the order, removing or adding places as it is

deemed valuable and sensible to do so. We intend to use the software model for

this process, specifically for the use of change proposals, review, and

potential integrational merging of individual changes back into the gimste.

The current repository where this work will take place can be found here:

https://github.com/balningau/gimste

We are currently working to organize this repository with the data of the gimste

so that work can begin. We will be authoring a number of documents outlining the

procedure and process for this effort explicitly so that it can be referenced

later. We will also include good information about how to interact with github's

interface to participate in the effort, using easy to understand language and

pictures outlining the steps to perform things like, submitting your own change

proposal, and commenting on the proposal's of others.

If you think you too would like to participate directly in this process we

HIGHLY encourage you to come visit us in the #balningau channel on Freenode IRC.

There is still some time before we actually begin as the aforementioned

documentation needs to be authored and we need to further discuss the process

and ordering of that process before anything happens. However, we are getting

fairly close to feeling ready to begin so please come and join us in direct

discourse.

We expect this thread will devolve into the philosophy about the mere

integrity or legitimacy of the effort or specific revisions to the gismu that

this person or that person agrees or disagrees with. As for the former, we'll be

listening to that discussion but no longer feel strongly compelled by it. As for

the latter, we again highly encourage you to come to #balningau where such

specific discussions are happening all the time. Furthermore, when we move to

begin having those conversations in a more formal context on github, utilizing

the issue system, you will be more contextualized when that happens.

Thanks for reading this far.

Regards,

Dustin

[Craig Daniel]

Question:

Is it your intention to fork off of Lojban? If so, what do you believe
fracturing the speech community will accomplish? If not, why are you
making no apparent effort to make this any kind of official project?

(I say this as somebody who loves the idea of a better-organized, more
internally consistent gimste and is likely to back any kind of
official proposal to sanely bring about such a thing.)

- mi'e .kreig.daniyl.

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[Dustin Lacewell]

I invite you to read the thread I linked. While we are not working inside the purview of the LLG, we have no intention of 'forking' the language. We work on Lojban. Our aim is to create materials that more accurately reflect the current state of the language without, say, finishing reference materials that reflect lojban as it was more than 10 years ago. No doubt many will view this as a fork. We're simply updating stuff with out the prerequisites laid before us by those with such official purview. Its a complex notion but I hope we can discern what it means to go ahead and work on the language without first carrying out or paying much heed to decade old deadlocked agendas that have no real bearing on speakers of lojban today, or the impressions of our nintadni. We aim to solve some of the actual issues the language has today, and skipping the bit where we spend a lot of time doing what others have viewed as the way forward in the past.

[Adam Lopresto]

On Thu, May 22, 2014 at 3:54 PM, Craig Daniel <craigb...@gmail.com> wrote:

Question:

Is it your intention to fork off of Lojban? If so, what do you believe
fracturing the speech community will accomplish? If not, why are you
making no apparent effort to make this any kind of official project?

We tried that; you can read the thread linked above (https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/lojban/_juGorRhWtI) if you want the nitty gritty, but the short answer is that the LLG is committed to thoroughly documenting CLL-Lojban before any other work can be done. We feel that that that standard is out of date, and that effort toward perfecting it would be better spent advancing modern usage.

 

(I say this as somebody who loves the idea of a better-organized, more
internally consistent gimste and is likely to back any kind of
official proposal to sanely bring about such a thing.)

Your input would be appreciated!

[Craig Daniel]

On Thu, May 22, 2014 at 5:06 PM, Adam Lopresto <adamlo...@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Thu, May 22, 2014 at 3:54 PM, Craig Daniel <craigb...@gmail.com>
> wrote:
>>
>> Question:
>>
>> Is it your intention to fork off of Lojban? If so, what do you believe
>> fracturing the speech community will accomplish? If not, why are you
>> making no apparent effort to make this any kind of official project?
>
>
> We tried that; you can read the thread linked above
> (https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/lojban/_juGorRhWtI) if you want the
> nitty gritty, but the short answer is that the LLG is committed to
> thoroughly documenting CLL-Lojban before any other work can be done. We feel
> that that that standard is out of date, and that effort toward perfecting it
> would be better spent advancing modern usage.

Do you believe reordering the places of a gismu into something that is
not consistent with current usage (but is an improvement, at least if
you do it well) will "more accurately reflect the current state of the
language" (Dustin's phrasing) than working to fully document the
language as it stands? I'm not aware of any gismu whose dominant usage
is entirely self-consistent but at odds with the standard you describe
as "out-of-date," but it's possible I'm wrong - I'm not nearly as
involved in the use of the language as I was a decade ago.

Also: let me point out that there has been at least one successful
occasion wherein an area of the language felt to be in need of serious
reform was approved by the LLG, *after* the foundation of the BPFK.
(In fact it's BPFK work that brought the proposal forth.) The process
created to make this possible explicitly references BPFK work, though,
and is intensely restrictive as a compromise with the hardliners who
comprise a large fraction of the current voting membership (yes,
that's the reason for the restrictions; I wrote the ZG policy, and I
did so in terms that basically go "seriously guys, support for this is
*so freaking overwhelming*, can we just let it in now?"), but there's
nothing set in stone about those restrictions being unable to be eased
the next time some proposal has such broad support from the community.
The fact that we did pass the ZG policy (even with the compromise of
it requiring unanimous buy-in from the ZG plus a members' vote to put
anything into the ZG) and then gave xorlo the LLG's official
imprimatur (which I think led directly to its being the standard way
the language is spoken and taught, as opposed to something almost
nobody ever actually used despite lots of us thinking it sounded like
a good idea) gives the lie to the notion that the LLG will never
approve anything not perfectly compliant with the CLL as written. In
fact, that's part of the point of having the BPFK at all - if we were
hamstrung by the idea that everything had to match 100% with the
badyxu'e, then we'd be promising never to fix any of the ways in which
that standard has been found buggy.

By leaving behind the current language documentation and refinement
process (and it very much is also about fixing the broken bits as we
find them, even if the process of documenting the brokenness and
putting forth ways to actually fix it is basically halted at the
moment), you're almost inevitably separating this effort from the
version of the language that will come out of the BPFK if its work
ever gets finished. (As somebody who stepped down from BPFK things for
many of the same reasons Lojbab identifies, my hat is off to anyone
who helps make that happen. I might step up to give it a go again in a
less intense fashion, though as I work in baseball I have minimal free
time for such things until the end of the summer.) If, however, a
"suggested gimste revisions" document were to be part of the BPFK's
output even before the rest of the work is done or even close, then it
would almost certainly be a part of the official standard at the time
that the official standard is completely defined.

Step one in how I'd want to see something like this done: participate
in LLG meetings. I know you're on the mailing list for them, but
AFAICT you're not currently a member, and I'm not aware of you or
Dustin having expressed any any interest in becoming one. The LLG is
not, in any way, committed to anything its members don't want it to
be, and most members are in favor of any and all active users of the
language who care about its future having a voice in directing that
future. It is beneficial to neither the LLG as an organization nor the
wider Lojban community for official status to be associated with
decisions made only by us curmudgeonly old-timers (and curmudgeonly
medium-timers, in my case) due to a lack of involvement by the people
who make up the bulk of the language's current user base!

- mi'e .kreig.

[selpa'i]

la'o me. Craig Daniel .me cusku di'e

> Is it your intention to fork off of Lojban?

No.

> If not, why are you
> making no apparent effort to make this any kind of official project?

We actually did try. See this recent thread (
https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/lojban/_juGorRhWtI ). We tried
to appoint some sort of new leadership in order to give activities like
this gimste revision the proper drive and momentum and the ability to
make actual decisions.

(I would like to say that I'm very grateful for the huge amount of
support I have received from so many jbopre, both old and new.)

We certainly would like this project to be official, but the LLG clearly
has other plans before even considering a project like this.

Nevertheless, I and everyone else involved in this project believe that
improving the gimste is something that we shouldn't postpone any longer
than necessary (Nobody knows how long we would have to wait. Another 10
years?). Usage and definitions are drifting further and further apart,
and it pains me that newcomers find the language in this state of
uncertainty. There are obvious flaws in the gimste, and we want to fix
them in order to make Lojban the best possible language we can.

We don't want to wait anymore, and we hope that others share this
sentiment and will participate in the revision either by actively
getting involved or by voicing their approval of the idea and supporting
our cause that way.

> (I say this as somebody who loves the idea of a better-organized, more
> internally consistent gimste and is likely to back any kind of
> official proposal to sanely bring about such a thing.)

Great to hear that!

mi'e la selpa'i mu'o

[Craig Daniel]

On Thu, May 22, 2014 at 5:48 PM, selpa'i <sel...@gmx.de> wrote:
>
>> If not, why are you
>> making no apparent effort to make this any kind of official project?
>
>
> We actually did try. See this recent thread (
> https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/lojban/_juGorRhWtI ). We tried to
> appoint some sort of new leadership in order to give activities like this
> gimste revision the proper drive and momentum and the ability to make actual
> decisions.

Yes, that's a thread I saw. An attempt was made to appoint new
leadership to official status in a manner that has nothing to do with
what is currently official. Just as Josha Norton could not bootstrap
his way into any actual leadership of the United States, this was a
silly way to try to get anything done.

I see you as a leader within the Lojban community in an unofficial
way. I'm genuinely surprised you've never shown any interest in being
part of the voting membership of the organization that is tasked with
shepherding the language, especially as you have ideas about how that
mission could more effectively be accomplished.

> We certainly would like this project to be official, but the LLG clearly has
> other plans before even considering a project like this.

It does, at this time. But the LLG is a democratic organization that
has only the plans its membership decides to have at the annual
meeting, which is conducted via a parliamentary process.

> Nevertheless, I and everyone else involved in this project believe that
> improving the gimste is something that we shouldn't postpone any longer than
> necessary (Nobody knows how long we would have to wait. Another 10 years?).

Do you know how many years passed from when xorlo was proposed in a
usably-close-to-final form and when it was granted official status by
the body you are assuming can't act fast enough?

The answer is about half of one. The BPFK took a vote pretty much
immediately in which we (I say we because I was on it at the time)
unanimously said this was a thing we wanted approved and made
official, so Robin moved to do so. Objections were made that the
then-current version of the BPFK procedures didn't actually allow for
that to happen with any piece before all pieces were done (which is
because they were written at a time when it was thought the whole
project would take a year or so tops, and we were at the time already
seeing that it was going to be a long slog), so And said, let's change
the procedures so we can implement it! And so I wrote up a proposal to
do precisely that (one that said, in more formal terms, "hey, the
entire BPFK and a healthy majority of the membership wants this;
clearly when *that* is the case it is a good idea") and to incorporate
into those changes the adoption of xorlo, and this proposal passed at
once.

So, based on past experience: we'd have to wait until the work on that
bit of stuff was done and there was a proposal to vote on, and
probably also until there was a clear enough mandate from the
community for its implementation that even at least a few
mostly-hardliners like And were squarely behind it, and then a'osai it
would get approved with a promptness you may find startling.

> We don't want to wait anymore, and we hope that others share this sentiment
> and will participate in the revision either by actively getting involved or
> by voicing their approval of the idea and supporting our cause that way.

As noted a moment ago, I can't help in any active way until after
baseball season (and even then I won't dive in hard like you seem to
be; Lojban is no longer my primary hobby, but I'm glad to see serious
work with it being done by those for whom it is), but I will gladly
take the opportunity to express my support for your goals even if I'm
quite cautious about how you're trying to get them done.

- mi'e .kreig.

[Craig Daniel]

On Thu, May 22, 2014 at 6:05 PM, Craig Daniel <craigb...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Do you know how many years passed from when xorlo was proposed in a
> usably-close-to-final form and when it was granted official status by
> the body you are assuming can't act fast enough?
>
> The answer is about half of one. The BPFK took a vote pretty much
> immediately in which we (I say we because I was on it at the time)
> unanimously said this was a thing we wanted approved and made
> official, so Robin moved to do so. Objections were made that the
> then-current version of the BPFK procedures didn't actually allow for
> that to happen with any piece before all pieces were done (which is
> because they were written at a time when it was thought the whole
> project would take a year or so tops, and we were at the time already
> seeing that it was going to be a long slog), so And said, let's change
> the procedures so we can implement it! And so I wrote up a proposal to
> do precisely that (one that said, in more formal terms, "hey, the
> entire BPFK and a healthy majority of the membership wants this;
> clearly when *that* is the case it is a good idea") and to incorporate
> into those changes the adoption of xorlo, and this proposal passed at
> once.

(To clarify: I should note that xorlo as a thing was about three or
four years old, but the specific, detailed proposal of it that xorxes
put forth was fresh.)

[And Rosta]

Dustin Lacewell, On 22/05/2014 21:50:

> If you think you too would like to participate directly in this process we
> HIGHLY encourage you to come visit us in the #balningau channel on Freenode IRC.

Perhaps because of my generation (internet-using before web was invented), the only discussion forums I can cope with are email-based. So I hope some of your endeavours will be presented on Lojban list; I would be an interested and sympathetic observer.

--And.

[v4hn]

On Thu, May 22, 2014 at 04:06:09PM -0500, Adam Lopresto wrote:
> On Thu, May 22, 2014 at 3:54 PM, Craig Daniel <craigb...@gmail.com>wrote:
>
> > Question:
> >
> > Is it your intention to fork off of Lojban? If so, what do you believe
> > fracturing the speech community will accomplish? If not, why are you
> > making no apparent effort to make this any kind of official project?

Ever tried to talk to a wall? How about twice+? .u'iru'e .uinai
The official answer of the LLG is pretty much clear even before talking
about it...

Although pretty much besides the point in this case, I agree.
Changing the place structure of irregular gismu has nothing to do with
e.g. the specifications for termset cmavo.

> > On Thu, May 22, 2014 at 4:50 PM, Dustin Lacewell <dlac...@gmail.com>

> > > We have considered how to approach the community
> > > regarding this agenda and the conclusion was to formally approach the
> > > mailing-list, Facebook and IRC communities regarding the status-quo
> > > regarding the policies related to lojban's maintenance.
> > >
> > > You can view the result of this approach in this thread:
> > >
> > > https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/lojban/_juGorRhWtI

This entire thread never refers to either the gimste or irregular gismu
_at all_. I see no sense in referring to it here.

> > > The suggestions provided for removing that gridlock have been,
> > > to be clear, deemed unreasonable and not worth their weight in practical
> > > value.
> > >

> > > [...]

> > > Be certain that we have *heard* these outlines for how we should be spending
> > > our efforts, considered them, and decided we have no intention of carrying
> > > out such tautological efforts as prerequisites to our own.
> > >
> > > To speak plainly, we simply are not interested.
> > > We have far more practical things to do that are directly
> > > related to dealing with making the lojbanic prescription more immediately
> > > reflective of modern lojban for the benefit of its current speakers and
> > > the sensibilities of those finding the language for the first time, every
> > > day.

I see why you consider irregular gismu "more practical" than completing the byfy.
Yet, I politely disagree when you say that finishing
http://www.lojban.org/tiki/BPFK+Section%3A+Contact+Spatial
and
http://www.lojban.org/tiki/BPFK+Section%3A+Termsets
is not practical at all and tries to define a 10-year old language.
I'm pretty sure you use {bu'u} and {ne'i} in your "practical" language.
Do you agree with the definitions given? Is this the way you use these words
and want them to be used?

What about {ce'e} and {pe'e}? Surely they are less commonly used, but nevertheless
they could appear in regular discussions. Are their definitions reasonable?

If all of these words _are_ the way you want them to be, then the byfy or,
given that selpa'i considers them to be dead, anyone Robin considers knowledgeable
enough, can officially vote for the acceptance of all the sections.

This would leave some rather formal things to be done. See
http://www.lojban.org/tiki/BPFK+To-Do
Apart from xorxes' many grammar simplifications,
these things look pretty much ready for voting to me..
Some of these already, however, already started year-long discussions...

> > > The first of those efforts is the aforementioned revision of the gimste.

The only real problem I have with this whole endeavour, as you described it
so far, is the "The first of those efforts"-part. What comes after?


v4hn

[la durka]

The current plan is to use Github for its issue system. It is somewhat integrated with email -- if you participate in a thread, you'll get new replies by email, and you can reply by email without going to the website. You can subscribe to get emails for individual discussion threads even if you don't participate in them.

We could also post some kind of weekly progress update to the main list.

mi'e la durka mu'o

[la durka]

Thanks for this perspective.
 

So, based on past experience: we'd have to wait until the work on that
bit of stuff was done and there was a proposal to vote on, and
probably also until there was a clear enough mandate from the
community for its implementation that even at least a few
mostly-hardliners like And were squarely behind it, and then a'osai it
would get approved with a promptness you may find startling.

Even more of a reason not to wait before getting started! :)

mi'e la durka mu'o

[Bob LeChevalier, President and Founder - LLG]

On 5/22/2014 6:26 PM, v4hn wrote:
> I see why you consider irregular gismu "more practical" than completing the byfy.
> Yet, I politely disagree when you say that finishing
> http://www.lojban.org/tiki/BPFK+Section%3A+Contact+Spatial
> and
> http://www.lojban.org/tiki/BPFK+Section%3A+Termsets
> is not practical at all and tries to define a 10-year old language.

Let me correct this. The purpose of the BPFK is to document the 17 year
old language (i.e that of 1997 when CLL was written) as a basis for
MODIFYING That baseline to reflect the current language.

lojbab

[Robert LeChevalier]

On 5/22/2014 4:50 PM, Dustin Lacewell wrote:
> You can view the result of this approach in this thread:
>
> https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/lojban/_juGorRhWtI
>

> We implore you to carefully review the progression of discourse and
> consider for
> yourself what may be concluded from the positions put forth there. The
> outcome
> is not much different than what we expected when we submitted the original
> message, at least in terms of pushback. The amount of explicit support and
> advocacy was incredibly encouraging and reaffirming.

You seem to have rather low standard for "encouraging and reaffirming".

The Lojban community numbers in the several hundreds if not thousands.

Maybe 1000 copies of CLL have been sold. People who bought it expect
that the language will not lightly be changed under them.

You and your few others (relative to that 1000) of course do not respect
that, which is your choice.

My position requires me to oppose yours, and to consider your efforts
schismatic.

-----

For the other query in this thread: perhaps LLG is unnecessary as an
organization, but if Lojban is ever to become something other than a
word-of-mouth hobby, it needs an business organization in any relevant
political entity capable of dealing with laws, and finance, and business
matters. LLG is a nonprofit that can accept financial contributions (in
the USA) that are tax-deductible. That is why we had the money to
publish CLL in the first place. And why we can eventually hope to
publish a dictionary and other books, and sell them internationally.

Esperanto and all other significant language projects have one or more
organizations in several countries.

Of course maybe you and your friends are happy with Internet-only
materials. I'm an old fossil by your standards. And perhaps when I no
longer have the capability of participating, others will decide to fold LLG.

lojbab

[Gleki Arxokuna]

2014-05-24 6:51 GMT+04:00 Robert LeChevalier <loj...@lojban.org>:

On 5/22/2014 4:50 PM, Dustin Lacewell wrote:

You can view the result of this approach in this thread:

https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/lojban/_juGorRhWtI

We implore you to carefully review the progression of discourse and
consider for
yourself what may be concluded from the positions put forth there. The
outcome
is not much different than what we expected when we submitted the original
message, at least in terms of pushback. The amount of explicit support and
advocacy was incredibly encouraging and reaffirming.

You seem to have rather low standard for "encouraging and reaffirming".

The Lojban community numbers in the several hundreds if not thousands.

Maybe 1000 copies of CLL have been sold.  People who bought it expect that the language will not lightly be changed under them.

You and your few others (relative to that 1000) of course do not respect that, which is your choice.

This certainly shows disrespect for CLL. But what's really interesting is how did xorlo proposals pass then? Was it a lost battle to you?

xorlo invalidates large portions of CLL thus suggesting that those 1000 copies of CLL are to be burned.

Do you have a solution to this problem? Because I feel that xorlo was de facto a mistake (at least partially).

Shall we adapt xorlo to what is described in CLL?

 

My position requires me to oppose yours, and to consider your efforts schismatic.

They would certainly be schismatic if they invalidate many things described in CLL.

However, for now we don't know what they are suggesting since their work hasn't even started.

I revised gimste myself injecting gua\spi style specifications of sumti interactions and found very few problems in gimste. So I can't even imagine what they are suggesting. Probably they don't know themselves.

Anyway, how can it be schismatic if the only reliable source for a dictionary are definitions that we can learn from CLL?

Is there another official source apart from CLL? If yes then why wasn't it printed?

-----

For the other query in this thread:  perhaps LLG is unnecessary as an organization, but if Lojban is ever to become something other than a word-of-mouth hobby, it needs an business organization in any relevant political entity capable of dealing with laws, and finance, and business matters.  LLG is a nonprofit that can accept financial contributions (in the USA) that are tax-deductible.  That is why we had the money to publish CLL in the first place.  And why we can eventually hope to publish a dictionary and other books, and sell them internationally.

Esperanto and all other significant language projects have one or more organizations in several countries.

Of course maybe you and your friends are happy with Internet-only materials.  I'm an old fossil by your standards.  And perhaps when I no longer have the capability of participating, others will decide to fold LLG.

lojbab

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[John E Clifford]

Dang it, Bob, you just undid your bit of good!  You have again saddled BPFK with the paradoxical task of now documenting a language that ceased to exist in 1997 (if even then).  You had said its task was to work out how the presumably inadequate descriptions had been filled out, a reasonable task.  But that would not be a description of CLL Lojban  but of what that has become.  I suppose that a compromise approach would be to find out for each piece when it was possible to give an adequate account and to give that account and close that piece, ignoring what came after (except, perhaps, to note if a more complete account became available and then use that).  Or (ultimately a more useful thing) to trace all the developments, take the first adequate one as the baseline and the rest as the first proposals for revision.  In no case would this be, except accidentally, CLL Lojban (nor, if BPFK has any job to do, would one expect it to be).  

The sensible approach (and what I think was actually intended -- certainly after it became clear that the baselining was not going to be done in a short time) is to close a corpus (we do have a good searchable corpus somewhere, don't we) at some date certain (tomorrow, say or June 1, 2014 anyhow) and describe that language synchronically and diachronically, then take the synchronic as a baseline with notes on how it evolved from CLL based on the diachronic data.  This is a nice simple field linguist job, made considerably easier by all the tools in CLL and since.  All it needs is warm bodies with computers, since very little serious thought is required.

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[John E Clifford]

I haven't slogged through the latest published take on xorlo yet, but have several questions/objections to what I currently take to the official line. I do think that, at heart, it is the right way to go, but it has inherited or accreted a number of doctrines that render it less useful (an absolute notion of individuals for one).  What are your lines of dissatisfaction?

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[Bob LeChevalier, President and Founder - LLG]

This is too long, but when I try to shorten it, it gets longer.

On 5/24/2014 4:16 AM, Gleki Arxokuna wrote:
> You seem to have rather low standard for "encouraging and reaffirming".
>
> The Lojban community numbers in the several hundreds if not thousands.
>
> Maybe 1000 copies of CLL have been sold. People who bought it
> expect that the language will not lightly be changed under them.
>
> You and your few others (relative to that 1000) of course do not
> respect that, which is your choice.
>

> This certainly shows disrespect for CLL.

How so?

Until a new baseline is approved, the CLL (along with a few other
documents) is the de jure baseline. It is of course the process of
creating a new baseline that has been the problem.

> But what's really interesting is how did xorlo proposals pass then?

Simply put, it was approved by the BPFK. My personal opinion is not
decisive. Later, at a member's meeting, Robin and other members
presented an argument that LLG stop teaching the old gadri system when
most new people were learning the already approved new system. It was
further argued that adoption of xorlo would not have drastic effect:
little existing Lojban usage would be invalidated, but new people would
understand how things in the language work differently.

Was it a lost battle to you?

Yes and no.

Personally yes, especially in the sense that I have never understood
xorlo. People have explained it to me, but it goes over my head, and I
cannot apply it to any usage problems, and I forget any explanation by
the time the topic comes up again.

I trust xorxes' claims that my old usage is still acceptable Lojban.
(But I have found it very hard to motivate myself to use the language
except in ad hoc conversation, not knowing how far my understanding
deviates from the usage of the rest of the community. I want to return
to my effort ancient effort translating an arbitrary chunk of Burton's
Arabian Nights (I started this back in 1989); I'd also like to try some
Pushkin, which would also exercise my studies of Russian. But anything
I write won't use xorlo, unless I do it by accident.

On the other hand, it was a strong victory for the process I devised for
language evolution (a conservative form of "let usage decide"). We took
a long time arguing out the change, recording the arguments so that
people could later examine them (adequate definitions of the status quo
were produced in the process and argued out, so we achieved my
requirement of documenting the existing language.) No changes were
being made to CLL at that time.

My responsibilities as Founder and President are to the process and the
community of users. I think the community won, and thus in a
*professional* sense, I won.

(It also demonstrated to the community that I will in fact let strong
community sentiment override my personal choices; I am not invested in
asserting personal power as the guy who started the project - something
JCB was too prone to doing with TLI Loglan, and historically the main
reason for artificial languages failing to survive their founders).

Here is the minutes version of that official recognition of xorlo

http://www.lojban.org/tiki/LLG+2007+Annual+Meeting+Minutes
> Robin Lee Powell moved that the membership recognize xorlo. Specifically, I
> move that the membership assert that xorlo is more correct than the CLL at this
> time, that whatever the BPFK come up with xorlo will be part of it, and that
> new Lojbanists should be taught it as soon as possible.

...

> 1) The following procedures are added to the extant BPFK procedures:
>
> "Any proposal which at least half of the BPFK membership has
> voted on in a tentative vote with none voting against, may be
> submitted by the BPFKJ to the general membership as a possible
> piece of the zasni gafyfantymanri ("interim baseline", herein
> after referred to as the ZG). Such a proposal requires a
> two-thirds majority of those voting to vote in favor of it at
> the general membership meeting in order to pass.
>
> Voting something into the ZG has the following effects:
>
> 1. The proposal will be considered correct Lojban until such a
> time the complete new baseline is established and approved by
> the membership. Usage according to the CLL standard will not be
> considered incorrect, but usage according to the ZG will be
> preferred.
>
> 2. The BPFK will recognize that such a vote indicates a desire
> by the membership for the proposal in question to be included,
> in modified form if necessary, when the new baseline is
> finished. Such a desire will not be considered binding in any
> way.
>
> 3. The membership is encouraged to use the ZG standard in all
> pedagogical contexts, and in all Lojban conversation.
>
> The ZG will last only until the entire new baseline is written
> by the BPFK and approved by the membership."
>
> In addition, xorlo was added to the zasni gafyfantymanri

To allow the above to be understood, I briefly recapitulate the process
as I understand it (Robin has assumed dictatorial powers in order to get
the ZG done, so in theory these procedures can be overridden):

1. The BPFK produces a collection of language description documents
reflecting a new baseline, based on the current language, as you can
find on the web site. Each document is approved separately in a series
of "checkpoints", each of which requires consensus.

The original form of this presented by Nick Nicholas in
http://mw.lojban.org/index.php?title=Mini-dictionary (see especially 2.2)
http://mw.lojban.org/index.php?title=Mini-dictionary_To-do

Note that BPFK can consider change proposals to be submitted at any
time, but the primary basis for any such discussion has to make
reference to actual usage as found in the accumulated corpus of usage.
The BPFK final result will nominally reflect "current usage" and not the
1997 language.

But we found that any contentious issue could not be decided finally.
And actual work and completed checkpoints turned into a series of
interminable discussions that I and others could not keep up with, much
less provide timely rational counter-arguments and counter-proposals as
required. The limited time of BPFK workers was occupied by trying to
keep up with discussions of the work of very few others. Volunteers
rarely finished anything, and tended to drop out because they couldn't
spend the time needed to keep up.

I finally said that I personally would not agree to any change proposals
at the time of checkpoint voting, but that I would also not exercise an
anti-consensus veto to any checkpoint, reserving my personal approval
for the package as a whole (at which point it might be easier to see any
interactions and conflicts between proposals).

I got an informal commitment from Robin that the final baseline package
would include a set of change pages to the published CLL, implicitly
providing a simplified explanation for what, if anything, was being
changed. (This effectively required that change pages for corrections
of typos and the like be created, so that we have a good starting point
for examining change proposals.), and that a reasonably long period of
review would be allowed for this whole package (I suggested 6 months to
a year) before a final vote. (Typically 1 week was the review time for
checkpoint votes, and I couldn't get through all the discussions that
quickly, much less produce any counter-argument or counter-proposal).

The need for that set of change pages is what drives the statement that
we first document the status-quo-ante language (CLL with change pages
for typos and detected errors), followed by approval of a new baseline
which might include changes reflecting current usage (and possibly some
changes that go beyond current usage, as reflected in experimental
cmavo). At the time, xorlo and dotside were such changes. The 2007 vote
merely recognized that xorlo would probably be accepted in the final
package and that we shouldn't be teaching a contradictory set of gadri.

The longer the process has continued incomplete, the less has been the
willingness to consider changes before getting SOMETHING done that can
be called a baseline. If people had kept plugging away, we would have
had a new baseline years ago, and proposals would be dealt with in a
timely manner.

-------------

The following, by the way, is the official policy approved by the
members which I am committed to supporting, by which I labelled this new
group schismatic. We cannot as an organization cooperate with such a
group acting outside of and independent of the BPFK.

> Lojbanology:
>
> MOVED: That any efforts by individuals or groups to develop a new
> language or version of the existing language other than under the
> direct auspices of the byfy is specifically disowned by LLG and shall
> not be associated with LLG - PASSED without objection

> Friendly Amendment: That membership in such an effort does not
> disqualify one from membership in the LLG or the BPFK - PASSED
> without objection


On the other hand, as noted in the amendment, individuals participating
in such an effort are still entitled to a voice in the community (and if
they seek membership, a vote). It is possible for a group such as this
new one to "take over" LLG by adding enough of themselves as members.
In effect, Robin gained his considerable power and authority by leading
the last such anti-lojbab group. He then found out that I was correct
on so many of the issues we disagreed on, especially the process
questions that are to me more important than specific design points.


gleki:

> xorlo invalidates large portions of CLL thus suggesting that those 1000 copies of CLL are to be burned.

I'm not into book-burning as a solution to any problem.

The commitment is not that the language never change, but rather that
changes be carefully considered and not made unnecessarily. And
well-documented. People with an old CLL and a set of formally approved
change pages will know what the current language is. (I had hoped that
the set of change pages would be small, but it has been 17 years rather
than the originally intended 5).

Note also that the new baseline, when done, is intended to be the last
language prescription from "on high". In the future, after the baseline
is done, documents produced by LLG are intended to have a more
descriptive function rather than prescriptive. A successor to BPFK
might attempt to maintain the baseline documents in accordance with any
changes in current usage, and might certify textbooks or other works as
to whether they are consistent with the current official documents. But
no one will have the authority to go off and revise the gismu list.
They can choose to start using the language differently from the
standard, but only if the bulk of the community chooses to adopt these
variations over time in actual usage, would the changes have a chance be
recognized in some official way. Hopefully the language community will
be large enough that groups such as selpa'i leads will be too small to
have much effect without years passing.

> Do you have a solution to this problem? Because I feel that xorlo was de
> facto a mistake (at least partially).

I can't argue, since I don't understand xorlo. Every time I try, I get
mentally tangled up.

> Shall we adapt xorlo to what is described in CLL?

The final baseline will (presumably) incorporate xorlo in CLL as a set
of change pages (along with any other changes). But if there are
problems with xorlo, then alternatives could be proposed to be included
in the final baseline. Likely they would have to well-documented and
supported with actual usage by some Lojbanists.

> My position requires me to oppose yours, and to consider your
> efforts schismatic.
>

> They would certainly be schismatic if they invalidate many things
> described in CLL.

The are schismatic because they are outside of the regular procedures
for considering changes, procedures that are necessarily conservative
out of respect for the people who have committed years of effort to get
us to where we are today, as well as the need for language change to be
slow and evolutionary rather than prescriptively revolutionary.

> However, for now we don't know what they are suggesting since their work
> hasn't even started.

It doesn't matter. They have explicitly denounced the BPFK process,
which makes them schismatic.

If their intent was to produce a proposal to be considered by the BPFK,
whenever it finally gets around to looking at gismu issues, and NOT to
be promulgated in any official way until then (what people choose to do
in their own conversations and writing is not "official").

> I revised gimste myself injecting gua\spi style specifications of sumti
> interactions and found very few problems in gimste. So I can't even
> imagine what they are suggesting. Probably they don't know themselves.

Note that the original BPFK charter included the possibility of
re-examining gismu, especially in light of actual usage. But it still
has to go through the process, and years of non-accomplishment mean that
anything unconnected to the cmavo problem is completely off of the
priority charts. (I hope your revisions are kept distinct from the
official baseline list, which should not be changed at all.)

> Anyway, how can it be schismatic if the only reliable source for a
> dictionary are definitions that we can learn from CLL?

The CLL is the baseline document. The collected BPFK checkpoints (the
ZG) are (in the field of cmavo/selma'o definition) a draft proposed
revision to that baseline. The draft is "official" in the sense of
being produced by the officially recognized producer of new documents.

In the software development sense, the checkpoints are a pre-beta
version. When the complete set is done, the ZG will be a beta version
of the new baseline, released after several months of review as a new
"product" hopefully with a new edition of CLL or something similar, and
some sort of summary of changes in addition to a complete set of change
pages for the old CLL.

> Is there another official source apart from CLL? If yes then why wasn't
> it printed?

Printing is expensive and hard to take back, and lasts a long time (as
evidenced by the 16+ years CLL has been on the market without selling
out - we did a large print run in part to keep the price down).

It also takes time to do it, time that is taken away from other tasks.
While HTML and other smart-tagging have made it easier to format a book,
it still takes a lot of time to do the markup, and even longer if you
want an index (CLL took roughly a year to markup and index, me doing the
markup and Nora doing the index, while John Cowan finished writing and
made corrections. Probably at least a full time person-year, and it
would have been at least twice that if we had been farming out tasks
rather than doing it all ourselves).

We do have baseline gismu and cmavo and rafsi lists which are not in
CLL, that were printed and published separately. These paper documents
are in theory still available, although no one has ordered a copy in
years, probably because the order form is some obscure place on the website:
http://www.lojban.org/old-style/publications/brochures/ordernet.html
(If I ever started getting orders, I would probably have to modify the
order form because the prices do not reflect current postage costs).

Even after they were baselined, I maintained those documents personally,
and sometimes corrected typos and made clarifications (this was before
BPFK). But the membership rebuked me for doing so. If the document was
baselined, then I didn't have the authority to change it without a vote
(then a vote by the membership), which was impractical.

In theory, no one should have made ANY changes to those baseline
documents as they appear on-line. Alas, I have little confidence that
the people working on the wiki have followed that absolute constraint,
so I keep an official baseline version on my own computer, and the BPFK
will eventually have to formally approve any differences between that
version and what is on-line.

(And I did produce a first working-draft dictionary file covering the
gismu and some regular lujvo. But that isn't quite at the level of
baseline, and is probably routinely ignored in favor of jbovlaste, which
I have never found especially usable.)

Well, enough for now. Sorry this is so long.

lojbab

[Gleki Arxokuna]

2014-05-24 20:33 GMT+04:00 Bob LeChevalier, President and Founder - LLG <loj...@lojban.org>:

This is too long, but when I try to shorten it, it gets longer.

On 5/24/2014 4:16 AM, Gleki Arxokuna wrote:

    You seem to have rather low standard for "encouraging and reaffirming".

    The Lojban community numbers in the several hundreds if not thousands.

    Maybe 1000 copies of CLL have been sold.  People who bought it
    expect that the language will not lightly be changed under them.

    You and your few others (relative to that 1000) of course do not
    respect that, which is your choice.

This certainly shows disrespect for CLL.

How so?

Sorry, my phrase "This certainly shows disrespect for CLL."  is about their words, not about your words, Lojbab. va'i it means I agree with you.

[Bob LeChevalier, President and Founder - LLG]

On 5/24/2014 12:05 PM, 'John E Clifford' via lojban wrote:
> Dang it, Bob, you just undid your bit of good! You have again saddled
> BPFK with the paradoxical task of now documenting a language that ceased
> to exist in 1997 (if even then).

Actually, I just stated it poorly. But my new if longwinded version may
not be more satisfactory - just more accurate

> The sensible approach (and what I think was actually intended --
> certainly after it became clear that the baselining was not going to be
> done in a short time)

By the time that could become clear, things were in such a muddle that
almost no one was thinking about the final goal, only about winning the
argument of the day. I largely dropped out of active byfy work because
I couldn't keep up with the argument of the day.

>is to close a corpus (we do have a good searchable
> corpus somewhere, don't we) at some date certain (tomorrow, say or June
> 1, 2014 anyhow) and describe that language synchronically and
> diachronically, then take the synchronic as a baseline with notes on how
> it evolved from CLL based on the diachronic data. This is a nice simple
> field linguist job, made considerably easier by all the tools in CLL and
> since.

As Nick's description referenced in my other post shows, the corpus was
intended to be a big part of the effort. But we didn't have any field
linguists (other than Nick himself), and it seemed that few really
wanted to do that part of the work (as opposed to arguing about the wat
things "should be"), so there was nothing simple about it.

> All it needs is warm bodies with computers, since very little
> serious thought is required.

So I thought as well. But even in my own attempts at corpus diving,
nothing proved simple. And no one talked about the problems, only about
this or that interpretation of the language design.

lojbab

[Jorge Llambías]

On Sat, May 24, 2014 at 1:13 PM, 'John E Clifford' via lojban <loj...@googlegroups.com> wrote:

I haven't slogged through the latest published take on xorlo yet, but have several questions/objections to what I currently take to the official line. I do think that, at heart, it is the right way to go, but it has inherited or accreted a number of doctrines that render it less useful (an absolute notion of individuals for one). 

I don't think xorlo espouses any notion of individuals. xorlo is basically just this:

                lo broda = zo'e noi ke'a broda

There's nothing about individuals there. It just says that "lo" converts a selbri into a constant, which is then used as an argument of the selbri in the bridi in which it appears, as opposed to turning it into a quantifier that quantifies the bridi in which it appears, which was CLL's take (i.e. the old lo broda = su'o da poi broda zo'u .... da ....). It also says that the referent(s) of that constant satisfy "ke'a broda".

Individuals turned up in guskant's recent discussion of inner quantifiers. The question was, what exactly does the inner quantifier count? One answer is that it counts the individual referents of the sumti, but then what is an individual? One circular answer is to say that an individual is whatever the inner quantifier counts. A possible definition for "individual" is to say that ko'a is an individual iff ro da poi da me ko'a zo'u ko'a me da. 

guskant is not too happy with that answer, because he wants to use inner quantifiers to count things that may contain other things (in the "me" sense of contain) which themselves don't count. To me that just amounts to excluding those other things from the universe of discourse, guskant prefers to just flag some things in the universe of discourse as countable and the rest as not. I don't think there's any difference of substance here, just of presentation. I can't think of a sentence that would change meaning depending on which metalinguistic explanation one prefers, except perhaps cryptic stuff like "su'oi da no mei" which for me is necessarily false and guskant may accept as true.

mu'o mi'e xorxes

[John E. Clifford]

Interesting, given the arduous history of 'lo'.  Assuming that 'zo'e' is here used in the sense of "the contextually specified thing", which is a change (restriction) from CLL, this 'lo' no longer does the job that led to the argument for its acceptance, since 'lo broda cu broda' is now a tautology, unless I've missed something crucial.  'lo broda' was meant, in most stages of the argument, including the last (I thought) to cover the semantic range of English "a broda", "the broda", "brodas" and "broda" in the non definite senses.  But at least the last of these may include in the referent of 'lo broda' things which are not broda in any sense, but rather, for example, broda bits. (There was broda all over my bumper after I plowed into a herd of brodas.)   This possibility comes out in the technical definition of 'lo broda' as the salient node in the upward lattice of the field of jest (me) on the set of brodas (in the domain).  Of course, this possibility does also rely on there not being any absolute individuals, since me here extends below things which are brodas (individual brodas still have members, they just aren't brodas).

Sent from my iPad

[Craig Daniel]

On Sat, May 24, 2014 at 12:33 PM, Bob LeChevalier, President and
Founder - LLG <loj...@lojban.org> wrote:
> Until a new baseline is approved, the CLL (along with a few other documents)
> is the de jure baseline. It is of course the process of creating a new
> baseline that has been the problem.

Specifically, per the ZG policy adopted at the 2007 LLG meeting,
CLL-compliant Lojban is de jure baseline Lojban, and so is any Lojban
that fails to comply with the CLL standard only because it adheres to
the differences specified in the zasni gafyfantymanri (also called the
"interim baseline," specifically to reflect the fact that it's part of
a two-standard state of affairs that is not expected to continue).
That is, the standard form of the language technically includes both.
It is also officially the case that the LLG currently (as of 2007 when
xorlo was added to the ZG) expects that xorlo will be part of the
"final" baseline once the BPFK work is done, and consequently
considers ZG-compliant Lojban to be the preferred form for teaching
new speakers - but the wording of that policy is such that if you go
strictly by the CLL, you are explicitly still speaking valid,
currents-tandard-compliant Lojban until such a time as the baseline is
finished.

[Jorge Llambías]

On Sat, May 24, 2014 at 4:05 PM, 'John E. Clifford' via lojban <loj...@googlegroups.com> wrote:

Interesting, given the arduous history of 'lo'.  Assuming that 'zo'e' is here used in the sense of "the contextually specified thing", which is a change (restriction) from CLL, this 'lo' no longer does the job that led to the argument for its acceptance, since 'lo broda cu broda' is now a tautology, unless I've missed something crucial.  'lo broda' was meant, in most stages of the argument, including the last (I thought) to cover the semantic range of English "a broda", "the broda", "brodas" and "broda" in the non definite senses.  But at least the last of these may include in the referent of 'lo broda' things which are not broda in any sense, but rather, for example, broda bits.

If broda bits don't broda, they shouldn't be referred to as "lo broda", no. But whether broda bits broda or not depends on context and the meaning of "broda", not on "lo".

 

(There was broda all over my bumper after I plowed into a herd of brodas.)  

If "lo broda cu preja lo do karcybandu" then I would say that "lo preja be lo do karcybandu cu broda", yes.

 

This possibility comes out in the technical definition of 'lo broda' as the salient node in the upward lattice of the field of jest (me) on the set of brodas (in the domain).  Of course, this possibility does also rely on there not being any absolute individuals, since me here extends below things which are brodas (individual brodas still have members, they just aren't brodas).

So we agree that there are no absolute individuals, just contextual ones.

[selpa'i]

la .pycyn. cu cusku di'e

> But at least the last of these may
> include in the referent of 'lo broda' things which are not broda in any
> sense, but rather, for example, broda bits. (There was broda all over my
> bumper after I plowed into a herd of brodas.)

Whether or not those things are considered things that {broda} depends
on the universe of discourse. There is no pre-defined set of things
which can and can't satisfy {broda} in all contexts.

>Of course, this possibility does also rely on there not being
> any absolute individuals, since me here extends below things which are
> brodas (individual brodas still have members, they just aren't brodas).

If the universe of discourse in question makes no distinction between an
alive broda and one that got squashed, then they both {broda} equally.
In another context, they may be considered distinct and then only one of
them will {broda}, and the other is something else.

None of this is strictly tied to {lo} or xorlo, but to the semantics of
universes of discourse.

[selpa'i]

Before this thread gets too far off the subject; I will send out some
more information about the gimste revision later, to illustrate our
plans and how we hope to tackle them.

[John E Clifford]

Yes, it  is time to move this to another thread,  To round off here, however, if 'lo' is to be used as xorxes argued for over the years, then either every part of every broda must also be a broda or else 'lo broda' does not always refer to a broda.  Each of these has consequences wrt the definition of 'lo', the second obviously. the first because there are then on individuals to enumerate with internal quantifiers (or external, for that matter). The living/dead/squashed issue does not enter in an interesting way, since the issue arises whatever the universe of discourse assigns to 'broda'.

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[John E Clifford]

NO individuals to enumerate

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[selpa'i]

With the gimste revision hopefully about to begin, I'd like to introduce
you to some goals of this project as well as present a simple outline of
how I hope we're going to accomplish those goals.

For ease of learning and for aesthetic reasons the gimste should be

1. As interally consistent as possible
2. As simple as possible

Lojban is marketed as "simple and easy to learn". The gimste contains
certain elements which seem to contradict that claim, as lots of gismu
are bloated, and lots of gismu contain surprising and irregular sumti
places.

The simpler and the more consistent the gimste, the higher are the
chances for the average person to learn Lojban and the more pleasant it
is to be a user of this language, I believe.

The gimste should also be expressive, but not at the cost of cramming in
countless places just for the sake of having more places per gismu.
That's not something that adds expressiveness.


The gimste revision can be divided in two parts:

1) Global proposals and considerations
2) Individual gismu poposals


Global proposals are those that pertain to the whole gimste as a whole.
This is where general questions, such as "should we remove the "under
conditions" places?" are discussed. Anything that can be applied to
multiple gismu at once falls under this category. This has the advantage
that we don't have to discuss the same things again and again for each
gismu we consider.

Individual gismu proposals then look at each gismu individually. Here,
the special characteristics of each gismu can be analyzed. Superfluous
or irregular places can be adjusted or removed and missing places can be
added. Examples of likely-superfluous places would be the x3 of {tirxu}
or the completely unweildy definition of {santa}.

The point of this revision is, again, to make the gimste internally
consistent and thus easier to learn for newcomers as well as easier to
use for people already reasonably fluent.

For the second step it makes sense to proceed not in alphabetical order
but by semantic groupings. That way it becomes much easier to get
related gismu to align. For example, all the gismu about emotional
states could go together. We have a few such gismu categorizations we
can use as a basis.

As part of the revision, I would also like to define each gismu well
enough that we can come up with examples filling *every* sumti place of
every gismu. Currently there are certain sumti places which nobody
really knows how to fill. If we can't fill a place or don't understand
it, it has no reason to exist, so we should either figure out what it
means and how it's used or remove it. At the end of all this, we will
have a shiny list of gismu, along with plenty of example sentences that
anyone having questions about how to use a certain gismu can simply look
up and learn from. It is my belief that this will be an invaluable aid
for learners and that the project as a whole will increase Lojban's
attractiveness. (afterall, one of its advertised selling points is that
it is free of exceptions, and I don't think we should lie to people)

Concerning how to get involved:

As I respect people's preference of email over anything else (I myself
love mailing lists more than I can say), I will make sure that the list
is informed of current discussions and has a chance to be involved
without using the github interface. Those who do want to use it can
follow this link to learn how to use it for this project (it's not
*that* difficult):
https://github.com/balningau/gimste/blob/master/docs/SUBMISSIONS.md

As la durka said, you can also subscribe to the repository just like you
would to a mailing list and you will then get email for all the
discussions happening on github, so you won't miss a thing and won't
ever have to use the website except once to subscribe.

This is the rough outline of what I'd like us to do. Comments are welcome.

Thank you.

["Alfred W. Tüting"]

Hello Robert

> Maybe 1000 copies of CLL have been sold. People who bought it
> expect that the language will not lightly be changed under them.

though silent here for years now - I'm grateful for your speak-out !!

Best

mi'e .aulung.

> --
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_______________

Alfred W. Tüting
t...@fa-kuan.muc.de

[Robert LeChevalier]

On 5/24/2014 4:46 PM, selpa'i wrote:
> With the gimste revision hopefully about to begin, I'd like to introduce
> you to some goals of this project as well as present a simple outline of
> how I hope we're going to accomplish those goals.
>
> For ease of learning and for aesthetic reasons the gimste should be
>
> 1. As interally consistent as possible
> 2. As simple as possible

A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin...

> Lojban is marketed as "simple and easy to learn".

By the standards of languages, it is. Of course, in point of fact, if
you are trying to learn Lojban to a level of fluency that requires 30000
distinct concepts to be labeled clearly (i.e 30000 brivla with known
place structures), you probably won't find that to be "easy", no matter
how regular the lists are.

> The gimste contains certain elements which seem to contradict that claim,

It doesn't If the claim was that Lojban constitutes the simplest
possible language to learn, that claim might have an argument. But even
then "seem to" makes the claim trite and subjective.

The gimste is a small subset if all brivla, more important now while the
language is growing than it will be when most skilled Lojbanists know
far more lujvo than they do gismu.

> as lots of gismu are bloated,

another ill-defined and subjective claim.

>and lots of gismu contain surprising

so what?

>and irregular sumti places.

Likewise, so what.

It was never a goal of the language to have no words that are
surprising, nor to have all words constrained by a straitjacket of
"consistency" according to ad hoc criteria.

Even if you could achieve the goal of a perfectly regular and consistent
and non-bloated gismu list, your perfection is sullied by the first
lujvo that uses a semantically unusual tanru (like some of the oddball
examples in the chapter of CLL describing lujvo metaphors), or a nonce
fu'ivla borrowing, which has whatever places the person borrowing
chooses to have.

Meanwhile, the very first change you make to the existing gismu list, no
matter how regularizing it may seem inherently makes the language HARDER
to learn because you have potentially invalidated all prior use of that
gismu both as an individual words and as a component in a lujvo You
have made someone who knew that gismu less knowledgeable (and whether
you have experienced it or not, the relearning of language changes is
among the more difficult parts of learning a new language.

> The simpler and the more consistent the gimste, the higher are the
> chances for the average person to learn Lojban and the more pleasant it
> is to be a user of this language, I believe.

Those claims are merely that: claims. Unsupported by actual evidence.
They thus rank somewhat less certain than the claim that the gismu
construction algorithm with its meticulous scoring of phonemes, makes
the language easier to learn for learners from the source languages.
JCB did at one time conduct research on this, although the experiment
was poorly reported and had methodological flaws. Someday a more
rigorous test can be devised and conducted. But will it really matter,
if someone finds that a different algorithm might have made the words
10% or 20% easier to learn?

> The gimste should also be expressive,

Another claim regarding a subjectively measured property.

> but not at the cost of cramming in
> countless places just for the sake of having more places per gismu.

Anyone who thinks that places were "crammed in just for the sake of
having more places" is utterly clueless about how the language was
developed.

Throughout the language development era, there has been tension between
those who wanted to minimize the number of places, and those who wanted
to maximize "expressiveness" or more importantly "usefulness in making
lujvo" which was a more important criterion than "simplicity".

> That's not something that adds expressiveness.

Depends on the definition of that term.

> Global proposals are those that pertain to the whole gimste as a whole.
> This is where general questions, such as "should we remove the "under
> conditions" places?" are discussed. Anything that can be applied to
> multiple gismu at once falls under this category. This has the advantage
> that we don't have to discuss the same things again and again for each
> gismu we consider.

Excepting of course that whether or not an "under conditions" place is
necessary is NOT a global question. Whether a substance is a gas, a
liquid, or a solid, is strongly dependent on the "under conditions"

> Individual gismu proposals then look at each gismu individually. Here,
> the special characteristics of each gismu can be analyzed. Superfluous
> or irregular places can be adjusted or removed and missing places can be
> added. Examples of likely-superfluous places would be the x3 of {tirxu}
> or the completely unweildy definition of {santa}.

To some, tiger-ness requires stripes on the coat. But we have included
jaguars and leopards that don't have stripes. A different gismu might
have left-off non-striped big cats, which would have been
"simpler" except for someone who wants to talk about leopards. And yet,
even while recognizing that not all big cats and therefore tirxu have
the same coating, the concept of a tiger is also used metaphorically in
many ways, including one which depends on the stripiness of the coat.
Usage, and not prescription, is the only proper way to decide how to
resolve that conflict.

santa similar has its place structure for historical reasons, ones which
were complicated when people successfully argued to "simplify" the gismu
list by eliminating "gumri" which was "mushroom" and thus a number of
useful metaphors found in other languages. So instead we now have santa
mledi, and it was a santa dilnu over Hiroshima some 70 years ago,
neither of which satisfies a lot of people, and made even more
problematical by the place structure. But of course at that time there
was no attempt to devise rules for place structures of lujvo based on
their source gismu.

History has made the language what it is. Someone ignorant of that
history, and the full range of criteria that went into making such
decisions is not qualified for "remaking the gismu list" UNLESS they are
trying to invent a new and different language.

On bit of knowledge would be that the sort of review of the gismu list
as a whole that you describe has been done at least 3 times that I know
of, back before we baselined the gismu list and every single review was
found unsatisfactory by those who had someone different criteria and
priorities. What makes your groups particular priorities more important
than any others, encompassing those of 25 years of Lojbanists.

> The point of this revision is, again, to make the gimste internally
> consistent and thus easier to learn for newcomers as well as easier to
> use for people already reasonably fluent.

NO change makes the language "easier" for someone fluent. Language
change requires relearning, which is not easy (some 20+ years later,
Nora and I still occasionally throw a nonexistent gumri into our usage,
and more often waste time because we remember it isn't a word and try to
figure out whether and how to use santa and/or mledi in its place

> For the second step it makes sense to proceed not in alphabetical order
> but by semantic groupings.

We found also that Roget's thesaurus concepts work nicely for
non-predicate languages. Alas, all of that analysis was based on the
meaning of x1 of the various gismu, which in a way invalidates the
analysis. Try doing a semantic grouping of the gismu based on the x2 of
each word and you find that the semantic groupings will be quite
different from those based on x1.

And it is important that this be so, because too much semantic emphasis
on the x1 risks losing the predicate nature of the language.

> That way it becomes much easier to get related gismu to align.

All gismu are "related".

Why should some "align", and not others

>For example, all the gismu about emotional states could go together.

They could. But what about the words that you don't recognize to be
about emotional states

>We have a few such gismu categorizations we can use as a basis.

And by definition, NONE of those categorizations is completely valid,
because no one has devised a categorization scheme that encompasses both
the semantic meaning of x1 and that of all the other places which are in
theory equally important to the gismu semantics.

> As part of the revision, I would also like to define each gismu well
> enough that we can come up with examples filling *every* sumti place of
> every gismu.

That would be an interesting but probably unproductive challenge.

> Currently there are certain sumti places which nobody
> really knows how to fill.

The first time someone fills it, they will know.

>If we can't fill a place or don't understand it, it has no reason to exist,

Absolutely incorrect.

And you can always fill a place. Many people have no clue about the
nuances of epistemology, and even those who do know them may be hard
pressed to come up with an expression to fill the x4 of djuno. And yet
knowledge does require an epistemology, even if you don't know what that
is. And you can "fill the place" x4 with "zo'e" or even le/lo ve djuno.

> so we should either figure out what it means

Worthwhile goal, but not a very high priority one when we have cmavo
that people haven't figured out.

> and how it's used

It is used however people use it.

> or remove it. At the end of all this, we will have a shiny list of gismu,

and a schism in the language.

> along with plenty of example sentences that
> anyone having questions about how to use a certain gismu can simply look
> up and learn from.

Except of course that they won't.

A more useful effort on the gismu list would be to come up with new
definitions, trying NOT to change any place structures, but also not
constrained by the fixed length field of the baseline list (which of
course was originally designed to be the input to a flash card program,
and not a statement of a baseline.)

> It is my belief that this will be an invaluable aid for learners

I am uninterested in your religion.

> and that the project as a whole will increase Lojban's attractiveness.

To whom.

>(afterall, one of its advertised selling points is that
> it is free of exceptions, and I don't think we should lie to people)

Then don't, since that is not an accurate statement of any selling
point. These are the points in the introductory brochure, of which two
are relevant:

> There are many artificial languages, but Loglan/Lojban has been engineered to make it unique in several ways. The following are the main features of Lojban:
>
> Lojban is designed to be used by people in communication with each other, and possibly in the future with computers.
> Lojban is designed to be culturally neutral.
> Lojban grammar is based on the principles of logic.
> Lojban has an unambiguous grammar.
> Lojban has phonetic spelling, and unambiguous resolution of sounds into words.
> Lojban is simple compared to natural languages; it is easy to learn.
> Lojban's 1300 root words can be easily combined to form a vocabulary of millions of words.
> Lojban is regular; the rules of the language are without exception.
> Lojban attempts to remove restrictions on creative and clear thought and communication.
> Lojban has a variety of uses, ranging from the creative to the scientific, from the theoretical to the practical.

"simple compared to natural languages". Not "simple" in the absolute
sense, whatever that means.

"the rules of the language are without exception" There are no rules of
the language which dictate what sort of places go into place structures.
The closest we can come to such a rule would be that place structures
are inviolate - not filling a brivla place doesn't eliminate that place
from the meaning of the brivla (nor does not knowing what sort of thing
properly goes into that place). But changing the place structure of a
word by prescriptive decree, which is what your group wants to do,
arguable DOES violate this marketing point. If the rules of the
language change AT ALL, then the rules are not without exception in the
time-free sense (and Lojban is of course tense-optional).

Of course, since the language is intended to "go feral" and cease to be
under prescriptive control, it can be argued that we already have
conceded that time-free sense in incorrect. Or perhaps any apparent
rule which does change through usage is therefore not-a-rule. In which
case we may never know "the rules of the language" as long as there are
Lojban users. (This tension may indicate why many Lojbanists like the
idea of the community deciding what the language is through usage, while
at the same time want a perpetual BPFK around to codify usage questions
prescriptively (which is arguably exactly the opposite of community
decision.)

lojbab

[selpa'i]

la .lojbab. cu cusku di'e

> On 5/24/2014 4:46 PM, selpa'i wrote:
>> With the gimste revision hopefully about to begin, I'd like to introduce
>> you to some goals of this project as well as present a simple outline of
>> how I hope we're going to accomplish those goals.
>>
>> For ease of learning and for aesthetic reasons the gimste should be
>>
>> 1. As interally consistent as possible
>> 2. As simple as possible
>
> A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin...
>
>> Lojban is marketed as "simple and easy to learn".
>
> By the standards of languages, it is. Of course, in point of fact, if
> you are trying to learn Lojban to a level of fluency that requires 30000
> distinct concepts to be labeled clearly (i.e 30000 brivla with known
> place structures), you probably won't find that to be "easy", no matter
> how regular the lists are.

What's easier to memorize: a gismu that follows a common pattern or one
that doesn't? When there is a semantic group of, say, 20 gismu that
follow a common place structure pattern, learning them is much easier
than if all those gismu had different place structures.

>> and irregular sumti places.
>
> Likewise, so what.

See above.

> Meanwhile, the very first change you make to the existing gismu list, no
> matter how regularizing it may seem inherently makes the language HARDER
> to learn because you have potentially invalidated all prior use of that

> gismu both as an individual words and as a component in a lujvo.

No.

First of all, lujvo don't change, since they mean what are defined to mean.

Secondly, when a speaker always has to skip around a place (e.g. {broda
fi ko'a} for skipping x2) because they never need that place, then that
is an annoyance.

> You
> have made someone who knew that gismu less knowledgeable (and whether
> you have experienced it or not, the relearning of language changes is
> among the more difficult parts of learning a new language.

They need to relearn the gismu, yes, but it will be a simpler
definition. Also, if we also take future Lojban speakers into account,
it's more desirable (in my opinion) to hand them a consistent and
easy-to-learn gimste, and they *won't* have to relearn anything. The
number of people right now who are fluent in all the sumti places of
every single gismu is close to zero. What the gismu are about remains
the same, and some details which most people never even got familiar
with are adjusted. The practical impact is much less drastic than you
make it sound.

>> The simpler and the more consistent the gimste, the higher are the
>> chances for the average person to learn Lojban and the more pleasant it
>> is to be a user of this language, I believe.
>
> Those claims are merely that: claims. Unsupported by actual evidence.

Experience, both my own and those of other jbopre I interact with. We
use the language daily, and making slight adjustments in gismu place
structures results in a big increase in pleasantness of use. This may
not be the case for you, but it is for some.

>> For the second step it makes sense to proceed not in alphabetical order
>> but by semantic groupings.
>
> We found also that Roget's thesaurus concepts work nicely for
> non-predicate languages. Alas, all of that analysis was based on the
> meaning of x1 of the various gismu, which in a way invalidates the
> analysis. Try doing a semantic grouping of the gismu based on the x2 of
> each word and you find that the semantic groupings will be quite
> different from those based on x1.
>
> And it is important that this be so, because too much semantic emphasis
> on the x1 risks losing the predicate nature of the language.

But they are not limited to x1. And they couldn't be, since Lojban
sometimes puts the experiencer in x2 and someimes in x1. We are able to
look past x1 and figure out what a gismu is about.

>> That way it becomes much easier to get related gismu to align.
>
> All gismu are "related".
>
> Why should some "align", and not others
>
>> For example, all the gismu about emotional states could go together.
>
> They could. But what about the words that you don't recognize to be
> about emotional states

I think we can agree that {klama} is not an emotion, whereas {badri} is.

>> As part of the revision, I would also like to define each gismu well
>> enough that we can come up with examples filling *every* sumti place of
>> every gismu.
>
> That would be an interesting but probably unproductive challenge.

Then you aren't aware of one of the most common requests by beginners I
hear. They want examples, they want to know how to use a gismu. (to
which you will reply again "it's used how people want to use it")

>> Currently there are certain sumti places which nobody
>> really knows how to fill.
>
> The first time someone fills it, they will know.

I'll adress this attitude at the end of the mail.

> > so we should either figure out what it means
>
> Worthwhile goal, but not a very high priority one when we have cmavo
> that people haven't figured out.

Not a high priority for you, but for many others. Lojban is not only
made up of cmavo.

> Of course, since the language is intended to "go feral" and cease to be
> under prescriptive control, it can be argued that we already have
> conceded that time-free sense in incorrect. Or perhaps any apparent
> rule which does change through usage is therefore not-a-rule. In which
> case we may never know "the rules of the language" as long as there are
> Lojban users. (This tension may indicate why many Lojbanists like the
> idea of the community deciding what the language is through usage, while
> at the same time want a perpetual BPFK around to codify usage questions
> prescriptively (which is arguably exactly the opposite of community
> decision.)

I know you want usage to decide (but since you want usage to decide,
wouldn't you accept it if people simply started using different gismu
place structures?). However, a *lot* of people prefer a centrally
defined language. They want clear semantics, they want clear rules. If
the community wants it, then why should they not get it? Afterall, who,
if not the community of users, keeps Lojban alive?

Before you call this another claim without evidence, here is a thread
from 2010 about just that:

https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/lojban/xn8hCt3Aagw

I hope we don't have to repeat that thread again.

[Jonathan Jones]

On Sun, May 25, 2014 at 4:28 AM, Robert LeChevalier <loj...@lojban.org> wrote:

<snip>

And by definition, NONE of those categorizations is completely valid, because no one has devised a categorization scheme that encompasses both the semantic meaning of x1 and that of all the other places which are in theory equally important to the gismu semantics.

I haven't dived very far into this hole, myself, but I have looked into the categorization deal a bit.

For example, there are the "x1 is x2 <metric units> in <measurement type> by standard x3" gismu, which, with the exception of {mitre}, have the exact same place structure. (Similarly for the non-metric measurement gismu.)

There all the creature gismu, which with some exceptions, are all "x1 is a <creature> of species x2".

{klama}, {litru}, {muvdu}, and not quite {pluta} differ only in which of the places of {klama} they do or do not contain. ({pluta} has an extra place for the set of points defining the route, as well as reordering the {klama} places it has.)

I certainly agree that categorizing purely based on the x1 is a BAD idea, but I contend that there have indeed been efforts to categorized based on the entire meaning.

<snip>

Of course, since the language is intended to "go feral" and cease to be under prescriptive control, it can be argued that we already have conceded that time-free sense in incorrect.  Or perhaps any apparent rule which does change through usage is therefore not-a-rule.  In which case we may never know "the rules of the language" as long as there are Lojban users.  (This tension may indicate why many Lojbanists like the idea of the community deciding what the language is through usage, while at the same time want a perpetual BPFK around to codify usage questions prescriptively (which is arguably exactly the opposite of community decision.)

I personally do not think Lojban should ever stop being a prescriptive language, and if you want my reasons for it, I direct you to Robin's rant. Although I'm unlikely to live long enough to see it, I might be persuaded to change my stance if and when a significant community of first-language natives of Lojban exist.

As far as this "endeavor", I would consider this effort to be an in-the-works BPFK change proposal, to be potentially reviewed once the freeze had been lifted, and nothing more. As anything other than a change proposal, I emphatically agree with .lojbab. as to it being a language-schism, especially as has been announced not merely as an unofficial project, but also as a self-professed attempt to undermine the established authority- the very definition of a schism.
--
mu'o mi'e .aionys.

.i.e'ucai ko cmima lo pilno be denpa bu .i doi.luk. mi patfu do zo'o
(Come to the Dot Side! Luke, I am your father. :D )

[Wuzzy]

I think the proposal is very bad and looks pretty half-baked to me.
I am strongly against it.

Any changes, even small ones, to the place structure of gismu
definitions are likely to have huge impact to the language.

The gismu are very important words in Lojban. The place structure of a
gismu affects the place structure of loads and loads of new ones, and
roughly determines the meaning of stage-3 fu'ivla.

If you change even just one (!) gismu definition, you have to deal with
these problems:
- Ambiguity. People may wonder “Hmmm? Did person X mean ‘broda’ in the
sense BEFORE or AFTER the gismu rewrite?”.
- Even if people knew that, lojbanists basically may be split into two
camps, the “before gismu rewrite” and the “after gismu rewrite” camp.
- The existing regular lujvo using this gismu may become irregular. A
person may wonder “Huh? Where did that X place come from?”. The lujvo
would still work, but remembering will be harder.
- This will likely invalidate many texts from before the change, since
gismu are used so often in the language.

I am not saying these problems are neccessarily unsolvable. But the
proposal does not seem to address any of these problems. Also, you do
not even mention how the existing lujvo should be treated. I could
think of three strategies: Just keep all the lujvo we have already and
accepting that some of the nice regular lujvo are not regular anymore
(and get a place from nowhere, for example.). Or rewrite all existing
lujvo as well, which I guess would take a LONG time. Have fun doing
that ;-). Or just throw away all lujvo and start from scratch. But this
would likely frustrate a lot of jbovlaste editors.
None of these strategies make me particulary happy and I can not think
of a better one. It would be nice if you at least have *some* strategy.
You just want to push your proposal without even considering the
consequences in the long run.

I acknowledge that there are indeed some gismu definitions which could
have been better. Some gismu definitions are clearly suboptimal. But as
far I can tell, I never had a problem with _using_ gismu. I learned the
gismu, and I can use all of them. The gismu are not so badly broken
that they are unusable. I MAY be in favor of changes to gismu which are
unusable anyways, but then you better show me the exact gismu are
ACTUALLY unusable (NOT just inconvenient). Although I also dislike
_some_ gismu definitions like that of “latna” I think this alone does
not justify to rewrite the definition. The problems which can arise from
rewriting even just one gismu clearly outweigh my personal distaste for
the definition of “latna” (for example). Besides, I fixed the problem of
“latna” in another way: I invented the word “atna” which is the same as
“latna” but without the cultural implications (x3 and x4 removed). You
find the definition on jbovlaste. I think this is a nice and cheap
workaround for gismu definitons you don’t like: Simply create a new
word instead.

Conclusion: It is true that there are some gismu definitions which are
suboptimal. But they are far from being broken and unusable. Because
you think the gismu definitions are sub-optimal, you propose to change
the gismu. I think the impact of this change is too large and the
possible results are scary to me.

It would be nice if we just could change the gismu “for free”. But
actually, the price of changing just one gismu is rather high. And you
want to change ALL gismu if I understood correctly. The impacts on the
existing lujvo on jbovlaste would be extreme.
So this proposal is a no-go for me. Unless you want to fork the
language, but you don’t want to do that either.

[selpa'i]

la .uuzìt. cu cusku di'e

> If you change even just one (!) gismu definition, you have to deal with
> these problems:
> - Ambiguity. People may wonder “Hmmm? Did person X mean ‘broda’ in the
> sense BEFORE or AFTER the gismu rewrite?”.

This is already happening both with gismu and with cmavo. Some people
use a word one way, and others use it another way. Try to compare some
texts and you will find conflicting usage. Old texts are also full of
usage that is now considered incorrect, but reading them and knowing
when they were written, we can easily understand why and don't need to
be confused. As for gismu, lots of people for instance use {traji}
without its old x3 place, lots of people use {mabla} with a new definition.

> - Even if people knew that, lojbanists basically may be split into two
> camps, the “before gismu rewrite” and the “after gismu rewrite” camp.

Already the case for cmavo and for several gismu. Consider Lojbab who
refuses to use xorlo even though it's official.

> - The existing regular lujvo using this gismu may become irregular. A
> person may wonder “Huh? Where did that X place come from?”. The lujvo
> would still work, but remembering will be harder.

Regular lujvo will change automatically in usage and where needed the
definitions can be updated in the dictionary.

> - This will likely invalidate many texts from before the change, since
> gismu are used so often in the language.

Yes, but it will not make the texts uninterpretable by any means, just
like xorlo didn't. There are actually several changes that are part of
the BPFK cmavo specification that invalidate large chunks of usage (e.g.
ZAhO or VA). They reflect modern usage at the cost of making old texts
awkward or simply incorrect. The changes still happened, and it's good
that they did, because the new definitions are better. So where is the
difference?

I may also add that whatever changes the BPFK or whatever other
language-defining body makes to the language, I *will* update my
writings to reflect that, and I've written some 60 thousand words. This
is not the problem.

> I am not saying these problems are neccessarily unsolvable. But the
> proposal does not seem to address any of these problems.

Well, instead of shooting it down categorically, you could have asked
for clarification. Afterall, this is supposed to be a joint effort.

> It would be nice if we just could change the gismu “for free”. But
> actually, the price of changing just one gismu is rather high. And you
> want to change ALL gismu if I understood correctly.

*Looking* at every gismu does not entail *changing* every gismu. All of
this is in essence a democratic process, driven by the desires of the
community. Nobody is going to change {dunda}, for example. There will be
no changes made just for the sake of changing things.

There is a non-negligible number of people who support the revision and
who are going to take part. Maybe they are going to speak up themselves.

[Bob LeChevalier, President and Founder - LLG]

On 5/25/2014 7:18 AM, selpa'i wrote:
>>> Lojban is marketed as "simple and easy to learn".
>>
>> By the standards of languages, it is. Of course, in point of fact, if
>> you are trying to learn Lojban to a level of fluency that requires 30000
>> distinct concepts to be labeled clearly (i.e 30000 brivla with known
>> place structures), you probably won't find that to be "easy", no matter
>> how regular the lists are.
>

> What's easier to memorize: a gismu that follows a common pattern or one
> that doesn't?

Neither. Easiest is a gismu that you use, and you tend to memorize only
the places that you actually use and that you hear others use. 25 years
now, and I never made any effort to learn place structures systematically.

For a language user, rather than a designer, why would you choose to
memorize a gismu (place structure) that follows a common pattern but
which never actually comes up in your conversation, over a useful brivla
where the place structure matters?

> When there is a semantic group of, say, 20 gismu

what makes them a semantic group? Such considerations were meaningful
when we were trying to initially figure out place structures, But now,
with the language complete, I would try to avoid grouping words
semantically (as I said before, usually such "grouping" is really on the
x1 of the gismu and not on the gismu itself - otherwise all words with
"under conditions" places are equally a "semantic group" as all words
with a type of animal in x1. But who would try to memorize all gismu
with an "under condition" place?

Sometimes a semantic association might make memorizing a gismu or its
place structure a little easier, but which such associations are
important is purely individual.

>> Meanwhile, the very first change you make to the existing gismu list, no
>> matter how regularizing it may seem inherently makes the language HARDER
>> to learn because you have potentially invalidated all prior use of that

>> gismu both as an individual words and as a component in a lujvo.
>
> No.
>
> First of all, lujvo don't change, since they mean what are defined to mean.

Who decides what they are defined to mean? Most lujvo are invented and
used ad hoc with no one bothering to define them or their place
structures. When their place structures are defined, as likely as not it
will be by someone who did not coin the word, and perhaps someone who
does not know how it has been used. This has been especially true since
a distinction was realized between making place structures according to
some system/rules vs more ad hoc methods (which might include basing
them on arbitrary semantic groupings as you wish to do for gismu).

In reality, the meaning of lujvo is not and cannot be prescribed. And
to a large extent, gismu cannot either. Words mean what people actually
use them to mean, not what someone writes that they should mean in a
dictionary. Thus gismu place structures should only be changed if
someone observing many years and many Lojbanists using a place structure
different from that prescribed.

> Secondly, when a speaker always has to skip around a place (e.g. {broda
> fi ko'a} for skipping x2) because they never need that place, then that
> is an annoyance.

Tough. Be annoyed. Or perhaps start using the place you've been
skipping - you know: allowing the language to structure the way you
think about things. The language was after all originally designed to
test the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis.

Of course it would be easier to coin a lujvo with the place omitted or
in a different place, and memorize that instead of the gismu with the
place structure you dislike. In actual usage, gismu should not be more
privileged than lujvo.

Which incidentally brings up another matter. To some extent, the place
structures were NOT intended to reflect to most useful form for use as a
bare gismu, but rather, we were trying to think about how words would be
used in combination, and especially in lujvo. And we were also trying
to use the place structures as a defining tool. Most people won't use
"under conditions" places or "by standards" places in most of their
usage. But it is useful to embed in a predicate word referring to a
liquid, that the conditions determine whether it will in fact act as a
liquid. And whether something is "good" or not depends on the standard
(morality? or perhaps benefit), and possibly the person doing the
evaluation because goodness itself is subjective. One could claim these
places aren't needed because in natlangs, they seldom are mentioned.
But Lojban is NOT a natural language, and we don't rely on natural
language conventions if possible.

Your "semantic groupings" sound very much like your personal natural
language conventions. I rather suspect that a native speaker of a
language quite unlike yours would consider different "semantic
groupings" more important than yours, and perhaps will find places
useful that you prefer to skip, because in their native language,
different assumptions about the world have shaped the meaning of words.

>> You
>> have made someone who knew that gismu less knowledgeable (and whether
>> you have experienced it or not, the relearning of language changes is
>> among the more difficult parts of learning a new language.
>

> They need to relearn the gismu, yes,

Why should they? And in particular, what gives a newbie like you the
right to tell them that they should?

>but it will be a simpler definition.

Only according to your specific, natural-language-biased assumptions.

We've had the debate before, countless times, over place structure
minimalization, maximalization, strongly regularized, etc. in cluding
several times before the gismu list was baselined. Different speakers
were involved, and results were, umm, inconsistent, as you can see by
the fact that you find the current set inconsistent.

It is pure hubris on your part to think that you, and your group of
fellow travellers are more insightful than the people who came before you.

I learned better a long time ago (actually I learned it while still
working on TLI Loglan before the split occurred - yes, they also had
debates about "regularizing the list", and JCB himself was one of the
worst - go look at the TLI word list and see what sorts of lujvo he made
using madzo (our zbasu) and durzo (our gasnu) many of those came about
by simplifying and regularizing, and incidentally ignoring the original
meaning of the gismu in favor of a meaning implied by an English gloss)
http://www.loglan.org/Loglan1/app-f.html).

> Also, if we also take future Lojban speakers into account,
> it's more desirable (in my opinion) to hand them a consistent and
> easy-to-learn gimste,

in *your* opinion consistent, and in *your* opinion easy to learn. Of
course you have no actual basis for that opinion, only some untested
assumptions about what sorts of things make learning easier, and place
structures more consistent.

and they *won't* have to relearn anything.

Of course they will. You think you will be the last person to come
along and argue for a new improved gismu list? This comes up every few
years. And if we ever said "yes" to a single one, we surrender all
moral authority to oppose the next dozen attempts.

This one I also learned a long time ago, luckily schooled by other
Lojbanists. The original set of rafsi assignments was based on word
frequencies and usage of gismu in proposed lujvo up through 1991. I did
a nice systematic study and assigned rafsi to give the shortest and best
words based on the then-current list.

In 1994 after much more usage, I did the same analysis, finding that a
couple hundred rafsi should be reassigned. But the list was baselined,
so I put it to a BPFK like committee. They rejected most of my
proposals, and I am glad they did. Try reading any pre-1994 Lojban, and
you'll find it rather hard, simply because a few percent of the rafsi
changed.

Now envision your future Lojban student trying to read any of the
megabytes of Lojban text in the current corpus. You want to throw out
25 years of usage history by hundreds instead of just 5 years of history
by a couple dozen.

>The
> number of people right now who are fluent in all the sumti places of
> every single gismu is close to zero.

Good. I wouldn't want them to have wasted so much time trying.
Assuming "fluent" is meaningful the way you used it there.

Let is say that they are. Then the issue is that number of people who
are "fluent" in all the sumti places of all the lujvo in jbovlaste
(which is of course a small subset of all of those in the corpus) is
even more certainly zero.

Knowing all of the place structures is only slightly more useful than
memorizing the OED (or similar large dictionary). "slightly" more
because gismu place structures are useful in highly analytical
lujvo-making according the the jvojva "rules" in CLL. (but those rules
are merely a convention, and one I don't think has been carefully followed).

> What the gismu are about remains
> the same, and some details which most people never even got familiar
> with are adjusted. The practical impact is much less drastic than you
> make it sound.

The practical impact is that the resistance to revising the gismu list
every time some new reformer like you comes along goes away. And old
Lojban text in invalidated to some unknown extent. And the result isn't
really any better than the old list because people shouldn't be wasting
their time memorizing all of the gismu place structures

(there is somewhat more limited benefit to knowing all gismu at the
keyword level, and most or all of the rafsi, because it tells you how
the wordspace is filled and how rafsi-space is filled and thus makes it
easier to decode a new lujvo that you don't know the meaning of. If you
know the rafsi for sralo, you won't accidentally interpret that rafsi as
meaning something else, and since rafsi space is so crowded, knowing
some of the rafsi makes it enormously easier to learn the rest, merely
by elimination.

No such factor motivates place structure memorization. You learn them
by using them, as you need them.

>>> The simpler and the more consistent the gimste, the higher are the
>>> chances for the average person to learn Lojban and the more pleasant it
>>> is to be a user of this language, I believe.
>>
>> Those claims are merely that: claims. Unsupported by actual evidence.
>

> Experience, both my own and those of other jbopre I interact with. We
> use the language daily,

Whoopie. Anecdotal evidence based on personal experience. Let me know
when a linguistics journal accepts your paper based on that "experience".

>and making slight adjustments in gismu place
> structures results in a big increase in pleasantness of use. This may
> not be the case for you, but it is for some.

And why should your personal aesthetics preferences count more than mine?

>> And it is important that this be so, because too much semantic emphasis
>> on the x1 risks losing the predicate nature of the language.
>

> But they are not limited to x1. And they couldn't be, since Lojban
> sometimes puts the experiencer in x2 and someimes in x1. We are able to
> look past x1 and figure out what a gismu is about.

Sometimes. And sometimes the semantic experiencer is in x3 or x4 or x5.
And probably in some lujvo, in x8.

And it is just as fundamental to understanding Lojban conceptually that
a beginner be able to cope with an experiencer in x8 as in x1 or x2.
(Of course a beginner is far less likely to run into such a word these
days.)

>>> That way it becomes much easier to get related gismu to align.
>>
>> All gismu are "related".
>>
>> Why should some "align", and not others
>>
>>> For example, all the gismu about emotional states could go together.
>>
>> They could. But what about the words that you don't recognize to be
>> about emotional states
>

> I think we can agree that {klama} is not an emotion, whereas {badri} is.

klacni (or maybe klaselcni) would probably be an emotion (the emotional
reaction to going somewhere, which reaction might be dependent on the
route and means). It might or might not have a place structure similar
to badri. cricni is even more recognizably an emotion (English gloss
"loss") and even more likely to have a different place structure. But
we aren't going to try to systematize all lujvo that are used to talk
about emotions, so why do so for gismu.

Gismu are NOT semantically privileged in Lojban. They are
morphologically privileged in having rafsi, but not in any other way.
And most people learn a lot of gismu relative to lujvo when first
starting, but that is likely an artifact of how the language was
designed. I rather suspect that Robin's kids recognize or attach
significance to gismu vs lujvo, and you probably shouldn't either, but
no one has written textbooks that reflect this fundamental truth.

>>> As part of the revision, I would also like to define each gismu well
>>> enough that we can come up with examples filling *every* sumti place of
>>> every gismu.
>>
>> That would be an interesting but probably unproductive challenge.
>

> Then you aren't aware of one of the most common requests by beginners I
> hear. They want examples, they want to know how to use a gismu. (to
> which you will reply again "it's used how people want to use it")

I am quite aware of the requests of beginners. I have after all been
teaching the language longer than anyone else. And, I don't reply that
way. If someone is a beginner, I wouldn't be trying to explain the
language using gismu that you don't know how to use. Beginners aren't
going to be able to use the whole language with facility.

>> > so we should either figure out what it means
>>
>> Worthwhile goal, but not a very high priority one when we have cmavo
>> that people haven't figured out.
>

> Not a high priority for you, but for many others. Lojban is not only
> made up of cmavo.

The rest of the language has been defined to a certain level. But be
that as it may, we cannot adopt everyone's priorities. Nor can we
respect them if they run counter to our own.

>> Of course, since the language is intended to "go feral" and cease to be
>> under prescriptive control, it can be argued that we already have
>> conceded that time-free sense in incorrect. Or perhaps any apparent
>> rule which does change through usage is therefore not-a-rule. In which
>> case we may never know "the rules of the language" as long as there are
>> Lojban users. (This tension may indicate why many Lojbanists like the
>> idea of the community deciding what the language is through usage, while
>> at the same time want a perpetual BPFK around to codify usage questions
>> prescriptively (which is arguably exactly the opposite of community
>> decision.)
>

> I know you want usage to decide (but since you want usage to decide,
> wouldn't you accept it if people simply started using different gismu
> place structures?).

Guess what? Neither you nor I have a choice if people choose to not
follow the language prescription. They can even use TLI Loglan; I have
no say in the matter.

> However, a *lot* of people prefer a centrally
> defined language. They want clear semantics, they want clear rules. If
> the community wants it, then why should they not get it?

Because it is an impossibility, for one reason. "Clear semantics" is an
oxymoron.

But even ignoring that, if some people want a strongly prescribed
language and others do not, we have a fundamentally intractable
contradiction, and cannot please everyone. So we follow the concepts
under which the project was started and under which it has survived 25
years.

If prescriptivists want to prescribe up a storm, they can try, but not
as part of LLG, and we would prefer that they not try to pretend that
they are working on Lojban. (Again, we have no way to stop someone from
doing so, but we certainly won't offer help or encouragement.)

I can't please your ilk, and I'm not inclined to try, even if I didn't
have that LLG members' motion directing me not to do so.

You got yourself onto the TLI Academy (JCB's likely turning over in his
grave about that) - they accept the possibility of prescribing
everything. Good luck over there.

> Afterall, who, if not the community of users, keeps Lojban alive?

*You* aren't the "community of users", and you and your friends are only
a tiny subset of that community, if what you are using still fits the
label "Lojban". Lojban has stayed alive for many years before you came
along, and will stay alive just fine without you, and might even do
better, since more people will understand that we aren't going to
support or even cooperate with every splinter group that announces itself.

> Before you call this another claim without evidence, here is a thread
> from 2010 about just that:
>
> https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/lojban/xn8hCt3Aagw

I don't see anything under that topic even slightly relevant to the
current discussion. It seems to be about whether people use the machine
grammar in their heads when speaking Lojban. Though indeed most of the
claims in said discussion were indeed without evidence.

> I hope we don't have to repeat that thread again.

I didn't get involved the last time, but why do you think I care enough
about your opinion to bother?

lojbab

[selpa'i]

la .lojbab. cu cusku di'e

>> Before you call this another claim without evidence, here is a thread
>> from 2010 about just that:
>>
>> https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/lojban/xn8hCt3Aagw
>
> I don't see anything under that topic even slightly relevant to the
> current discussion. It seems to be about whether people use the machine
> grammar in their heads when speaking Lojban. Though indeed most of the
> claims in said discussion were indeed without evidence.

Please, did you even read the thread? It's about Robin's essay which
clearly states that he doesn't want usage to decide and that he wants a
centralized, formalized language. The responses in the thread (in which
you *did* participate) showed that pretty much everyone except you
agreed with him. The situation hasn't changed since then, but feel free
to ignore it further. You clearly have no interest in acknowledging
other people's ideals concerning the specification of Lojban even when
they outnumber you and include many of the most prominent Lojbanists of
all time, for which *I* have more respect than anything else.

[Bob LeChevalier, President and Founder - LLG]

On 5/25/2014 7:41 AM, Jonathan Jones wrote:
> I haven't dived very far into this hole, myself, but I have looked into
> the categorization deal a bit.

As have I, more than once.

> For example, there are the "x1 is x2 <metric units> in <measurement
> type> by standard x3" gismu, which, with the exception of {mitre}, have
> the exact same place structure. (Similarly for the non-metric
> measurement gismu.)

The fact that so many look alike reflect my prior analyses. But you of
course are missing all the places I added and later deleted in an effort
to maximize this aspect (the se pilno/tutci/cabra/minji/zukte set, which
included words that would typically be useful in x1 and x2 of those
words, occupied me for several months before someone convinced me that I
was overanalyzing.

Someone else argued that it would be better not to group gismu
semantically, but rather to group them by number of defined places.
IIRC, pc has been addressing issues like this since he was editing The
Loglanist way back in 1975.

> There all the creature gismu, which with some exceptions, are all "x1 is
> a <creature> of species x2".

My work, including the exceptions.

>
> {klama}, {litru}, {muvdu}, and not quite {pluta} differ only in which of
> the places of {klama} they do or do not contain. ({pluta} has an extra
> place for the set of points defining the route, as well as reordering
> the {klama} places it has.)

Again, my work, and that extra place was one reason why pluta exists
other than as a conversion of the others. Especially in lujvo-making
where the person going is usually irrelevant to the route.

> I personally do not think Lojban should ever stop being a prescriptive
> language,

Well, if we can never get the prescription done, it will arguably never
start being one.

What is most likely is that we will eventually finish something we can
call the initial/baseline language prescription. Perhaps thereafter
someone will constitute a BPFK-like standards group, though if it is to
be meaningful, membership likely will need to be more formal than BPFK
membership has been. Thereafter, any further "prescriptions" will be
increasingly selected from things demonstrated to work in actual usage,
and thus arguably will be descriptive rather than prescriptive. The
description will of course be treated by many people as having
prescriptive force, just as major dictionaries have prescriptive force
in English, even though none of them were intended to be prescriptive.

and if you want my reasons for it, I direct you to Robin's
> rant. Although I'm unlikely to live long enough to see it, I might be
> persuaded to change my stance if and when a significant community of
> first-language natives of Lojban exist.

From what I've heard, native Esperanto speakers are not considered more
expert in the language than non-natives who have spoken the language for
decades.

> As far as this "endeavor", I would consider this effort to be an
> in-the-works BPFK change proposal, to be potentially reviewed once the
> freeze had been lifted, and nothing more.

If they submit such a change proposal, then the BPFK will presumably
deal with it, but I had the sense that they were doing so specifically
in opposition to the procedures in place. And this is not the first
time selpa'i has exhibited strong distaste for what you term "the
established authority". Nor is he the first to try this sort of stunt.
Luckily the community has largely ignored splinter groups in the past, and
their leaders eventually go away to fight some other battle.

But thanks for your support for the status quo.

lojbab

[Robert LeChevalier]

On 5/25/2014 10:50 AM, selpa'i wrote:
>> - Even if people knew that, lojbanists basically may be split into two
>> camps, the “before gismu rewrite” and the “after gismu rewrite” camp.
>

> Already the case for cmavo and for several gismu. Consider Lojbab who
> refuses to use xorlo even though it's official.

I don't "refuse" to use it. I don't understand it, and thus CAN'T use
it, except insofar as my usage just happens to be compatible with xorlo,
which xorxes says is essentially always.

And "xorlo" itself is an English coinage and not a gismu, so far as I know.

>> - The existing regular lujvo using this gismu may become irregular. A
>> person may wonder “Huh? Where did that X place come from?”. The lujvo
>> would still work, but remembering will be harder.
>

> Regular lujvo will change automatically in usage

NOTHING changes automatically.

> and where needed the definitions can be updated in the dictionary.

We can't get the existing stuff done.

>> I am not saying these problems are neccessarily unsolvable. But the
>> proposal does not seem to address any of these problems.
>

> Well, instead of shooting it down categorically, you could have asked
> for clarification. Afterall, this is supposed to be a joint effort.

You may think it is supposed to be, but it isn't. It is a small group
of you and your fellow-travelers going off half-cocked. Most people are
NOT interested in designing part of all of an artificial language. They
choose to use Lojban because it is DONE (even if not fully documented).
And they value our commitment against ad hoc prescriptive change.

You did not experience what happened when JCB did his redesign of his
gismu list. The rather small TLI Loglan community essentially
disappeared for several years.

> There is a non-negligible number of people who support the revision and
> who are going to take part. Maybe they are going to speak up themselves.

We won't stop them, but LLG cannot support them.

lojbab

[Dustin Lacewell]

Neither.  Easiest is a gismu that you use, and you tend to memorize only the places that you actually use and that you hear others use.  25 years now, and I never made any effort to learn place structures systematically.

 

This is a thoughtless retort. The suggestion that there is truly no objective sense of efficiency, rhyme or reason to a place structure is unmoving. The idea that an efficient place structure has anything to do with memorizing gismu systematically doesn't follow.

 

For a language user, rather than a designer, why would you choose to memorize a gismu (place structure) that follows a common pattern but which never actually comes up in your conversation, over a useful brivla where the place structure matters?

Another retort that doesn't connect with the original statement. In fact this retort makes zero sense whatsoever. Why would anyone pick a gismu that follows a common pattern but never comes up in your conversation? What kind of question is this? I mean you're right, no one *would* pick a gismu for their speech that doesn't actually require that gismu. This is just not a thought-out reply. What does it have to do with the content of the original message? 

 

When there is a semantic group of, say, 20 gismu

what makes them a semantic group?  Such considerations were meaningful when we were trying to initially figure out place structures,  But now, with the language complete, I would try to avoid grouping words semantically (as I said before, usually such "grouping" is really on the x1 of the gismu and not on the gismu itself - otherwise all words with "under conditions" places are equally a "semantic group" as all words with a type of animal in x1.  But who would try to memorize all gismu with an "under condition" place?

Sometimes a semantic association might make memorizing a gismu or its place structure a little easier, but which such associations are important is purely individual.

You're not even trying. To suggest that there is no meaningful way to semantically categorize the gismu for the utility of helping us partition the work, one has to wonder what your actual intention in this reply is. Furthermore, the process is democratic and so those associations are completely open to discussion. Of course the lexicon could be organized in to many many different semantic groupings based on the weather, or what mood any such person is in. That isn't the point. We simply require a useful ordering to the work. Your reply misses the point entirely.

 

Meanwhile, the very first change you make to the existing gismu list, no
matter how regularizing it may seem inherently makes the language HARDER
to learn because you have potentially invalidated all prior use of that

gismu both as an individual words and as a component in a lujvo.

No.

First of all, lujvo don't change, since they mean what are defined to mean.

Who decides what they are defined to mean?  Most lujvo are invented and used ad hoc with no one bothering to define them or their place structures. When their place structures are defined, as likely as not it will be by someone who did not coin the word, and perhaps someone who does not know how it has been used.  This has been especially true since a distinction was realized between making place structures according to some system/rules vs more ad hoc methods (which might include basing them on arbitrary semantic groupings as you wish to do for gismu).

In reality, the meaning of lujvo is not and cannot be prescribed.

 

In reality. Sure, if you say so. Except that we have a dictionary where explicit lujvo place structures are created mindfully and voted on democratically. How the lujvo are formed is completely irrelevant to this conversation. Why you are incorporating the semantic categorization that we intend to use to partition the work into this retort, is any one's guess.

 

Secondly, when a speaker always has to skip around a place (e.g. {broda
fi ko'a} for skipping x2) because they never need that place, then that
is an annoyance.

Tough.  Be annoyed.  

No.

 

Or perhaps start using the place you've been skipping - you know: allowing the language to structure the way you think about things.  The language was after all originally designed to test the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis.

 

This actually made me chuckle out loud. You're not even trying to create strong replies that aim at the content to which you are replying. Use places that are not relevant to the speech, just because they come earlier in the place structure? What are you even *talking about* Bob?

 

Which incidentally brings up another matter.  To some extent, the place structures were NOT intended to reflect to most useful form for use as a bare gismu, but rather, we were trying to think about how words would be used in combination, and especially in lujvo.  And we were also trying to use the place structures as a defining tool.  Most people won't use "under conditions" places or "by standards" places in most of their usage.  But it is useful to embed in a predicate word referring to a liquid, that the conditions determine whether it will in fact act as a liquid.  And whether something is "good" or not depends on the standard (morality? or perhaps benefit), and possibly the person doing the evaluation because goodness itself is subjective.  One could claim these places aren't needed because in natlangs, they seldom are mentioned. But Lojban is NOT a natural language, and we don't rely on natural language conventions if possible.

Your "semantic groupings" sound very much like your personal natural language conventions.  I rather suspect that a native speaker of a language quite unlike yours would consider different "semantic groupings" more important than yours, and perhaps will find places useful that you prefer to skip, because in their native language, different assumptions about the world have shaped the meaning of words.

 

Bob, we're not making natlang arguments. You don't know us at all, as you have demonstrated. We speak the language every day. We talk about the language every day. We are not simply saying "Oh look at these weird places in these gismu, our poor English mind just can't wrap around their utility". Please. I invite you to search through the corpus. 

 

You

have made someone who knew that gismu less knowledgeable (and whether
you have experienced it or not, the relearning of language changes is
among the more difficult parts of learning a new language.

They need to relearn the gismu, yes,

Why should they?  And in particular, what gives a newbie like you the right to tell them that they should?

 

This remark doesn't deserve a respectful reply so I will simply acknowledge it being uttered.

 

but it will be a simpler definition.

Only according to your specific, natural-language-biased assumptions.

 

No Bob. No matter how much it would be comfortable for you to minimize our community and our contributions for everyone else in this thread, that is going to prove to be a very hard thing to do because you're talking about actual jbopre who are actually recognized for their regular work with the language. Only you could reply to selpa`i with accusations of natural-lagnauge biases. Really.

We've had the debate before, countless times, over place structure minimalization, maximalization, strongly regularized, etc. in cluding several times before the gismu list was baselined.  Different speakers were involved, and results were, umm, inconsistent, as you can see by the fact that you find the current set inconsistent.

It is pure hubris on your part to think that you, and your group of fellow travellers are more insightful than the people who came before you.

Hubris on our part is one way to look at it. I'll say that hearing this critique from someone who has throughout this entire dialog minimized and insulted something he cannot even really perceive, being so far removed from the life of the daily lojbanist and who cannot even speak a dialect of lojban understandable by anyone having learned the language in the last 5 years is certainly not going to evoke the any feeling of legitimate and genuine criticism in us.

What an interesting demonstration is all that one can really think, as we know who we are, and we know who supports us, and it is really clear that you're speaking to the audience trying to paint us as completely out of our element. To see you attempt this coloring while all the while knowing that the very audience you speak to is mostly supportive I'll say its also a very uncomfortable demonstration - but not for us.

 

Also, if we also take future Lojban speakers into account,
it's more desirable (in my opinion) to hand them a consistent and
easy-to-learn gimste,

in *your* opinion consistent, and in *your* opinion easy to learn.  Of course you have no actual basis for that opinion, only some untested assumptions about what sorts of things make learning easier, and place structures more consistent.

This is where you truly show that you have no idea what's going on beneath you. You believe that we are simply tinkerers who have in our own hubris and imagination have divined arbitrary changes to fit our own 'style' of Lojban. But the truth is, the IRC community is one of the most active communities Lojban has and it is the first stop for many people seeking the language for the first time. We regularly have new names showing up and we have gone through the motions of how lojban can be presented and explained to a fresh student countless times! We have fielded the same questions so often that we actually DO have a unique insight into many of lojban's qualities no only from the perspective of using to have realtime conversations with multiple participants everyday, but also to teaching others how to do exactly that.

No one buys the "selpa'i and his rag tag IRC community is just a small ignorant rebel group looking to destroy the language argument. Ask some of the people around you.

 and they *won't* have to relearn anything.

Of course they will.  You think you will be the last person to come along and argue for a new improved gismu list?  This comes up every few years.  And if we ever said "yes" to a single one, we surrender all moral authority to oppose the next dozen attempts.

We're not coming up with anything. We're executing a process in which anyone may make contributions of merit.

 

This one I also learned a long time ago, luckily schooled by other Lojbanists.  The original set of rafsi assignments was based on word frequencies and usage of gismu in proposed lujvo up through 1991.  I did a nice systematic study and assigned rafsi to give the shortest and best words based on the then-current list.

In 1994 after much more usage, I did the same analysis, finding that a couple hundred rafsi should be reassigned.  But the list was baselined, so I put it to a BPFK like committee.  They rejected most of my proposals, and I am glad they did.  Try reading any pre-1994 Lojban, and you'll find it rather hard, simply because a few percent of the rafsi changed.

Now envision your future Lojban student trying to read any of the megabytes of Lojban text in the current corpus.  You want to throw out 25 years of usage history by hundreds instead of just 5 years of history by a couple dozen.

 

This argument is simply not a genuine one. MUCH of the corpus is already 'thrown out' by xorlo and other factors. How does adjusting some broken gismu constitute "throwing out 25 years of usage history"? Doesn't that sound scary everyone? If we remove traji3, the entire corpus history is... gone!

 

What the gismu are about remains
the same, and some details which most people never even got familiar
with are adjusted. The practical impact is much less drastic than you
make it sound.

The practical impact is that the resistance to revising the gismu list every time some new reformer like you comes along goes away.  And old Lojban text in invalidated to some unknown extent.  And the result isn't really any better than the old list because people shouldn't be wasting their time memorizing all of the gismu place structures

 

Again, the assertion that you should not memorize all the gismu is not a retort that follows from the desire for quality and consistency in gismu definitions.

 

(there is somewhat more limited benefit to knowing all gismu at the keyword level, and most or all of the rafsi, because it tells you how the wordspace is filled and how rafsi-space is filled and thus makes it easier to decode a new lujvo that you don't know the meaning of.  If you know the rafsi for sralo, you won't accidentally interpret that rafsi as meaning something else, and since rafsi space is so crowded, knowing some of the rafsi makes it enormously easier to learn the rest, merely by elimination.

No such factor motivates place structure memorization.  You learn them by using them, as you need them.

The simpler and the more consistent the gimste, the higher are the
chances for the average person to learn Lojban  and the more pleasant it
is to be a user of this language, I believe.

Those claims are merely that: claims.  Unsupported by actual evidence.

Experience, both my own and those of other jbopre I interact with. We
use the language daily,

Whoopie.  Anecdotal evidence based on personal experience.  Let me know when a linguistics journal accepts your paper based on that "experience".

 

This a joke.

and making slight adjustments in gismu place
structures results in a big increase in pleasantness of use. This may
not be the case for you, but it is for some.

And why should your personal aesthetics preferences count more than mine?

 

The process is open for anyone to make arguments for or against the proposed changes of others or their own. In some cases usage can already allow us to predict how some of the changes will go. 

 

And it is important that this be so, because too much semantic emphasis
on the x1 risks losing the predicate nature of the language.

But they are not limited to x1. And they couldn't be, since Lojban
sometimes puts the experiencer in x2 and someimes in x1. We are able to
look past x1 and figure out what a gismu is about.

Sometimes.  And sometimes the semantic experiencer is in x3 or x4 or x5.  And probably in some lujvo, in x8.

And it is just as fundamental to understanding Lojban conceptually that a beginner be able to cope with an experiencer in x8 as in x1 or x2. (Of course a beginner is far less likely to run into such a word these days.)

 

Only someone who doesn't care about the on-going proliferation of the language would say something like this. Knowing how the grammar works in a general way and being able to 'cope' with an actually cumbersome gimste are completely different qualities a beginner should possess but I'm certainly not going to advocate for the latter. In fact, we're going to try to improve that situation.

 

That way it becomes much easier to get related gismu to align.

All gismu are "related".

Why should some "align", and not others

For example, all the gismu about emotional states could go together.

They could.  But what about the words that you don't recognize to be
about emotional states

I think we can agree that {klama} is not an emotion, whereas {badri} is.

klacni (or maybe klaselcni) would probably be an emotion (the emotional reaction to going somewhere, which reaction might be dependent on the route and means).  It might or might not have a place structure similar to badri.  cricni is even more recognizably an emotion (English gloss "loss") and even more likely to have a different place structure.  But we aren't going to try to systematize all lujvo that are used to talk about emotions, so why do so for gismu.

Gismu are NOT semantically privileged in Lojban.  They are morphologically privileged in having rafsi, but not in any other way. And most people learn a lot of gismu relative to lujvo when first starting, but that is likely an artifact of how the language was designed.  I rather suspect that Robin's kids recognize or attach significance to gismu vs lujvo, and you probably shouldn't either, but no one has written textbooks that reflect this fundamental truth.

None of this is relevant whatsoever. We're talking about fixing some small things on gismu that already exist. 

 

As part of the revision, I would also like to define each gismu well
enough that we can come up with examples filling *every* sumti place of
every gismu.

That would be an interesting but probably unproductive challenge.

Then you aren't aware of one of the most common requests by beginners I
hear. They want examples, they want to know how to use a gismu. (to
which you will reply again "it's used how people want to use it")

I am quite aware of the requests of beginners.  I have after all been teaching the language longer than anyone else.  And, I don't reply that way.  If someone is a beginner, I wouldn't be trying to explain the language using gismu that you don't know how to use.  Beginners aren't going to be able to use the whole language with facility.

Do you feel that your response actually connects with the content of what you're replying to? That you are disagreeing with the goal of having examples justifying the design of every place in the gimste is unproductive rather than exceedingly legitimizing and of much utility to jbopre at any level is astounding, really.

 

But even ignoring that, if some people want a strongly prescribed language and others do not, we have a fundamentally intractable contradiction, and cannot please everyone.  So we follow the concepts under which the project was started and under which it has survived 25 years

Lojban as language used by actual people, is inevitably a language that changes naturally adapting to the needs of the users as those needs arise and inspiration provides workable solutions. The idea that lojban can ever be truly prescribed can in no way ever be enforced or otherwise implemented. Any prescription is only useful as a reflection of usage. Both for current speakers but also for transferring that usage to new speakers as a pathway for integration and compatible speech.

Funny, that's exact motivations behind our efforts. To bring the language up to date with modern usage and if your own remedy is the dogma of uselessly tautological busy work as demonstrated by its unexecuted state, then be surprised not that people demand a set of actually working materials. 

 

If prescriptivists want to prescribe up a storm, they can try, but not as part of LLG, and we would prefer that they not try to pretend that they are working on Lojban.  (Again, we have no way to stop someone from doing so, but we certainly won't offer help or encouragement.)

In the context of actually having some LLG support this is ironic.

 

I can't please your ilk, and I'm not inclined to try, even if I didn't have that LLG members' motion directing me not to do so.

You got yourself onto the TLI Academy (JCB's likely turning over in his grave about that) - they accept the possibility of prescribing everything.  Good luck over there.

I just can't even begin to understand your disposition.

 

Afterall, who, if not the community of users, keeps Lojban alive?

*You* aren't the "community of users", and you and your friends are only a tiny subset of that community, if what you are using still fits the label "Lojban".  Lojban has stayed alive for many years before you came along, and will stay alive just fine without you, and might even do better, since more people will understand that we aren't going to support or even cooperate with every splinter group that announces itself.

You know what? We are the community of users. As much as any other group of users can say they are. A tiny subset? Sure we maybe a relative small amount of *regular* users but we have the first say in how MANY people experience the language for the first time. Everyday I watch conversations discussing in detail the specifics and nuance of the entire range of grammar features and lexicon definitions. I see people of varied skillsets teaching each other lojban going to great lengths to illuminate for each other its many concepts and conventions. I see people producing and collaborating on lojban works from translations to tools all the time.

Lojban stays alive in large part BECAUSE of the efforts of this community to maintain it from the practical reality and not some completely disconnected banal nostalgia of yesteryear's hopeless agendas. Ask some people around you if they agree.

I didn't get involved the last time, but why do you think I care enough about your opinion to bother?

lojbab

Its clear you don't. 

[Bob LeChevalier, President and Founder - LLG]

On 5/25/2014 12:48 PM, selpa'i wrote:
> la .lojbab. cu cusku di'e

>>> Before you call this another claim without evidence, here is a thread
>>> from 2010 about just that:
>>>
>>> https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/lojban/xn8hCt3Aagw
>>
>> I don't see anything under that topic even slightly relevant to the
>> current discussion. It seems to be about whether people use the machine
>> grammar in their heads when speaking Lojban. Though indeed most of the
>> claims in said discussion were indeed without evidence.
>

> Please, did you even read the thread?

The link pointed to a page of several threaded discussions. No essay
from Robin on that page. Only on closer look did I now notice that it
was pointing to page 6, and there is indeed an essay on Robin there. I
don't have the time to reread the essay much less the thread.

> It's about Robin's essay which
> clearly states that he doesn't want usage to decide and that he wants a
> centralized, formalized language.

He's running byfy. If he can produce such a thing, he has the authority
to do so. I haven't tried to stop him.

My personal opinion, even if I disagree with Robin, is only my opinion.
In my position as President, I act on behalf of the policies voted by
the membership and directors, insofar as I am able. And at age 60 and
not in great health, I know I won't be around forever. It'd be nice if
the language and the organization supporting it survives my eventual
departure, but I likely won't have much to say about it when I am not
around anymore %^)

> The responses in the thread (in which
> you *did* participate) showed that pretty much everyone except you
> agreed with him. The situation hasn't changed since then, but feel free
> to ignore it further.

I probably will, since I saw nothing that requires action from me. If
it did, I suspect that Robin would have made a motion to that effect.

If Robin completes the prescription, that is what matters most. Even if
what he prescribes isn't exactly what I want him to prescribe.

> You clearly have no interest in acknowledging
> other people's ideals concerning the specification of Lojban even when
> they outnumber you

As you say, I responded to the thread. That acknowledged what was said.
That does not mean that I am going to jump on board, especially since
I have nothing useful to contribute.

> and include many of the most prominent Lojbanists of
> all time, for which *I* have more respect than anything else.

I have plenty of respect for Robin, and xorxes, and many others. I
don't have much respect for you and your group.

lojbab

[Dustin Lacewell]

Did you just invoke your own death to bolster your position?

Bob. We want to fix some things in the language within a realistic timeframe as to benefit from them without spending years doing uselessly tautological work to reflect in materials that we will shortly after rewrite, reflect a very out of date version of the language. How is it possible that we're talking about all these odd topics that don't seem to connect with solving that problem?

Its like, the problem is simple, the solution is simple, and lots of people agree. If you stop this odd debate of trying to make us out to be some sort of insignificant traitors or untrue scotsmen, you might see that the things that have changed do improve the language and make things cleaner and more elegant and more useful for speech and communication.

That improving the prescription more immediately to reflect modern usage, so that we can better go on teaching and advocating the language, is even contentious is boring. The debate is tired and apparently the arguments have become very weak. And odd. You made some odd arguments Bob. That don't really address the problem at all. 

The dogmas serve no one except those who are more interested in debating dogma and process rather than teaching lojban to new people and making sure the language is digestible and effective. You need to start speaking to realistic and practical short term solutions for those out there teaching and using the language. But I don't expect that to happen. Just reflect on the character of your tone and content. I don't realistically see you changing your mind and saying things that are actually realistic in helping solving our problems. Because of course we don't exist, and probably don't even speak "Lojban" as it could be officially called anyway right?

Why are we not the first group to come along and suggest such editorializing  of the language? Its because the language does not exist as just some mental object.

[Robert LeChevalier]

On 5/25/2014 2:06 PM, Dustin Lacewell wrote:
> 25 years now, and I never made any effort to learn place
> structures systematically.
>

> This is a thoughtless retort.

It is a truthful one.

> The suggestion that there is truly no objective sense of efficiency, rhyme or reason to a place structure is
> unmoving.

There may be such a thing, but you have no more access to it than I do.
And I have more interesting things to worry about.

>The idea that an efficient place structure has anything to do
> with memorizing gismu systematically doesn't follow.

The idea that I give a damn about either, also doesn't follow.

> For a language user, rather than a designer, why would you choose to
> memorize a gismu (place structure) that follows a common pattern but
> which never actually comes up in your conversation, over a useful
> brivla where the place structure matters?
>

> Another retort that doesn't connect with the original statement. In fact
> this retort makes zero sense whatsoever. Why would anyone pick a gismu
> that follows a common pattern but never comes up in your conversation?

Back in the day, I picked some 1300 gismu that had never come up in my
conversation, because no one at that time spoke Lojban. A large chunk
of those words were gismu in TLI Loglan, and their initial place
structures were more or less the same that JCB used, except where we had
a good reason to change. But JCB's gismu and place structure choice
were often quite arbitrary, too.

Efficiency was never a priority.

> This is just not a thought-out reply.

You expect me to spend more time thinking about this stuff than I
already have?

> You're not even trying.

You are right.

> To suggest that there is no meaningful way to semantically categorize the gismu

I suggest no such thing. There are lots of ways, but how meaningful
they are is a subjective question.

> for the utility of helping us
> partition the work, one has to wonder what your actual intention in this
> reply is.

Ridicule?

> Furthermore, the process is democratic

Most of the Lojbanic world isn't involved in your process and won't be.

> and so those associations are completely open to discussion.

Most people have no interest in such a discussion.

> No.
>
> First of all, lujvo don't change, since they mean what are
> defined to mean.
>
> Who decides what they are defined to mean?

At this point, either the person who uses one, or the person who enters
it into jbovlaste or some other word collection.

> In reality, the meaning of lujvo is not and cannot be prescribed.
>

> In reality. Sure, if you say so. Except that we have a dictionary

I have never seen a published Lojban dictionary. If you refer to
jbovlaste, it isn't a dictionary, but rather a data base, and I don't
believe its collection has any official status.

> where
> explicit lujvo place structures are created mindfully and voted on
> democratically.

I have never been aware of, nor involved in, any such vote. I suspect
that this is true for most of the community.

> Or perhaps start using the place you've been skipping - you know:
> allowing the language to structure the way you think about things.
> The language was after all originally designed to test the
> Sapir-Whorf hypothesis.
>
>

> This actually made me chuckle out loud. You're not even trying to create
> strong replies

Correct. selpa'i is hardly worth such an effort, even if I had the time.

> that aim at the content to which you are replying. Use
> places that are not relevant to the speech, just because they come
> earlier in the place structure? What are you even *talking about* Bob?

Maybe we don't speak the same language.

> Your "semantic groupings" sound very much like your personal natural
> language conventions. I rather suspect that a native speaker of a
> language quite unlike yours would consider different "semantic
> groupings" more important than yours, and perhaps will find places
> useful that you prefer to skip, because in their native language,
> different assumptions about the world have shaped the meaning of words.
>

> Bob, we're not making natlang arguments

Then you aren't talking about language. Lojban will never be recognized
by real linguists as being a real language, if it doesn't have certain
traits that they define as necessary.

Maybe you don't care. Your choice.

> Hubris on our part is one way to look at it. I'll say that hearing this
> critique from someone who has throughout this entire dialog minimized
> and insulted something he cannot even really perceive, being so far
> removed from the life of the daily lojbanist and who cannot even speak a
> dialect of lojban understandable by anyone having learned the language
> in the last 5 years is certainly not going to evoke the any feeling of
> legitimate and genuine criticism in us.

.u'inai .ionai

> What an interesting demonstration is all that one can really think, as
> we know who we are,

You may know, but the rest of us don't.

> To see you attempt this coloring while all the while
> knowing that the very audience you speak to is mostly supportive

Evidence is lacking.

> in *your* opinion consistent, and in *your* opinion easy to learn.
> Of course you have no actual basis for that opinion, only some
> untested assumptions about what sorts of things make learning
> easier, and place structures more consistent.
>

> This is where you truly show that you have no idea what's going on
> beneath you. You believe that we are simply tinkerers

Yes. You talk like all the tinkerers before you.

> But the truth is, the IRC community

You are you. You are not the IRC community. You speak only for yourself.

> is one of the most active communities Lojban has

Yet no one is ever there most of the times I log in.

(I'm not saying that no one uses IRC; I see a long list of bots logged
in, but people don't respond to what I say, so I don't bother very often.

> No one buys the "selpa'i and his rag tag IRC community is just a small
> ignorant rebel group looking to destroy the language argument. Ask some
> of the people around you.

selpa'i also is not "the IRC community" and does not have any authority
to speak for them.

> and they *won't* have to relearn anything.
>
> Of course they will. You think you will be the last person to come
> along and argue for a new improved gismu list? This comes up every
> few years. And if we ever said "yes" to a single one, we surrender
> all moral authority to oppose the next dozen attempts.
>

> We're not coming up with anything.

Good. Then no one has to bother with you.

> Whoopie. Anecdotal evidence based on personal experience. Let me
> know when a linguistics journal accepts your paper based on that
> "experience".
>

> This a joke.

I guess I forgot the zo'o

> and making slight adjustments in gismu place
> structures results in a big increase in pleasantness of use.
> This may
> not be the case for you, but it is for some.
>
> And why should your personal aesthetics preferences count more than
> mine?
>

> The process is open for anyone to make arguments for or against the
> proposed changes of others or their own.

There is no process.

> Sometimes. And sometimes the semantic experiencer is in x3 or x4 or
> x5. And probably in some lujvo, in x8.
>
> And it is just as fundamental to understanding Lojban conceptually
> that a beginner be able to cope with an experiencer in x8 as in x1
> or x2. (Of course a beginner is far less likely to run into such a
> word these days.)
>

> Only someone who doesn't care about the on-going proliferation of the
> language would say something like this.

Maybe I care rather differently than you, and for different reasons.

> I am quite aware of the requests of beginners. I have after all
> been teaching the language longer than anyone else. And, I don't
> reply that way. If someone is a beginner, I wouldn't be trying to
> explain the language using gismu that you don't know how to use.
> Beginners aren't going to be able to use the whole language with
> facility.
>

> Do you feel that your response actually connects with the content of
> what you're replying to?

I have no idea. selpa'i seldom makes much sense to me.

> That you are disagreeing with the goal of
> having examples justifying the design of every place in the gimste is
> unproductive

We haven't managed the much smaller goal of a set of examples for every
cmavo. Why worry about a larger and less important goal?

I don't see any need to "justify the design of every place in the
gimste". I can freely admit that many decisions were arbitrary, and
further I assert that any "justification" is arbitrary. It simply
doesn't matter, because gismu are not semantically privileged above
lujvo, I rather doubt that you expect to justify every place of every lujvo.

> rather than exceedingly legitimizing and of much utility to
> jbopre at any level is astounding, really.

The utility has yet to be seen much less demonstrated.

> But even ignoring that, if some people want a strongly prescribed
> language and others do not, we have a fundamentally intractable
> contradiction, and cannot please everyone. So we follow the
> concepts under which the project was started and under which it has

> survived 25 years
>
> Lojban as language used by actual people, is inevitably a language that
> changes naturally adapting to the needs of the users as those needs
> arise and inspiration provides workable solutions. The idea that lojban
> can ever be truly prescribed can in no way ever be enforced or otherwise
> implemented.

Sounds like what I argued in response to Robin in the discussion cited
by selpa'i.

I guess you don't really agree with selpa'i

>Any prescription is only useful as a reflection of usage.

Then it is really a *description*, not a prescription. People can use
descriptions prescriptively, but that doesn't make them prescriptions.

> In the context of actually having some LLG support this is ironic.

Your support is not in evidence.

> I can't please your ilk, and I'm not inclined to try, even if I
> didn't have that LLG members' motion directing me not to do so.
>
> You got yourself onto the TLI Academy (JCB's likely turning over in
> his grave about that) - they accept the possibility of prescribing
> everything. Good luck over there.
>

> I just can't even begin to understand your disposition.

JCB had a problem with people who challenged authority, shall we say.

> *You* aren't the "community of users", and you and your friends are
> only a tiny subset of that community, if what you are using still
> fits the label "Lojban". Lojban has stayed alive for many years
> before you came along, and will stay alive just fine without you,
> and might even do better, since more people will understand that we
> aren't going to support or even cooperate with every splinter group
> that announces itself.
>

> You know what? We are the community of users.

You speak only for yourself until proven otherwise.

> Lojban stays alive in large part BECAUSE of the efforts of this
> community to maintain it from the practical reality and not some
> completely disconnected banal nostalgia of yesteryear's hopeless
> agendas. Ask some people around you if they agree.

Alas, no one around me uses IRC.

I fully respect people who use the language on IRC, for doing so. But
they are still not above other Lojbanists who never have done so.

lojbab

[Bob LeChevalier, President and Founder - LLG]

On 5/25/2014 2:29 PM, Dustin Lacewell wrote:
> Did you just invoke your own death to bolster your position?

No. I invoked my own death to indicate my long term irrelevancy.
Unlike you, I have learned some humility.

> Bob. We want to fix some things in the language within a realistic
> timeframe as to benefit from them without spending years doing uselessly
> tautological work to reflect in materials that we will shortly after
> rewrite, reflect a very out of date version of the language. How is it
> possible that we're talking about all these odd topics that don't seem
> to connect with solving that problem?

We don't agree on "the problem".

> Its like, the problem is simple, the solution is simple, and lots of
> people agree.

Your evidence as to "lots" is lacking.

> If you stop this odd debate of trying to make us out to be
> some sort of insignificant traitors

Stop with insignificant, and that will be fine.

> That improving the prescription more immediately to reflect modern
> usage, so that we can better go on teaching and advocating the language,
> is even contentious is boring. The debate is tired and apparently the
> arguments have become very weak. And odd. You made some odd arguments
> Bob. That don't really address the problem at all.

I'm not trying to address YOUR problem.

And if my arguments are ill-thought out, then perhaps my health
problems, and family matters that are much more important to me than
your argument take precedence.

> You need to start
> speaking to realistic and practical short term solutions for those out
> there teaching and using the language.

Says who?

My job is defined in the LLG Bylaws, as interpreted by the Members and
Directors.

If THEY decide to change course, then I will either change course or not
continue as President.

> Because of course we
> don't exist, and probably don't even speak "Lojban" as it could be
> officially called anyway right?

I have no idea what you speak, or whether it would be mutually
intelligible with something I speak.

> Why are we not the first group to come along and suggest such
> editorializing of the language? Its because the language does not exist
> as just some mental object.

Take that up with a philosopher of language. I suspect that s/he would
disagree. But I'm not much of a philosopher.

[Alex Burka]

Indeed, maybe some of those people will speak up for themselves. Hi, I'm one of them! I think Lojban is a beautiful language and I have immense respect for its designers. I also agree with many others in the community that there are parts that could be improved, and I want to help in this effort to explore that.

Reading through this thread I was surprised and disappointed by how fast it descended into personal attacks. Originally, I thought it was an argument about whether we should try to make slightly updated gimste. But it doesn't seem to be about that at all. I don't understand talking to an accomplished member of the community using words like "newbie" and "hubris".

Some of the points that have been raised as objections don't make sense to me.

One is that changing the gimste at all makes it harder to learn. Perhaps this is conflating learning (for new speakers) with relearning (for existing speakers). Of course, changing the place structure of a gismu presents a small but surmountable hardship for someone who has already memorized that word. The change may be unwelcome, if they liked the old place structure, or welcome, if they didn't. But for new speakers, a more internally consistent gimste  can only be easier to learn. And Lojban needs new speakers if it is to survive and thrive. Now, there is a balance to be struck. Past and current usage is very important, and no word should (or would) be changed without careful consideration.

The "semantic categorization" part is a detail. We could go alphabetically; it would just be more difficult. It's not really relevant to the main point of whether we should do this. And of course the gismu can be categorized -- no categorization will be perfect, obviously, but some already exist, and they aren't simplistic sorting by the x1 places. It's also a learning aid for nintadni, if done well, to be able to study the gismu in an order informed by their meaning, rather than alphabetically.

And you've claimed at alternate points that Lojban is "done" and not done! The BPFK still has work to do, and so by focusing on the gimste we're looking at the "wrong" part -- that's fine. But it's not consistent with Lojban being a finished product. The BPFK has accepted official changes such as xorlo and the CLL itself points to isolated parts of the language (rafsi fu'ivla, na'e with gu'e constructs, etc) that needed work when it was published. Even if it were true that everyone who bought the CLL wanted Lojban to remain change-free forever (which is false) they can't wish for those problem areas, at least, to never be fleshed out.

You'll have to take our word for it that there is an active community on IRC. Actually, you don't have to believe us -- you can look at the logs. There are seven bots by my count, and a bunch of active users (and more inactive, but such is the nature of IRC). Evidence that people are interested in our efforts has already appeared on the mailing list.

Anyway we don't ask for legitimacy from the LLG at this time. Ridicule is fine, but it is a waste of time. We simply want to see what we can do with the gimste, and invite input from anyone and everyone who wants to participate. It is absolutely not my personal goal to be divisive or cause a schism, and I don't think that will result from our efforts, but I can't control what others view as schismatic. It's even possible that in the far future the BPFK would consider some of our changes. Some in the community and the LLG have expressed interest in that possibility, and I hope they will make themselves heard here, but it's not the point or the current goal. Hopefully the current argument has mostly run its course, so that those of us who want to can focus and the rest can resume ignoring us.

mi'a la durka mu'o

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[Dustin Lacewell]

On Sun, May 25, 2014 at 12:03 PM, Robert LeChevalier <loj...@lojban.org> wrote:

On 5/25/2014 2:06 PM, Dustin Lacewell wrote:

      25 years now, and I never made any effort to learn place
    structures systematically.

This is a thoughtless retort.

It is a truthful one.

Yes but has no bearing on the original content. That's the point.

 

The suggestion that there is truly no objective sense of efficiency, rhyme or reason to a place structure is
unmoving.

There may be such a thing, but you have no more access to it than I do.  And I have more interesting things to worry about.

No but the collective who is invited through whatever means of invitation are possible to create a consensus to access it. You're not listening.

 

The idea that an efficient place structure has anything to do
with memorizing gismu systematically doesn't follow.

The idea that I give a damn about either, also doesn't follow.

It was your argument.

 

    For a language user, rather than a designer, why would you choose to
    memorize a gismu (place structure) that follows a common pattern but
    which never actually comes up in your conversation, over a useful
    brivla where the place structure matters?

Another retort that doesn't connect with the original statement. In fact

this retort makes zero sense whatsoever. Why would anyone pick a gismu

that follows a common pattern but never comes up in your conversation?

Back in the day, I picked some 1300 gismu that had never come up in my conversation, because no one at that time spoke Lojban.  A large chunk of those words were gismu in TLI Loglan, and their initial place structures were more or less the same that JCB used, except where we had a good reason to change.  But JCB's gismu and place structure choice were often quite arbitrary, too.

Efficiency was never a priority.

Turns out this actually matters for lojban's proliferation.

 

This is just not a thought-out reply.

You expect me to spend more time thinking about this stuff than I already have?

:3

 

You're not even trying.

You are right.

:3

 

To suggest that there is no meaningful way to semantically categorize the gismu

I suggest no such thing.  There are lots of ways, but how meaningful they are is a subjective question.

As a way to partition the work of a gimste revision, it becomes objective in how well it helps us partition the work of a gimste revision. You're having trouble maintaining the ability to keep the content of what you're responding to in mind.

 

for the utility of helping us
partition the work, one has to wonder what your actual intention in this
reply is.

Ridicule?

Sure, but you do a bad job when your retort completely misses the content of what you're replying to. Ridicule is only effective if it touches on some embarrassing truth. But you made a comment with no bearing to what you replied in trying to do so. Relax.

 

Furthermore, the process is democratic

Most of the Lojbanic world isn't involved in your process and won't be.

Most of the lojbanic world has never been involved its management and never will be. What is your point? Democracy insofar as people care about the event and its outcome. This is a practical reality, not some identified weakness in our action that is useful to your as a retort.

and so those associations are completely open to discussion.

Most people have no interest in such a discussion.

Exactly, this is explains what your immediately preceding comment lacks effect.

 

        No.

        First of all, lujvo don't change, since they mean what are
        defined to mean.

    Who decides what they are defined to mean?

At this point, either the person who uses one, or the person who enters it into jbovlaste or some other word collection.

You mean the "database" which you de-legitimize literally in the next comment?

 

    In reality, the meaning of lujvo is not and cannot be prescribed.

In reality. Sure, if you say so. Except that we have a dictionary

I have never seen a published Lojban dictionary.  If you refer to jbovlaste, it isn't a dictionary, but rather a data base, and I don't believe its collection has any official status.

:3

 

where
explicit lujvo place structures are created mindfully and voted on
democratically.

I have never been aware of, nor involved in, any such vote.  I suspect that this is true for most of the community.

It hasn't happened yet...?

 

    Or perhaps start using the place you've been skipping - you know:
    allowing the language to structure the way you think about things.
      The language was after all originally designed to test the
    Sapir-Whorf hypothesis.

This actually made me chuckle out loud. You're not even trying to create
strong replies

Correct.  selpa'i is hardly worth such an effort, even if I had the time.

:3

 

that aim at the content to which you are replying. Use
places that are not relevant to the speech, just because they come
earlier in the place structure? What are you even *talking about* Bob?

Maybe we don't speak the same language.

You don't get to avoid having the fact that your comments completely miss the content of what you're replying to with stuff like this. The statement I pointed out made no sense whatsoever.

 

    Your "semantic groupings" sound very much like your personal natural
    language conventions.  I rather suspect that a native speaker of a
    language quite unlike yours would consider different "semantic
    groupings" more important than yours, and perhaps will find places
    useful that you prefer to skip, because in their native language,
    different assumptions about the world have shaped the meaning of words.

Bob, we're not making natlang arguments

Then you aren't talking about language. Lojban will never be recognized by real linguists as being a real language, if it doesn't have certain traits that they define as necessary. 

Maybe you don't care.  Your choice.

Again, what are you even talking about? You accused of not being able to semantically categorizing the gismu, as if we meant 'for good' rather than as a temporary guide to help us process the gimste revision by accusing us of having natural language bias which would make any semantic categorization useless and subjective as if that matters in the context we're using it.

How does Lojban being recognized by linguists as a real language have anything to do with this already irrelevant subthread of the dialog!

Hubris on our part is one way to look at it. I'll say that hearing this
critique from someone who has throughout this entire dialog minimized
and insulted something he cannot even really perceive, being so far
removed from the life of the daily lojbanist and who cannot even speak a
dialect of lojban understandable by anyone having learned the language
in the last 5 years is certainly not going to evoke the any feeling of
legitimate and genuine criticism in us.

.u'inai .ionai

.ionaidai je'a

 

What an interesting demonstration is all that one can really think, as
we know who we are,

You may know, but the rest of us don't.

Later you will accuse me of speaking for others. Ironic.

 

To see you attempt this coloring while all the while
knowing that the very audience you speak to is mostly supportive

Evidence is lacking.

There's evidence in this thread and the previous one.

 

    in *your* opinion consistent, and in *your* opinion easy to learn.
      Of course you have no actual basis for that opinion, only some
    untested assumptions about what sorts of things make learning
    easier, and place structures more consistent.

This is where you truly show that you have no idea what's going on
beneath you. You believe that we are simply tinkerers

Yes.  You talk like all the tinkerers before you.

We both agree work is needed you just disagree with what. This puts on the same level as far as this goes. Its useless speech.

 

But the truth is, the IRC community

You are you.  You are not the IRC community.  You speak only for yourself.

No actually, I'm very connected to the IRC community and all who care to participate in this conversation are in a channel specifically for discussing the events here. I do most of the messaging because I'm willing to. I'm constantly in contact with everyone, like I said, cares to be involved in those discussions.

 

is one of the most active communities Lojban has

Yet no one is ever there most of the times I log in.

(I'm not saying that no one uses IRC; I see a long list of bots logged in, but people don't respond to what I say, so I don't bother very often.

No one buys the "selpa'i and his rag tag IRC community is just a small
ignorant rebel group looking to destroy the language argument. Ask some
of the people around you.

selpa'i also is not "the IRC community" and does not have any authority to speak for them.

He's there too. Engaged in conversations about this thread and the movement and everything. You're just saying stuff at this point.

 

      and they *won't* have to relearn anything.

    Of course they will.  You think you will be the last person to come
    along and argue for a new improved gismu list?  This comes up every
    few years.  And if we ever said "yes" to a single one, we surrender
    all moral authority to oppose the next dozen attempts.

We're not coming up with anything.

Good.  Then no one has to bother with you.

Again not replying to the content of the thing you're replying to. I'm saying, we're not 'coming up' with a new gismu list. We're executing a process where anyone can submit contributions and input of merit.

  

        and making slight adjustments in gismu place
        structures results in a big increase in pleasantness of use.
        This may
        not be the case for you, but it is for some.

    And why should your personal aesthetics preferences count more than
    mine?

Continuing to ignore that we're not deciding anything and asking anyone who wishes to to contribute.

 

The process is open for anyone to make arguments for or against the
proposed changes of others or their own.

There is no process.

You don't get to change reality just by saying things. If you're interested as to what the process is you can just ask.

That you are disagreeing with the goal of
having examples justifying the design of every place in the gimste is
unproductive

We haven't managed the much smaller goal of a set of examples for every cmavo.  Why worry about a larger and less important goal?

I don't see any need to "justify the design of every place in the gimste".  I can freely admit that many decisions were arbitrary, and further I assert that any "justification" is arbitrary.  It simply doesn't matter, because gismu are not semantically privileged above lujvo, I rather doubt that you expect to justify every place of every lujvo.

As people who are involved with the direct selling of lojban to potential interested nintadni, we do.

Bob, we care. Justifying the sensibilities of the gismu is something we're asked to do by people considering the langague *all the time*.

 

    But even ignoring that, if some people want a strongly prescribed
    language and others do not, we have a fundamentally intractable
    contradiction, and cannot please everyone.  So we follow the
    concepts under which the project was started and under which it has

    survived 25 years

Lojban as language used by actual people, is inevitably a language that
changes naturally adapting to the needs of the users as those needs
arise and inspiration provides workable solutions. The idea that lojban
can ever be truly prescribed can in no way ever be enforced or otherwise
implemented.

Sounds like what I argued in response to Robin in the discussion cited by selpa'i.

I guess you don't really agree with selpa'i

I can assure you that selpa'i agrees with the motion of updating the record, prescription, description, or whatever, that we provide to new people and our selves as the codification of the reflection of modern usage is up to date.

 

Any prescription is only useful as a reflection of usage.

Then it is really a *description*, not a prescription.  People can use descriptions prescriptively, but that doesn't make them prescriptions.

Who cares?

 

In the context of actually having some LLG support this is ironic.

Your support is not in evidence.

You must assume everyone in the audience is blind.

 

I fully respect people who use the language on IRC, for doing so.  But they are still not above other Lojbanists who never have done so.

Hence why we are on this mailing list and elsewhere.

[John E Clifford]

In the midst off this often depressingly puerile exchange, I found the call for a philosopher of language, so I volunteer (MA in Linguistics, PhD in Philosophy, dissertation on the borderline between logic and language, etc. etc. including teaching course in the area for forty three years, somewhere between 54 and 38 years in the logical language business, including all the available offices at TLI and editor of The Lojbanist and VP and Board member at LLG).

So, a curse on both your houses!

Lojban, as what people say when they say they are doing Lojban, will change constantly and in uncontrolled ways. Lojban, as the language that has official imprimatur (however that may be gained, right now from BPFK, apparently), will also change but more slowly and in more controlled ways. That it will change (or die, of course) is a result of its being a language. That its official form will change slowly and in a controlled way is a result of the kind of language it is: constructed and logical, especially the latter.

“Logical” here has two interrelated parts. The first of these is that Lojban is to be syntactically unambiguous, every grammatical utterance has a unique parse which tells how the sentence is to be interpreted. The second is that this is to be achieved by taking the languages syntax from that of First Order Predicate Logic (actually some higher order intensional logic, a la Montague, but that does not make a difference to the basic point here). Now, someone who knows FOPL would be hard pressed to find it in Lojban; many things have had to be changed to make a usable language (every other expression in FOPL is a parenthesis of some sort, for example, or some equally non-content expression). These impose restrictions on how the official language can change, since the connection with FOPL cannot be broken for fear of losing unambiguity (or, at least, a relatively easy way to claim it, although this connection is not really exploited), and, even if the connection is lost, unambiguity must be maintained. So, any change has to be checked to see that it does not affect this prime quality (basically, Lojban's only special feature – it and Loglan are hardly the only languages with socket-and-plugs core syntax). So there is always going to be a prescriptive element in Lojban.

That being said, it must also be said that most changes in vocabulary have nothing to do with this central ground. Changing the meaning of one of the holes in a socket does not affect the heart of the language. Whether or not these changes are officialized or not just doesn't matter to Lojban. Of course, such a change may affect the Lojban community, dividing it into two groups who misunderstand one another in some particular circumstances. For the development of the language, this can have serious consequences, cutting one group off from the accumulated lore of the past and the other group off from new material as it comes in, breaking continuity. It tends moreover to tick off more experienced speakers, who have learned the older form and are now asked to relearn (which is very hard – I still, nearly 40 later, am most likely to come up with a Loglan word as my first attempt). And, alas, all this tends to create internal tensions, which can tear a constructed-language community apart, resulting, typically, in, first, two much smaller groups in competition, then one still rather small group, then nothing in that line at all.

But this doesn't have to happen, especially if, as here, the changes are made in remote (so, by assumption, less used) holes: it would be a long time before the two sides noticed that one side had dropped x5 of {klama}, say. (The need to know all the holes of all the sockets goes back to JCB's medieval notions of language learning and to the devices which were designed to enable “predicate pumping”. It once was the case that at least initial claims to competence amounted to a total of the number of sockets you could recognize and give all the hole-meanings for – and, eventually, all the derivational forms. While rational language teaching material is still not as available as would be nice, most of what is available teaches vocabulary in context, stressing the useful part and introducing both sockets and their holes as needed.) Of course, that raises the issue of why bother to change these holes and the answer seems to be that the changes are to satisfy some extrinsic goal: symmetry or “orderliness” or “ease of learning” (which, in context, suggest that learning predicates is done by mini-pumping, learning all the motion words at once, say – a possible but rarely ideal approach). So not central issues at all. Further, we have all the usual tools of language for dealing with dialects and diachronic change. We recognize the differences and translate and, if we don't, we ask for an explanation when the discussion obviously runs off the rails. Thus, vocabulary changes are just not important.

Well, a few are and these are all among cmavo. Obviously, if you change the meaning of {a} you have changed the connection to FOPL, and similarly with other expressions clearly tied to logic. But this tends to expand outward. If you change definition {ai} to or from factive (I don't remember where it is right now; it has changed at least five times in 60 years), you change the whole logical structure of the utterance of which it is a part, and many expressions have this feature. The possibilities for misunderstanding are now at a more profound level, even if, technically, the same cures are available. So, for these kinds of changes, control is again needed. And, correspondingly, we need to know where we are now, as – for various reason – apparently we do not. The definitions of content expressions may not be perfect, but they serve (as the fact that they have served and are serving shows) and so “fixing” them is a low priority. But, if, as is claimed, the definitions of some non-content expressions is no complete or not set, this is a structural matter that needs to be fixed if we are to say the language is complete (let alone finished).

So, if you accept that the cmavo are not completed, that is the priority task and any activity that might be directed to that task but goes to something else is a waste or even an attack on Lojban. Since meddling with gismu is a task very similar to organizing the cmavo, it will appear to Lojbab et al as such a waste (or, given the tone of the proclamation of undertaking that task, an attack). On the other hand, since the people doing the meddling are pretty clearly not going to work on cmavo (and are not obviously competent to do so anyhow), the tone of his response seems inappropriate (except as a response to their tone). The best thing is just to ignore them, pretty much. The one reason to pay attention them is the potential they have to sow dissensions, but, for that, the appropriate response is just not to allow them to use the LLG websites.

[Dustin Lacewell]

Lojban, as what people say when they say they are doing Lojban, will change constantly and in uncontrolled ways. Lojban, as the language that has official imprimatur (however that may be gained, right now from BPFK, apparently), will also change but more slowly and in more controlled ways. That it will change (or die, of course) is a result of its being a language. That its official form will change slowly and in a controlled way is a result of the kind of language it is: constructed and logical, especially the latter.

Hidden assumption that any change that happens by us (since any change would be deemed not official) is therefore made hastily and illogicaly. Sorry, are you trying to convince us?

 

“Logical” here has two interrelated parts. The first of these is that Lojban is to be syntactically unambiguous, every grammatical utterance has a unique parse which tells how the sentence is to be interpreted. The second is that this is to be achieved by taking the languages syntax from that of First Order Predicate Logic (actually some higher order intensional logic, a la Montague, but that does not make a difference to the basic point here).

Now, someone who knows FOPL would be hard pressed to find it in Lojban; many things have had to be changed to make a usable language (every other expression in FOPL is a parenthesis of some sort, for example, or some equally non-content expression). These impose restrictions on how the official language can change, since the connection with FOPL cannot be broken for fear of losing unambiguity (or, at least, a relatively easy way to claim it, although this connection is not really exploited), and, even if the connection is lost, unambiguity must be maintained.

Another hidden presumption that any change that's not official (hence those made by us, somehow weaken Lojban's connection to FOPL or makes it more ambiguous.

 

So, any change has to be checked to see that it does not affect this prime quality (basically, Lojban's only special feature – it and Loglan are hardly the only languages with socket-and-plugs core syntax). So there is always going to be a prescriptive element in Lojban.

This assumes that the community that speaks lojban is incapable of maintaining this prime quality and its degredation is not a mere effect, as you note, of the language's need to function as a language.

 

That being said, it must also be said that most changes in vocabulary have nothing to do with this central ground.

Well thank you then, for those many hidden assumptions that were an irrelevant segue to your actual points.

 

Changing the meaning of one of the holes in a socket does not affect the heart of the language.

You're right it doesn't.

 

Whether or not these changes are officialized or not just doesn't matter to Lojban.

I think people care a lot about whether this or that change has the prerogative to denote itself as official.

 

Of course, such a change may affect the Lojban community, dividing it into two groups who misunderstand one another in some particular circumstances.

Ignoring the fact that people misunderstand each other anyway, le'ts continue on...

 

For the development of the language, this can have serious consequences, cutting one group off from the accumulated lore of the past and the other group off from new material as it comes in, breaking continuity. It tends moreover to tick off more experienced speakers, who have learned the older form and are now asked to relearn (which is very hard – I still, nearly 40 later, am most likely to come up with a Loglan word as my first attempt).

This is overtly dramatic. In the community I'm from, we're forced to find practical solutions  to real difficulties in using Lojban as a medium of communication, that adhere to Lojban's core principle, we are also forever burdened with the responsibility to keep a clear division between what is and isn't official and laboriously explain this to anyone coming accross these details because Lojban lacks an effective and active mechanism through leadership to bring about the changes required for it continue to used on the ground. If some are to begrudge the requirement to slightly update their internalization of vocabularly is too much of a burden then those people have zero recourse for even you say, lojban must change (to ever better support the act of communication) or die.

 

And, alas, all this tends to create internal tensions, which can tear a constructed-language community apart, resulting, typically, in, first, two much smaller groups in competition, then one still rather small group, then nothing in that line at all.

It tears the community apart because of the unmoving, offensive and completely unsatisfying disposition and demeanor as displayed by the President of the thing for which we are talking. To blame the practical needs of the language on its strife is disingenuous at best, distracting from solutions at worst.

 

But this doesn't have to happen,

No it really doesn't.

 

especially if, as here, the changes are made in remote (so, by assumption, less used) holes: it would be a long time before the two sides noticed that one side had dropped x5 of {klama}, say.

This strengthens the dissoance affect you're trying to avoid. Changes should be made as soon as possible and as transparently as possible. Your position makes you come up with some very odd conclusions.

While rational language teaching material is still not as available as would be nice,

And do you have any insight as to why this is the case? Here's some for you. I know a handful of people who would LOVE to write teaching material but are CONFLICTED by the pressure to no codify any of the enhancements, optimizations, aesthetic changes, or any other heresy deemed unofficial *despite* those being changes everyone around them is utilizing. Some have even gone ahead and written these materials. 

 

most of what is available teaches vocabulary in context, stressing the useful part and introducing both sockets and their holes as needed.) Of course, that raises the issue of why bother to change these holes and the answer seems to be that the changes are to satisfy some extrinsic goal: symmetry or “orderliness” or “ease of learning” (which, in context, suggest that learning predicates is done by mini-pumping, learning all the motion words at once, say – a possible but rarely ideal approach).

This sounds like analysis from someone who does not utilize the language whatsoever. The experience of the entirety of a gismu takes place the very first time you look up the gismu. The implication that one is only ever exposed to the full content of a brivla if they 'predicate pumping' the lexicon is absurd. Furthermore the assertion that someone is doing something wrong in their need for any place of any gismu at anytime as 'overdoing' it or any other critique is also absurd.

 

So not central issues at all.

Please. You haven't demonstrated that at all.

 

Further, we have all the usual tools of language for dealing with dialects and diachronic change. We recognize the differences and translate and, if we don't, we ask for an explanation when the discussion obviously runs off the rails. Thus, vocabulary changes are just not important.

 

Seriously? Did you actually stop read the product of the typing it took you to create this? Its incredible.

Well, a few are and these are all among cmavo.

Its no surprise that we would eventually lead back to this. That it is couched in a prologue about how the vocabulary supposedly doesn't matter is bewildering.

 

Obviously, if you change the meaning of {a} you have changed the connection to FOPL, and similarly with other expressions clearly tied to logic. But this tends to expand outward. If you change definition {ai} to or from factive (I don't remember where it is right now; it has changed at least five times in 60 years), you change the whole logical structure of the utterance of which it is a part, and many expressions have this feature. The possibilities for misunderstanding are now at a more profound level, even if, technically, the same cures are available. So, for these kinds of changes, control is again needed.

Control is not needed. Capable minds, cooperatively and openly discussing these matters with the ability to affect the changes implied by their conclusions is what is needed. Control is an entirely worthless concept to lojban that only serves to make the language incredibly brittle overtime. It represents nothing but obstacles for the language's inevitable evolution over time. The dispositions of capable jbopre are enough. We do not need to further institutionalize is dramatically saturated and vivid gridlock. 

 

And, correspondingly, we need to know where we are now, as – for various reason – apparently we do not.

Just because no one has written a version of the CLL that reflects a Lojban that isn't known anymore does not mean that speakers utilizing the language today do not know its featureset. The jbopre that you're fighting against, know the entire history as it is on paper, know the content of the BPFK pages, know the small changes in usage and all the experimental cmavo. We not only know what Bob thinks lojban is, but also what lojban might be after a succession of BPFK proposal votes, but also the language we actually use. Saying "we don't know where we are" are the words of someone who does not actually use the language and is simply trying to proliferate the decade yet implemented policies as having anything to do with what is relevant to lojban today.

So, if you accept that the cmavo are not completed, that is the priority task and any activity that might be directed to that task but goes to something else is a waste or even an attack on Lojban.

The idea that lojban has more than a single need, which makes all other needs than the one you would like carried out first, by wills other than your own, makes you look hypocritical and lazy. No one is stopping you from completing any agenda you wish. Please do not insult us along the way of wishing we would do work your prioritize over the work we prioritize for ourselves. It makes literally no sense to do this and who is moved by this poor form is anyone's guess.

 

Since meddling with gismu is a task very similar to organizing the cmavo, it will appear to Lojbab et al as such a waste (or, given the tone of the proclamation of undertaking that task, an attack).

This is the end of your long thesis and this is where you are at. Just pointing that out.

 

On the other hand, since the people doing the meddling are pretty clearly not going to work on cmavo (and are not obviously competent to do so anyhow)

Nothing like leaving off with disrespectful speech from a position of pure ignorance about the character of people in your own community.

 

the tone of his response seems inappropriate (except as a response to their tone). The best thing is just to ignore them, pretty much. The one reason to pay attention them is the potential they have to sow dissensions, but, for that, the appropriate response is just not to allow them to use the LLG websites.

Whatta conclusion. And it took a MA in Linguistics and PhD in Philosophy to bring it to us.

If only you were spending that prowess writing useful speech where your hateful foregone conclusion was't rushed in attempt to demonize leaving you with a short essay that says nothing compelling and is inconsistent at best.

[Alex Burka]

On Sunday, May 25, 2014 at 8:14 PM, 'John E Clifford' via lojban wrote:

In the midst off this often depressingly puerile exchange, I found the call for a philosopher of language, so I volunteer (MA in Linguistics, PhD in Philosophy, dissertation on the borderline between logic and language, etc. etc. including teaching course in the area for forty three years, somewhere between 54 and 38 years in the logical language business, including all the available offices at TLI and editor of The Lojbanist and VP and Board member at LLG).

An impressive resume! You've certainly got my attention. 

So, a curse on both your houses!

:( 

Lojban, as what people say when they say they are doing Lojban, will change constantly and in uncontrolled ways. Lojban, as the language that has official imprimatur (however that may be gained, right now from BPFK, apparently), will also change but more slowly and in more controlled ways. That it will change (or die, of course) is a result of its being a language. That its official form will change slowly and in a controlled way is a result of the kind of language it is: constructed and logical, especially the latter.

I agree. 

“Logical” here has two interrelated parts. The first of these is that Lojban is to be syntactically unambiguous, every grammatical utterance has a unique parse which tells how the sentence is to be interpreted. The second is that this is to be achieved by taking the languages syntax from that of First Order Predicate Logic (actually some higher order intensional logic, a la Montague, but that does not make a difference to the basic point here). Now, someone who knows FOPL would be hard pressed to find it in Lojban; many things have had to be changed to make a usable language (every other expression in FOPL is a parenthesis of some sort, for example, or some equally non-content expression). These impose restrictions on how the official language can change, since the connection with FOPL cannot be broken for fear of losing unambiguity (or, at least, a relatively easy way to claim it, although this connection is not really exploited), and, even if the connection is lost, unambiguity must be maintained. So, any change has to be checked to see that it does not affect this prime quality (basically, Lojban's only special feature – it and Loglan are hardly the only languages with socket-and-plugs core syntax). So there is always going to be a prescriptive element in Lojban.

That being said, it must also be said that most changes in vocabulary have nothing to do with this central ground. Changing the meaning of one of the holes in a socket does not affect the heart of the language.

Except that the heart of the language includes its words! If it were possible to speak the grammar without words, we could just use FOPL and we wouldn't need a language. 

Whether or not these changes are officialized or not just doesn't matter to Lojban. Of course, such a change may affect the Lojban community,

I don't see the difference.  

dividing it into two groups who misunderstand one another in some particular circumstances. For the development of the language, this can have serious consequences, cutting one group off from the accumulated lore of the past and the other group off from new material as it comes in, breaking continuity. It tends moreover to tick off more experienced speakers, who have learned the older form and are now asked to relearn (which is very hard – I still, nearly 40 later, am most likely to come up with a Loglan word as my first attempt). And, alas, all this tends to create internal tensions, which can tear a constructed-language community apart, resulting, typically, in, first, two much smaller groups in competition, then one still rather small group, then nothing in that line at all.

But this doesn't have to happen, especially if, as here, the changes are made in remote (so, by assumption, less used) holes: it would be a long time before the two sides noticed that one side had dropped x5 of {klama}, say. (The need to know all the holes of all the sockets goes back to JCB's medieval notions of language learning and to the devices which were designed to enable “predicate pumping”. It once was the case that at least initial claims to competence amounted to a total of the number of sockets you could recognize and give all the hole-meanings for – and, eventually, all the derivational forms. While rational language teaching material is still not as available as would be nice, most of what is available teaches vocabulary in context, stressing the useful part and introducing both sockets and their holes as needed.) Of course, that raises the issue of why bother to change these holes and the answer seems to be that the changes are to satisfy some extrinsic goal: symmetry or “orderliness” or “ease of learning” (which, in context, suggest that learning predicates is done by mini-pumping, learning all the motion words at once, say – a possible but rarely ideal approach). So not central issues at all. Further, we have all the usual tools of language for dealing with dialects and diachronic change. We recognize the differences and translate and, if we don't, we ask for an explanation when the discussion obviously runs off the rails. Thus, vocabulary changes are just not important.

Vocabulary changes are not important _for making sure the language is FOPL-compliant and unambiguous_, sure. They may (or may not) be important for other purposes. One among these is making the language practical to learn and use. This may be an "extrinsic goal" by your terminology, but … if someone is ever going to finish the work of fully specifying the cmavo, we always say they need to be informed by usage. So, usage is important. And good, well-defined vocabulary is of paramount importance for generating usage. 

Well, a few are and these are all among cmavo. Obviously, if you change the meaning of {a} you have changed the connection to FOPL, and similarly with other expressions clearly tied to logic. But this tends to expand outward. If you change definition {ai} to or from factive (I don't remember where it is right now; it has changed at least five times in 60 years), you change the whole logical structure of the utterance of which it is a part, and many expressions have this feature. The possibilities for misunderstanding are now at a more profound level, even if, technically, the same cures are available. So, for these kinds of changes, control is again needed. And, correspondingly, we need to know where we are now, as – for various reason – apparently we do not. The definitions of content expressions may not be perfect, but they serve (as the fact that they have served and are serving shows) and so “fixing” them is a low priority. But, if, as is claimed, the definitions of some non-content expressions is no complete or not set, this is a structural matter that needs to be fixed if we are to say the language is complete (let alone finished).

So, if you accept that the cmavo are not completed, that is the priority task and any activity that might be directed to that task but goes to something else is a waste or even an attack on Lojban.

In a distributed system, people can work on different things at the same time. People who are motivated to work on the cmavo will work on the cmavo. People who are motivated to meddle with the gismu will meddle with the gismu. Maybe some of these will even be the same people! (But most likely not, of course, if they are ridiculed and excluded.) I reject the idea that any work outside a narrowly defined top priority is an attack. 

Since meddling with gismu is a task very similar to organizing the cmavo, it will appear to Lojbab et al as such a waste (or, given the tone of the proclamation of undertaking that task, an attack). On the other hand, since the people doing the meddling are pretty clearly not going to work on cmavo

Stating it this ways sounds like a self-fulfilling prophecy. I don't know where you got this idea. I doubt that _all_ of the people interested in gismu-meddling also want to work on cmavo, but again, distributed system. 

(and are not obviously competent to do so anyhow),

If we're not qualified to do the work you want us to do, why attack us for not doing it? Moreover, this seems like just another attempt to discredit a group with a wave of the hand. Why not ask for qualifications, instead, if it's qualifications you want? 

the tone of his response seems inappropriate (except as a response to their tone).

I agree that the tone of the response was unwarranted. I refuse to play the blame game, but if you read this exchange (and the previous one) and got the impression that Lojbab's tone is a response to someone else's -- you should read it again. Or don't, it's not very pleasant.  

The best thing is just to ignore them, pretty much.

As I said in my last message, fine. 

The one reason to pay attention them is the potential they have to sow dissensions,

Some regrettable things were probably said during the mudslinging, but dissent is obviously not the goal. A bright future for Lojban is the goal. 

but, for that, the appropriate response is just not to allow them to use the LLG websites.

I can't stop you, but if you're worried about splitting the community, then forcibly excluding a portion of it seems to me the quickest way to make that fear a reality. In fact, it seems to almost echo history in a bad way.

mi'e la durka mu'o 

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[Jorge Llambías]

.e'u di'a casnu la'e di'u bau la lojban .i ba'a va'o lo nu go'i kei lo nu prenu gunta cu ba zi tolcfa .i pe'i na se vamji lo raktu fa lo nu darlu lo du'u ma kau ma kau zmadu lo ka jbocre .i banzu fa lo nu jarco  

mu'o mi'e xorxes

[Dustin Lacewell]

lo ka jbocre cu na'i se darlu .i le nu prenu gunta cu no roi se nitcu .i ki'u le nabmi cu na ckini sa'u lo nu na sinma .i lo nu na sinma cu je'a nabmi .i ki'u na midju le du'u toltu'i .i le nabmi noi midju le du'u noltu'i cu ckaji za'u lo ka jicmu vau pe'i

[Dustin Lacewell]

lo'ai zo ki'u sa'ai zo ku'i le'ai .u'u ru'e

[selpa'i]

la .xorxes. cu cusku di'e

> .e'u di'a casnu la'e di'u bau la lojban .i ba'a va'o lo nu go'i kei lo
> nu prenu gunta cu ba zi tolcfa .i pe'i na se vamji lo raktu fa lo nu
> darlu lo du'u ma kau ma kau zmadu lo ka jbocre .i banzu fa lo nu jarco

ni'o .a'o ma'a ba zi co'a gunka tu'a lo gimste .i .i lo kampu se stidi
cu pa moi .e'u .i xu su'o da poi kampu srana zo'u: do no'u la .xorxes.
cu djica lo nu ma'a da cnegau .i mi na tugni fi lo du'u lo nu da tcini
(to sa'e tcini ja vanbi toi) te sumti lo simsa be zo litki cu sarcu .i
pe'i zo va'o banzu .i si'a mi jinvi lo du'u ka'e vimcu vei so'e .a ro lo
marji te sumti .i zo marji zasti .i lo nu cusku lu ti baktu lo djacu
gi'e marji lo slasi li'u noi basti lu ti baktu lo djacu lo slasi li'u
noi cizra (to be mi toi) milxe cu cumki gi'e la'a sai banzu .i do'a nai
ju'o nandymau fa lo ka mo'icli .i ji'a sa'u ro da zo'u lo du'u lo baktu
da marji cu nibli lo du'u baktu fi zi'o .i ja'o lo si'o marji na vajni

ni'o .a'o su'o drata ba zi stidi de .i lo nu darlu lo na'e srana cu
xamgu ma'a no da (to mi zo'u pe'i lo ci moi te sumti be zo xamgu cu
panra lo re moi pe zo drani ge'u .a lo ci moi pe zo mapti toi) .u'i

[John E Clifford]

No one who has followed this list for the last week, let alone the last few decades, would confuse me with tool of Lojbab, who ignorant, muddled nefeasance can not helped Lojban, whether or it not it has hurt it.  Nor with a supporter of the bipfuckers, who have pissed away more than a decade of creative Lojban, not only not adopting or adapting it, as they might have under even Lojbab's and Robins's reading of their charge, but not even keeping records of it to be brought up when the baseline comes.  I don't bear them any animus, one is the victim or personality and a raft of the vicissitudes of life (which he has chosen to have), the other is a posse of volunteer dilettantes, compared to which nailed Jello and herded cats are models of stability and efficiency.  I don't bear any animus to selpa'i et all , either -- or didn't before I read their comments on my attempt to sum up and resolve the current controversy.  Now I have a common reaction to being misrepresented and strawmanned.

ad Lacewell

I didn't assume (or imply) that changes from this group would be hasty or illogical; I just said that official changes would be slow and controlled, which is just the way the process works, even if the suggested changes are good and logic (in whatever is the relevant sense here).  And, of course, I was just reporting, not trying to convince anyone of anything at that point.

There is no assumption that any change  -- from any source -- is illogical (in any sense); this is again just a factual report on the situation: that any change must be tested against the logical standards.  As noted later, changes in the gismu (adding, dropping, changing places, and so on) nore or less get a pass on this, since they can't affect the logic.  Changes in cmavo require a closer look, sometimes a very long one indeed,

Maintaining monoparsing is not an easy task (look at how hard it was to achieve -- even in the rather restricted way we have).  So, yes, left unrestrained it is likely that the community would lose that feature of Lojban, but even if it would not, it is important to check at each new potential problem point.

The next series of comments are actually apparently agreeing with me while being mildly snarky.  As noted, I agree that Lojban needs a more rapid updating process (starting by catching up to now from 20 years ago) and that the President is at least not part of the solution, nor are the bipfuckers.  The claims that the proposing group has come up with solutions that should be official and that they are correctly meeting various sorts of problems is, of course, merely hearsay, since the solutions have not been written up and presented and tested agains standards or compared with other possible solutions  (even the "problems" which are supposedly solved have not been verified as real problems except to someone's subjective satisfaction, so far as t public record shows).

The claim that there are people dying to create educational materials is weakened by the dearth of such materials.  There is a whole lot of Lojban that needs teaching and that does not involve any controversial matter, but only a couple of texts have been produced even for that.  Show us the work.  Hell, show us specimens that use non-standard stuff; that's a good way to make a case for making it standard (not to mention that ity ios easier to tidy up a textbook than to create one in the first place).  

I didn't say that one only gets a predicate by predicate pumping; I said that that is a not vry effective way to learn a predicate and that learning it in situ and as much as needed is better.  I think the disagreement here comes down to a difference in theoretical emphasis, which doesn't affect the main point.

The central issue for Lojban is always syntactical unambiguity; changes in gismu, etc., never affect that. Logjam, the thread from Loglan 1955 to Lojban now, has had half a dozen different gismu lists.  People have enthusiastically learned each of them and some have even relearned lists a few times.  None of this has been a serious problem for Logjam and a new list wouldn't be either -- unless, of course, we get dueling lists, aas typically happens at a certain point (the history of conlangs over the last century and a half).

That cmavo might, among vocabulary items, matter was set up at the beginning, so it should not have been a surprise.  The first part was, after all, just a plea not to get all pushed out of shape by someone proposing to muck about with gismu, which is what has been going on for the last few days.  The contrast is now to what might matter, if someone were to do it (which, as we have been reminded constantly for a decade, not one is about to).  

If you don't like "control", then perhaps what is needed is a guarantee that, before a change is implemented, it is thoroughly tested against the existing standard and is adapted to fit in without loss of unambiguity.  This is not an easy test to make, apparently, so we need more than just the committee of the whole or some smaller consensus to decide; we need expertise.  And that is starting to get to something very like control -- and gets there all the way if a failed proposal is not allowed into the language (as it must be).

I am glad that someone (many someone;s apparently) know all about Lojban, past and present.  I do wish they would tell the rest of us, something the bipfuckers could and should have done but never did.  But, until this new CLL appears, the claims that all is known are merely subjective certainty, not subject to verification.  In particular, of course, is this language actually unambiguous?  Subjective certainty has long proven rather misleading on that point, for one.  In short, yes, the fact that no one has written a new CLL does mean that users don't know its feature set -- or, at least, they have no reason to be sure they do. Unlike English, where the claim makes sense (and is even true in a certain sense), Lojban has objective criteria to meet and meeting them requires the language to be laid out in totality.

No one said Lojban has only one need.  It is a question of priorities and using what work time there is wisely.  If the bipfuckers are blocking you from doing what you to do, the most practical solution -- given that they are in control of the process and will have to be satisfied sometime (for their project is at least one need) -- is to deal with their problem right away and then get on with what you want to do.  Otherwise, kvetching about how they are blocking progress is merely hypocritical, since the path forward is there to follow. 

Nothing disrepectful about my remarks.  The proposers have consistently not dealt with cmavo even though they have had every opportunity and know that that is a direct path to what they want to do, so the inference that they will continue this way does not seem unjustified.  And, of course, since they have done nothing with cmavo, they have no demonstrated competence to do so.  Not ignorance, just the public record.

Your final conclusion is not backed up by the evidence: there was nothing hateful, foregone (well, I figured out myy conclusion before I wrote the article and shaped the article to it, but that is not what you meant), nor demonizing, nor inconsistent.   Your response makes continuing discussion rather difficult, since you presumably won't read anything else either.

My credentials are not a basis for my conclusion, just bona fides as a philosopher of language as called for.

ad Burka

Of course a language has words.  The point is (as often repeated) that for Lojban, what the brivla are or what places they have and the like is not crucial, so long as they have some and are collectively enough.  And that goal has been achiever many times already and may well be several more times.  So, Lojban as a recognizable entity can exist with a wide range of vocabularies -- and has.  Fiddling with brivla isa problem not for the language but for a community in which there are two competing versions.  Changing a community from one version to another is difficult, but has been done several times; allowing two versions to compete and interact may be one way to effect that change but has historically more often led to schism and collapse.

A good well-defined vocabulary is essential for generating usage, maybe, but it has to be noted that we have all learned the current vocabulary to the point we have and many of us have learned several older versions (and thus, presumably, not so good) versions as well.  We generate a fair amount of usage and are probably neither smarter nor more motivated than the next generation of Lojbanists, so it is not obvious that any changes in that vocabulary are needed to win more learners or get them to produce more.  Indeed, the past history of changes suggest that its only effect in terms of usage is to tick off a few old-timers.

We agree more or less that people will do what they want and that there is nothing we can do about that.  That hardly prevents people with goals in view as seeing people doing things that are not furthering those goals as wasting time (particularly since what they are doing is rather like what the goals require and what they are doing doesn't have any merit within the goal scheme).  Of course, if you don't accept those goals, you don't see the force of that, and that is your right as well.  But, if the goals are a central part of some project which you want to particate in, you ought either go along or work to change those goals  (just bitching about them doesn't really count).  That a proposal to do something which is viewed as a waste of time comes to be viewed as an attack (if it was) when it is presented as 1) important and 2) as being suppressed by people who adhere to the goals. Since neither of these claims are obviously true, the presentation appears to be hostile rather than collegial (although, given actual colleagues and colleges, ...).  As to why I think that the people who want to play with brivla are not interested in or competent to work with cmavo, I look at the public record: despite all manner of urging to do so, they have not.  They may be competent -- at least some of them -- but we do not know (which is what "not obviously" means).  Of course, the implicit assumption is that anyone can probably do at least some useful work with cmavo if they take the task in hand and, up to a point, this is pretty certainly so -- at least as much as it is true for making meaningful changes to gismu.

As I have found, an offensive tone is pretty subjective.  I don't have a dog in this fight but I found the original proclamation and most the follow up rather hostile (at least implying that only the proponents were right and they were being suppressed and so had to fight, the old war on Christmas gambit).  The responses also seemed to be a bit over the top, but in the ball park for this sort of exchange.  It would have better had they all not happened and, objectively, there was no real reason for them to.  Aside from the possibility of schism, which comes more from the manner of presentation than from the activity, there is nothing wrong with predicate meddling.  But, on the other hand, if the probability of schism arises, then LLG has an obligation not to foster on its own resources.  (Notice please -- and I want credit for this -- I have never once mentioned paranoia nor megalomania on either side.)

--In the midst off this often depressingly puerile exchange, I found the call for a philosopher of language, so I volunteer (MA in Linguistics, PhD in Philosophy, dissertation on the borderline between logic and language, etc. etc. including teaching course in the area for forty three years, somewhere between 54 and 38 years in the logical language business, including all the available offices at TLI and editor of The Lojbanist and VP and Board member at LLG).

So, a curse on both your houses!

Lojban, as what people say when they say they are doing Lojban, will change constantly and in uncontrolled ways. Lojban, as the language that has official imprimatur (however that may be gained, right now from BPFK, apparently), will also change but more slowly and in more controlled ways. That it will change (or die, of course) is a result of its being a language. That its official form will change slowly and in a controlled way is a result of the kind of language it is: constructed and logical, especially the latter.

“Logical” here has two interrelated parts. The first of these is that Lojban is to be syntactically unambiguous, every grammatical utterance has a unique parse which tells how the sentence is to be interpreted. The second is that this is to be achieved by taking the languages syntax from that of First Order Predicate Logic (actually some higher order intensional logic, a la Montague, but that does not make a difference to the basic point here). Now, someone who knows FOPL would be hard pressed to find it in Lojban; many things have had to be changed to make a usable language (every other expression in FOPL is a parenthesis of some sort, for example, or some equally non-content expression). These impose restrictions on how the official language can change, since the connection with FOPL cannot be broken for fear of losing unambiguity (or, at least, a relatively easy way to claim it, although this connection is not really exploited), and, even if the connection is lost, unambiguity must be maintained. So, any change has to be checked to see that it does not affect this prime quality (basically, Lojban's only special feature – it and Loglan are hardly the only languages with socket-and-plugs core syntax). So there is always going to be a prescriptive element in Lojban.

That being said, it must also be said that most changes in vocabulary have nothing to do with this central ground. Changing the meaning of one of the holes in a socket does not affect the heart of the language. Whether or not these changes are officialized or not just doesn't matter to Lojban. Of course, such a change may affect the Lojban community, dividing it into two groups who misunderstand one another in some particular circumstances. For the development of the language, this can have serious consequences, cutting one group off from the accumulated lore of the past and the other group off from new material as it comes in, breaking continuity. It tends moreover to tick off more experienced speakers, who have learned the older form and are now asked to relearn (which is very hard – I still, nearly 40 later, am most likely to come up with a Loglan word as my first attempt). And, alas, all this tends to create internal tensions, which can tear a constructed-language community apart, resulting, typically, in, first, two much smaller groups in competition, then one still rather small group, then nothing in that line at all.

But this doesn't have to happen, especially if, as here, the changes are made in remote (so, by assumption, less used) holes: it would be a long time before the two sides noticed that one side had dropped x5 of {klama}, say. (The need to know all the holes of all the sockets goes back to JCB's medieval notions of language learning and to the devices which were designed to enable “predicate pumping”. It once was the case that at least initial claims to competence amounted to a total of the number of sockets you could recognize and give all the hole-meanings for – and, eventually, all the derivational forms. While rational language teaching material is still not as available as would be nice, most of what is available teaches vocabulary in context, stressing the useful part and introducing both sockets and their holes as needed.) Of course, that raises the issue of why bother to change these holes and the answer seems to be that the changes are to satisfy some extrinsic goal: symmetry or “orderliness” or “ease of learning” (which, in context, suggest that learning predicates is done by mini-pumping, learning all the motion words at once, say – a possible but rarely ideal approach). So not central issues at all. Further, we have all the usual tools of language for dealing with dialects and diachronic change. We recognize the differences and translate and, if we don't, we ask for an explanation when the discussion obviously runs off the rails. Thus, vocabulary changes are just not important.

Well, a few are and these are all among cmavo. Obviously, if you change the meaning of {a} you have changed the connection to FOPL, and similarly with other expressions clearly tied to logic. But this tends to expand outward. If you change definition {ai} to or from factive (I don't remember where it is right now; it has changed at least five times in 60 years), you change the whole logical structure of the utterance of which it is a part, and many expressions have this feature. The possibilities for misunderstanding are now at a more profound level, even if, technically, the same cures are available. So, for these kinds of changes, control is again needed. And, correspondingly, we need to know where we are now, as – for various reason – apparently we do not. The definitions of content expressions may not be perfect, but they serve (as the fact that they have served and are serving shows) and so “fixing” them is a low priority. But, if, as is claimed, the definitions of some non-content expressions is no complete or not set, this is a structural matter that needs to be fixed if we are to say the language is complete (let alone finished).

So, if you accept that the cmavo are not completed, that is the priority task and any activity that might be directed to that task but goes to something else is a waste or even an attack on Lojban. Since meddling with gismu is a task very similar to organizing the cmavo, it will appear to Lojbab et al as such a waste (or, given the tone of the proclamation of undertaking that task, an attack). On the other hand, since the people doing the meddling are pretty clearly not going to work on cmavo (and are not obviously competent to do so anyhow), the tone of his response seems inappropriate (except as a response to their tone). The best thing is just to ignore them, pretty much. The one reason to pay attention them is the potential they have to sow dissensions, but, for that, the appropriate response is just not to allow them to use the LLG websites.

In the midst off this often depressingly puerile exchange, I found the call for a philosopher of language, so I volunteer (MA in Linguistics, PhD in Philosophy, dissertation on the borderline between logic and language, etc. etc. including teaching course in the area for forty three years, somewhere between 54 and 38 years in the logical language business, including all the available offices at TLI and editor of The Lojbanist and VP and Board member at LLG).

So, a curse on both your houses!

Lojban, as what people say when they say they are doing Lojban, will change constantly and in uncontrolled ways. Lojban, as the language that has official imprimatur (however that may be gained, right now from BPFK, apparently), will also change but more slowly and in more controlled ways. That it will change (or die, of course) is a result of its being a language. That its official form will change slowly and in a controlled way is a result of the kind of language it is: constructed and logical, especially the latter.

“Logical” here has two interrelated parts. The first of these is that Lojban is to be syntactically unambiguous, every grammatical utterance has a unique parse which tells how the sentence is to be interpreted. The second is that this is to be achieved by taking the languages syntax from that of First Order Predicate Logic (actually some higher order intensional logic, a la Montague, but that does not make a difference to the basic point here). Now, someone who knows FOPL would be hard pressed to find it in Lojban; many things have had to be changed to make a usable language (every other expression in FOPL is a parenthesis of some sort, for example, or some equally non-content expression). These impose restrictions on how the official language can change, since the connection with FOPL cannot be broken for fear of losing unambiguity (or, at least, a relatively easy way to claim it, although this connection is not really exploited), and, even if the connection is lost, unambiguity must be maintained. So, any change has to be checked to see that it does not affect this prime quality (basically, Lojban's only special feature – it and Loglan are hardly the only languages with socket-and-plugs core syntax). So there is always going to be a prescriptive element in Lojban.

That being said, it must also be said that most changes in vocabulary have nothing to do with this central ground. Changing the meaning of one of the holes in a socket does not affect the heart of the language. Whether or not these changes are officialized or not just doesn't matter to Lojban. Of course, such a change may affect the Lojban community, dividing it into two groups who misunderstand one another in some particular circumstances. For the development of the language, this can have serious consequences, cutting one group off from the accumulated lore of the past and the other group off from new material as it comes in, breaking continuity. It tends moreover to tick off more experienced speakers, who have learned the older form and are now asked to relearn (which is very hard – I still, nearly 40 later, am most likely to come up with a Loglan word as my first attempt). And, alas, all this tends to create internal tensions, which can tear a constructed-language community apart, resulting, typically, in, first, two much smaller groups in competition, then one still rather small group, then nothing in that line at all.

But this doesn't have to happen, especially if, as here, the changes are made in remote (so, by assumption, less used) holes: it would be a long time before the two sides noticed that one side had dropped x5 of {klama}, say. (The need to know all the holes of all the sockets goes back to JCB's medieval notions of language learning and to the devices which were designed to enable “predicate pumping”. It once was the case that at least initial claims to competence amounted to a total of the number of sockets you could recognize and give all the hole-meanings for – and, eventually, all the derivational forms. While rational language teaching material is still not as available as would be nice, most of what is available teaches vocabulary in context, stressing the useful part and introducing both sockets and their holes as needed.) Of course, that raises the issue of why bother to change these holes and the answer seems to be that the changes are to satisfy some extrinsic goal: symmetry or “orderliness” or “ease of learning” (which, in context, suggest that learning predicates is done by mini-pumping, learning all the motion words at once, say – a possible but rarely ideal approach). So not central issues at all. Further, we have all the usual tools of language for dealing with dialects and diachronic change. We recognize the differences and translate and, if we don't, we ask for an explanation when the discussion obviously runs off the rails. Thus, vocabulary changes are just not important.

Well, a few are and these are all among cmavo. Obviously, if you change the meaning of {a} you have changed the connection to FOPL, and similarly with other expressions clearly tied to logic. But this tends to expand outward. If you change definition {ai} to or from factive (I don't remember where it is right now; it has changed at least five times in 60 years), you change the whole logical structure of the utterance of which it is a part, and many expressions have this feature. The possibilities for misunderstanding are now at a more profound level, even if, technically, the same cures are available. So, for these kinds of changes, control is again needed. And, correspondingly, we need to know where we are now, as – for various reason – apparently we do not. The definitions of content expressions may not be perfect, but they serve (as the fact that they have served and are serving shows) and so “fixing” them is a low priority. But, if, as is claimed, the definitions of some non-content expressions is no complete or not set, this is a structural matter that needs to be fixed if we are to say the language is complete (let alone finished).

So, if you accept that the cmavo are not completed, that is the priority task and any activity that might be directed to that task but goes to something else is a waste or even an attack on Lojban. Since meddling with gismu is a task very similar to organizing the cmavo, it will appear to Lojbab et al as such a waste (or, given the tone of the proclamation of undertaking that task, an attack). On the other hand, since the people doing the meddling are pretty clearly not going to work on cmavo (and are not obviously competent to do so anyhow), the tone of his response seems inappropriate (except as a response to their tone). The best thing is just to ignore them, pretty much. The one reason to pay attention them is the potential they have to sow dissensions, but, for that, the appropriate response is just not to allow them to use the LLG websites.

In the midst off this often depressingly puerile exchange, I found the call for a philosopher of language, so I volunteer (MA in Linguistics, PhD in Philosophy, dissertation on the borderline between logic and language, etc. etc. including teaching course in the area for forty three years, somewhere between 54 and 38 years in the logical language business, including all the available offices at TLI and editor of The Lojbanist and VP and Board member at LLG).

So, a curse on both your houses!

Lojban, as what people say when they say they are doing Lojban, will change constantly and in uncontrolled ways. Lojban, as the language that has official imprimatur (however that may be gained, right now from BPFK, apparently), will also change but more slowly and in more controlled ways. That it will change (or die, of course) is a result of its being a language. That its official form will change slowly and in a controlled way is a result of the kind of language it is: constructed and logical, especially the latter.

“Logical” here has two interrelated parts. The first of these is that Lojban is to be syntactically unambiguous, every grammatical utterance has a unique parse which tells how the sentence is to be interpreted. The second is that this is to be achieved by taking the languages syntax from that of First Order Predicate Logic (actually some higher order intensional logic, a la Montague, but that does not make a difference to the basic point here). Now, someone who knows FOPL would be hard pressed to find it in Lojban; many things have had to be changed to make a usable language (every other expression in FOPL is a parenthesis of some sort, for example, or some equally non-content expression). These impose restrictions on how the official language can change, since the connection with FOPL cannot be broken for fear of losing unambiguity (or, at least, a relatively easy way to claim it, although this connection is not really exploited), and, even if the connection is lost, unambiguity must be maintained. So, any change has to be checked to see that it does not affect this prime quality (basically, Lojban's only special feature – it and Loglan are hardly the only languages with socket-and-plugs core syntax). So there is always going to be a prescriptive element in Lojban.

That being said, it must also be said that most changes in vocabulary have nothing to do with this central ground. Changing the meaning of one of the holes in a socket does not affect the heart of the language. Whether or not these changes are officialized or not just doesn't matter to Lojban. Of course, such a change may affect the Lojban community, dividing it into two groups who misunderstand one another in some particular circumstances. For the development of the language, this can have serious consequences, cutting one group off from the accumulated lore of the past and the other group off from new material as it comes in, breaking continuity. It tends moreover to tick off more experienced speakers, who have learned the older form and are now asked to relearn (which is very hard – I still, nearly 40 later, am most likely to come up with a Loglan word as my first attempt). And, alas, all this tends to create internal tensions, which can tear a constructed-language community apart, resulting, typically, in, first, two much smaller groups in competition, then one still rather small group, then nothing in that line at all.

But this doesn't have to happen, especially if, as here, the changes are made in remote (so, by assumption, less used) holes: it would be a long time before the two sides noticed that one side had dropped x5 of {klama}, say. (The need to know all the holes of all the sockets goes back to JCB's medieval notions of language learning and to the devices which were designed to enable “predicate pumping”. It once was the case that at least initial claims to competence amounted to a total of the number of sockets you could recognize and give all the hole-meanings for – and, eventually, all the derivational forms. While rational language teaching material is still not as available as would be nice, most of what is available teaches vocabulary in context, stressing the useful part and introducing both sockets and their holes as needed.) Of course, that raises the issue of why bother to change these holes and the answer seems to be that the changes are to satisfy some extrinsic goal: symmetry or “orderliness” or “ease of learning” (which, in context, suggest that learning predicates is done by mini-pumping, learning all the motion words at once, say – a possible but rarely ideal approach). So not central issues at all. Further, we have all the usual tools of language for dealing with dialects and diachronic change. We recognize the differences and translate and, if we don't, we ask for an explanation when the discussion obviously runs off the rails. Thus, vocabulary changes are just not important.

Well, a few are and these are all among cmavo. Obviously, if you change the meaning of {a} you have changed the connection to FOPL, and similarly with other expressions clearly tied to logic. But this tends to expand outward. If you change definition {ai} to or from factive (I don't remember where it is right now; it has changed at least five times in 60 years), you change the whole logical structure of the utterance of which it is a part, and many expressions have this feature. The possibilities for misunderstanding are now at a more profound level, even if, technically, the same cures are available. So, for these kinds of changes, control is again needed. And, correspondingly, we need to know where we are now, as – for various reason – apparently we do not. The definitions of content expressions may not be perfect, but they serve (as the fact that they have served and are serving shows) and so “fixing” them is a low priority. But, if, as is claimed, the definitions of some non-content expressions is no complete or not set, this is a structural matter that needs to be fixed if we are to say the language is complete (let alone finished).

So, if you accept that the cmavo are not completed, that is the priority task and any activity that might be directed to that task but goes to something else is a waste or even an attack on Lojban. Since meddling with gismu is a task very similar to organizing the cmavo, it will appear to Lojbab et al as such a waste (or, given the tone of the proclamation of undertaking that task, an attack). On the other hand, since the people doing the meddling are pretty clearly not going to work on cmavo (and are not obviously competent to do so anyhow), the tone of his response seems inappropriate (except as a response to their tone). The best thing is just to ignore them, pretty much. The one reason to pay attention them is the potential they have to sow dissensions, but, for that, the appropriate response is just not to allow them to use the LLG websites.

In the midst off this often depressingly puerile exchange, I found the call for a philosopher of language, so I volunteer (MA in Linguistics, PhD in Philosophy, dissertation on the borderline between logic and language, etc. etc. including teaching course in the area for forty three years, somewhere between 54 and 38 years in the logical language business, including all the available offices at TLI and editor of The Lojbanist and VP and Board member at LLG).

So, a curse on both your houses!

Lojban, as what people say when they say they are doing Lojban, will change constantly and in uncontrolled ways. Lojban, as the language that has official imprimatur (however that may be gained, right now from BPFK, apparently), will also change but more slowly and in more controlled ways. That it will change (or die, of course) is a result of its being a language. That its official form will change slowly and in a controlled way is a result of the kind of language it is: constructed and logical, especially the latter.

“Logical” here has two interrelated parts. The first of these is that Lojban is to be syntactically unambiguous, every grammatical utterance has a unique parse which tells how the sentence is to be interpreted. The second is that this is to be achieved by taking the languages syntax from that of First Order Predicate Logic (actually some higher order intensional logic, a la Montague, but that does not make a difference to the basic point here). Now, someone who knows FOPL would be hard pressed to find it in Lojban; many things have had to be changed to make a usable language (every other expression in FOPL is a parenthesis of some sort, for example, or some equally non-content expression). These impose restrictions on how the official language can change, since the connection with FOPL cannot be broken for fear of losing unambiguity (or, at least, a relatively easy way to claim it, although this connection is not really exploited), and, even if the connection is lost, unambiguity must be maintained. So, any change has to be checked to see that it does not affect this prime quality (basically, Lojban's only special feature – it and Loglan are hardly the only languages with socket-and-plugs core syntax). So there is always going to be a prescriptive element in Lojban.

That being said, it must also be said that most changes in vocabulary have nothing to do with this central ground. Changing the meaning of one of the holes in a socket does not affect the heart of the language. Whether or not these changes are officialized or not just doesn't matter to Lojban. Of course, such a change may affect the Lojban community, dividing it into two groups who misunderstand one another in some particular circumstances. For the development of the language, this can have serious consequences, cutting one group off from the accumulated lore of the past and the other group off from new material as it comes in, breaking continuity. It tends moreover to tick off more experienced speakers, who have learned the older form and are now asked to relearn (which is very hard – I still, nearly 40 later, am most likely to come up with a Loglan word as my first attempt). And, alas, all this tends to create internal tensions, which can tear a constructed-language community apart, resulting, typically, in, first, two much smaller groups in competition, then one still rather small group, then nothing in that line at all.

But this doesn't have to happen, especially if, as here, the changes are made in remote (so, by assumption, less used) holes: it would be a long time before the two sides noticed that one side had dropped x5 of {klama}, say. (The need to know all the holes of all the sockets goes back to JCB's medieval notions of language learning and to the devices which were designed to enable “predicate pumping”. It once was the case that at least initial claims to competence amounted to a total of the number of sockets you could recognize and give all the hole-meanings for – and, eventually, all the derivational forms. While rational language teaching material is still not as available as would be nice, most of what is available teaches vocabulary in context, stressing the useful part and introducing both sockets and their holes as needed.) Of course, that raises the issue of why bother to change these holes and the answer seems to be that the changes are to satisfy some extrinsic goal: symmetry or “orderliness” or “ease of learning” (which, in context, suggest that learning predicates is done by mini-pumping, learning all the motion words at once, say – a possible but rarely ideal approach). So not central issues at all. Further, we have all the usual tools of language for dealing with dialects and diachronic change. We recognize the differences and translate and, if we don't, we ask for an explanation when the discussion obviously runs off the rails. Thus, vocabulary changes are just not important.

Well, a few are and these are all among cmavo. Obviously, if you change the meaning of {a} you have changed the connection to FOPL, and similarly with other expressions clearly tied to logic. But this tends to expand outward. If you change definition {ai} to or from factive (I don't remember where it is right now; it has changed at least five times in 60 years), you change the whole logical structure of the utterance of which it is a part, and many expressions have this feature. The possibilities for misunderstanding are now at a more profound level, even if, technically, the same cures are available. So, for these kinds of changes, control is again needed. And, correspondingly, we need to know where we are now, as – for various reason – apparently we do not. The definitions of content expressions may not be perfect, but they serve (as the fact that they have served and are serving shows) and so “fixing” them is a low priority. But, if, as is claimed, the definitions of some non-content expressions is no complete or not set, this is a structural matter that needs to be fixed if we are to say the language is complete (let alone finished).

So, if you accept that the cmavo are not completed, that is the priority task and any activity that might be directed to that task but goes to something else is a waste or even an attack on Lojban. Since meddling with gismu is a task very similar to organizing the cmavo, it will appear to Lojbab et al as such a waste (or, given the tone of the proclamation of undertaking that task, an attack). On the other hand, since the people doing the meddling are pretty clearly not going to work on cmavo (and are not obviously competent to do so anyhow), the tone of his response seems inappropriate (except as a response to their tone). The best thing is just to ignore them, pretty much. The one reason to pay attention them is the potential they have to sow dissensions, but, for that, the appropriate response is just not to allow them to use the LLG websites.

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[Jorge Llambías]

On Mon, May 26, 2014 at 7:07 AM, selpa'i <sel...@gmx.de> wrote:

ni'o .a'o ma'a ba zi co'a gunka tu'a lo gimste .i .i lo kampu se stidi cu pa moi .e'u .i xu su'o da poi kampu srana zo'u: do no'u la .xorxes. cu djica lo nu ma'a da cnegau .i mi na tugni fi lo du'u lo nu da tcini (to sa'e tcini ja vanbi toi) te sumti lo simsa be zo litki cu sarcu .i pe'i zo va'o banzu .i si'a mi jinvi lo du'u ka'e vimcu vei so'e .a ro lo marji te sumti .i zo marji zasti .i lo nu cusku lu ti baktu lo djacu gi'e marji lo slasi li'u noi basti lu ti baktu lo djacu lo slasi li'u noi cizra (to be mi toi) milxe cu cumki gi'e la'a sai banzu .i do'a nai ju'o nandymau fa lo ka mo'icli .i ji'a sa'u ro da zo'u lo du'u lo baktu da marji cu nibli lo du'u baktu fi zi'o .i ja'o lo si'o marji na vajni

.i mi do tugni .i nandu fa lo nu jimpe lo du'u ki'u ma kau ge zu'u lo bolci .e lo kojna .e lo baktu cu se jinzi lo ka marji gi zu'u nai lo boxna .e lo balre .e lo vasru na co'e .i ku'i lo manri te sumti .e lo vanbi te sumti cu zmadu fi lo ka fanza mi 

ni'o .a'o su'o drata ba zi stidi de .i lo nu darlu lo na'e srana cu xamgu ma'a no da (to mi zo'u pe'i lo ci moi te sumti be zo xamgu cu panra lo re moi pe zo drani ge'u .a lo ci moi pe zo mapti toi) .u'i

je'e .i zo mansa .e zo vajni .e zo cfipu .e zo cizra .e zo xajmi .e zo fange .e zo zdile ,e zo trina ,e zo .melbi .e zo cnino .e zo slabu .e zo dicra .e zo zunti cu mintu fi lo ka tersu'i stura .i ku'i ki'u ma zo cinri .e zo misno .e zo dirba ,e zo ckape .e so'o drata na go'i 

[selpa'i]

la .xorxes. cu cusku di'e

> .i mi do tugni .i nandu fa lo nu jimpe lo du'u ki'u ma kau ge zu'u lo
> bolci .e lo kojna .e lo baktu cu se jinzi lo ka marji gi zu'u nai lo
> boxna .e lo balre .e lo vasru na co'e .i ku'i lo manri te sumti .e lo
> vanbi te sumti cu zmadu fi lo ka fanza mi

ie .i fanza mi ji'a .i zo pluja jo'u zo sampu vu'o noi dukti simxu zi'e
noi ku'i lo ke'a tersu'i stura cu ba'e *na'e* panrysi'u cu misno mupli
co mabla .i pe'i fa'u gi zo va'o gi zo ma'i cu ro roi banzu .i .a'o lo
nu vimcu cu fasnu...

> ni'o .a'o su'o drata ba zi stidi de .i lo nu darlu lo na'e srana cu
> xamgu ma'a no da (to mi zo'u pe'i lo ci moi te sumti be zo xamgu cu
> panra lo re moi pe zo drani ge'u .a lo ci moi pe zo mapti toi) .u'i
>
>
> je'e .i zo mansa .e zo vajni .e zo cfipu .e zo cizra .e zo xajmi .e zo

> fange .e zo zdile .e zo trina .e zo .melbi .e zo cnino .e zo slabu .e zo

> dicra .e zo zunti cu mintu fi lo ka tersu'i stura .i ku'i ki'u ma zo

> cinri .e zo misno .e zo dirba .e zo ckape .e so'o drata na go'i

cinri preti .i li'a mi na djuno .i je nai mi kanpe lo nu lo ve ciksi be
fo lo gimfi'i cu mansa mi .i fanza milxe fa lo nu zo bebna mu'a na se
panra zo fenki (to lo gimste cu xusra toi) .i ki'u ma ge lo fenki cu
fasnu gi lo bebna cu prenu .i li'a so'i da cusku lo simsa be lu do fenki
li'u .i jarco lo nu la'a su'o so'o jbopre cu zmanei lo stura poi panra
zo bebna .i ji'a lo ka bixygau lo vasru be lo ka-zei-bridi lo
nu-zei-bridi cu frili fi'o mupli lu ko'a nu do fenki li'u .i ku'i lo
dukti noi ka bixygau lo nu-zei-bridi lo ka-zei-bridi cu nandu gi'a juxre
(to mupli fa lu ko'a pagzu'e lo fenki li'u .e ji'a ku'i lu ko'a jai
fenki fai ko'e li'u toi) .i .oi zo juxre ji'a mupli .i ku'i mapti lo
smuni .i zo juxre cu juxre valsi zo'o

ni'o ja'o su'o ci mei fa lo na'e se nelci klesi .i .a'u ma poi drata cu
fanza .i lo jutsi te sumti cu na'e sarcu gi'e ku'i simlu lo ka vajni fi
lo lojbo citri .i ku'i simsa lo marji te sumti lo ka ro roi ka'e cusku
lu ti mlatu gi'e jutlei la .siiam. li'u .i na birti

[Wuzzy]

Am Sun, 25 May 2014 16:50:48 +0200
schrieb selpa'i <sel...@gmx.de>:

> This is already happening both with gismu and with cmavo. Some people
> use a word one way, and others use it another way. Try to compare
> some texts and you will find conflicting usage.

Then this is because some Lojbanists tend to be clumsy when trying to
use Lojban. They are people, after all, and people make mistakes. This
includes me. Simple: Some people use Lojban correctly, the other people
use it incorrectly. How is tinkering with the gismu list helping here?

> Old texts are also
> full of usage that is now considered incorrect, but reading them and
> knowing when they were written, we can easily understand why and
> don't need to be confused.

Just because Lojban HAD changes does not mean it makes sense to
implement *this* proposal.

> As for gismu, lots of people for instance
> use {traji} without its old x3 place

Then again they are simply ignoring Lojban as it stands today. They
are, willfully or not, breaking the rules. It’s simple as that.
Besides: I don’t even see what’s wrong with the “old” x3 place of
traji.

And please give evidence for the “lots of people” part.

> , lots of people use {mabla} with
> a new definition.

I never saw anyone who used “mabla” in itself at all. Please give
examples.

If you are talking about lujvo like “malglico”, your argument has no basis.
“malglico” could also have been “selmalglico”, which would be closer
to the used meaning. But it is a common convention to just drop SE rafsi
when no confusion could arise. Therefore, “malglico” perfectly
represents the idea of “mabla”.


Besides, your argument sounds a lot like “Let usage decide!”. Just
because you think a lot of people use things that way does not make it
right. And I don’t even trust the “lots of people” part unless shown
otherwise.

> Regular lujvo will change automatically in usage and where needed the
> definitions can be updated in the dictionary.

Again: Have fun rewriting all those lujvo. :P Because I certainly won’t
do it. But if you do, please don’t do it on jbovlaste, at the very least, do
it on your own platform if you must.

> > - This will likely invalidate many texts from before the change,
> > since gismu are used so often in the language.
>
> Yes, but it will not make the texts uninterpretable by any means,
> just like xorlo didn't. There are actually several changes that are
> part of the BPFK cmavo specification that invalidate large chunks of
> usage (e.g. ZAhO or VA). They reflect modern usage at the cost of
> making old texts awkward or simply incorrect. The changes still
> happened, and it's good that they did, because the new definitions
> are better. So where is the difference?

The impact of changing gismu would invalidate even more texts and
certainly even larger chunks and even more texts, because the gismu are
very important in Lojban.

> I may also add that whatever changes the BPFK or whatever other
> language-defining body makes to the language, I *will* update my
> writings to reflect that, and I've written some 60 thousand words.
> This is not the problem.

Sadly, not everybody does that.

> > I am not saying these problems are neccessarily unsolvable. But the
> > proposal does not seem to address any of these problems.
>
> Well, instead of shooting it down categorically, you could have asked
> for clarification. Afterall, this is supposed to be a joint effort.

Then clarify, please. Do you think any gismu is BADLY broken, so broken
that it can not be used in any reasonable manner. (Just
“inconvenient place structure” is not broken to me.) If yes, then tell
me which gismu are broken according to you and why. Maybe this
discussion would finally start to make sense.


But for now, you may have guessed it, I do NOT want to be part of that
joint effort to tinker around with the gismu list, because I honestly
think it is just causing a lot of trouble and is a waste of time. There
are many much more important problems. For example, Lojban could use a
lot more vocabulary, and I try to fix that by inventing lujvo and
fu'ivla. This helps the language without breaking anything. And I
repeat: I did not have any problems whatsoever with the existing gismu.

Also, I think the gains of that proposal are relatively small. Sure,
the definitions may be more straight-forward afterwards. But this alone
does not suffice to make sacrifices.

[Wuzzy]

> And "xorlo" itself is an English coinage and not a gismu, so far as I
> know.

Well, it LOOKs like a gismu, but it is not on the gismu list, of couse.
And I think it is a very stupid coinage, besides. In future I will
refuse to call the proposal “xorlo” and instead refer to it with “la
xorlos” in Lojban. :P

> They choose to use Lojban because it is DONE (even if not
> fully documented). And they value our commitment against ad hoc
> prescriptive change.

Oh yeah, this is true for me.
Yeah, it may sound crazy to some, but there are some people (like me)
out there who actually simply want to USE Lojban, not to change it all
the time. xD

I think I should better ignore meta-discussions like this one and
should concentrate more on learning and using Lojban. Maybe I continue
participating for a while in this discussion, but after that, I just
pretend the other meta-discussions weren’t there; well, at least for a
while.

[selpa'i]

la .uuzìt. cu cusku di'e

> Am Sun, 25 May 2014 16:50:48 +0200
> schrieb selpa'i <sel...@gmx.de>:
>
>> This is already happening both with gismu and with cmavo. Some people
>> use a word one way, and others use it another way. Try to compare
>> some texts and you will find conflicting usage.
> Then this is because some Lojbanists tend to be clumsy when trying to
> use Lojban. They are people, after all, and people make mistakes. This
> includes me. Simple: Some people use Lojban correctly, the other people
> use it incorrectly. How is tinkering with the gismu list helping here?

io .i li'a lo nu sapyzengau lo gimste cu se jalge lo nu lo pilno cu
jdika lo ka xo kau roi srera .i ku'i mi na troci lo ka gasnu lo nu do
tugni .i la balningau cu se zukte lo ba'e xa'o jinvi be lo du'u ge lo
gimste ka'e melze'a gi lo nu cnegau cu xamgu .i .e'u do tolju'i se ba'i
lo nu damba .i la balningau cu fasnu

> Then again they are simply ignoring Lojban as it stands today. They
> are, willfully or not, breaking the rules. It’s simple as that.
> Besides: I don’t even see what’s wrong with the “old” x3 place of
> traji.
>
> And please give evidence for the “lots of people” part.

.a'u cu'i .i .e'u ko zenba lo ka jundi la jbogu'e .i ja ko pilno la
korpora zei sisku

>> , lots of people use {mabla} with
>> a new definition.
> I never saw anyone who used “mabla” in itself at all. Please give
> examples.

ja'o do io na banzu jundi la jbogu'e .i na nabmi .i ku'i lo du'u so'i da
pilno zo mabla cu jetnu .i ki'u ma do sruma lo du'u jifxu'a .i cizra mi
.i ke'u lo nu pilno la korpora zei sisku cu cumki .i .e'u io do ga sidju
gi tolju'i

[Wuzzy]

doi la selpa'i do pu ba'o cusku lu

.i ki'u ma do sruma lo du'u jifxu'a

li'u
.ue .i na'i mi na sruma lo du'u jifxu'a

.i pe'i mi tatpi le nu cimni casnu le du'u la lojban. bangu fi makau
.i mi tolju'i la balningau

mu'o

[Jorge Llambías]

On Mon, May 26, 2014 at 7:52 PM, selpa'i <sel...@gmx.de> wrote:

ni'o ja'o su'o ci mei fa lo na'e se nelci klesi .i .a'u ma poi drata cu fanza .i lo jutsi te sumti cu na'e sarcu gi'e ku'i simlu lo ka vajni fi lo lojbo citri .i ku'i simsa lo marji te sumti lo ka ro roi ka'e cusku lu ti mlatu gi'e jutlei la .siiam. li'u .i na birti

lo jutsi te sumti cu mulno to nai ru'e toi lo ka tinbe lo javni .i se ki'u bo frili fa lo nu cilre .i pe'i la xomosapiens po'o pu snada lo ka zifre jy

[Robert LeChevalier]

On 5/25/2014 3:18 PM, Bob LeChevalier, President and Founder - LLG

wrote:> On 5/25/2014 2:29 PM, Dustin Lacewell wrote:
>> Did you just invoke your own death to bolster your position?
>
> No. I invoked my own death to indicate my long term irrelevancy.

I should note that I dropped out of this discussion because my potential
irrelevancy became a lot shorter term for a while. I was in hospital
for a week with a septic leg infection that came altogether too close to
dropping me from the Lojbanist rolls permanently. I'm home but still
fighting the infection, possibly for a few weeks or more, so I'm still
not worth much at deep thought.

It may be a few weeks before I can read over threads I was following and
deciding if I still have anything useful to say on topics that
undoubtedly have moved on.

lojbab

[selpa'i]

la .lojbab. cu cusku di'e

> I should note that I dropped out of this discussion because my potential
> irrelevancy became a lot shorter term for a while. I was in hospital
> for a week with a septic leg infection that came altogether too close to
> dropping me from the Lojbanist rolls permanently. I'm home but still
> fighting the infection, possibly for a few weeks or more, so I'm still
> not worth much at deep thought.

I hope you get well soon! I wrote a poem for you.


.i do zo'u .a'o ba kanro
.i ia za'o nalganlo
fa le vorme be lenu ganzu
la lojban. noi gau do io bangu

.i .au ge do viska
lenu ba za ku lo so'iki'omei cu lojbo ciska
gi'e tavla fo ra gi do ri'a cisma
.i ia ro ma'a djica lenu le munje la lojban. ba tisna

.i la lojban. ma'a mutce dirba
du'i lenu lei jbopre cu se dirba
lenu casnu lo pavyseljirna
.i .a'o do ba zgana .i .a'o do lenu jbosa'a
fa la terdi cu tirna


(I also made a recording: http://selpahi.de/kokanro.mp3 )

[tran...@gmail.com]

On Thursday, May 22, 2014 5:48:17 PM UTC-4, selpa'i wrote:

Usage and definitions are drifting further and further apart, 

It is interesting to read this. Yesterday, I was considering the nature of natural languages and wondering why they tend to be binary predicate systems (e.g. nominative-accusative). So I was thinking about the word `klama` and it's five slots. It became very clear to me that that last two sumti would be subject to natural drift because it would be easy to forget the order they are supposed to be in. So people would start to use them incorrectly. Yet others would still understood what was meant by context, so it wouldn't really matter. And I concluded that eventually it would most likely (d)evolve into a 4-slot gismu where the last sumti meant a more general "means of transportation".

From there I played around with what a binary predicate Lojban might look like. It is quite possible actually, but it is a bit stilted in some respects. Consider if `klama` meant only that `x1-comes/goes-via-the-route-x2`. How then would one specify `to` and `from`? That would require an additional predicate that means `origin-x1-connects-to-destination-x2`, then you'd have to plug that construct into the `x2` slot of `klama`. Its a bit cumbersome and makes one wonder if there might be more streamlined ways of doing relative clauses. It really makes one wonder how natural languages are so good at it. (The answer of course is prepositions.) In any case, I determined that binary predication isn't *quite* Lojban's cup of tea.

However, after some further exploration, I found that Lojban worked quite well using a ternary system --essentially adding the dative that some natural languages do support. (e.g. English "He gave her it.) Note that very very few natural languages support anything more the three objects --all other object's must be handled via subordinate clauses like prepositional phrases. For Lojban at least, three seems to be the magic number at which point the whole of the gimste starts to click.

In your quest to reform the gimste, you might want to take this into consideration. I am not necessarily saying the 4th and 5th slots should be completely removed, but I do think it would at least be a worthwhile general principle to try to keep each gismu within that limit of three (vs the opposite inclination to fill all the slots up).

.trans.

[Gleki Arxokuna]

You are right that one can imagine a dialect with not more than two slots.

The advantage is that there are fewer slots to remember.

The drawback is that there are more words to remember.

You can create such a dialect within Lojban and it won't break Lojban. You are even free to add words for it to jbvovlaste.lojban.org.

Whether they become popular is another question (you would probably have to write texts in Lojban so that others read them and absorb your new words).

The same applies to three-slot predicates.

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[TR NS]

On Thursday, August 7, 2014 1:50:31 AM UTC-4, la gleki wrote:

You are right that one can imagine a dialect with not more than two slots.

The advantage is that there are fewer slots to remember.

The drawback is that there are more words to remember.

You can create such a dialect within Lojban and it won't break Lojban. You are even free to add words for it to jbvovlaste.lojban.org.

Whether they become popular is another question (you would probably have to write texts in Lojban so that others read them and absorb your new words).

The same applies to three-slot predicates.

Thanks! I don't want to create a separate dialect per se, but I would like to try to see all concepts covered within the first three sumti. I think a three slot rule of thumb is a good idea, really just a corollary of the more general KISS principle. I think I will pursue this, albeit just a little bit at a time. For now I will be happy to suggest one word that means `x1-travels-by-mode-x2-via-route-x3`.

[Gleki Arxokuna]

x1 litru x3 fi'o marce x2.

[Alex Burka]

litru already has that place, you don't have to add it.

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[TR NS]

On Thursday, August 7, 2014 9:36:47 AM UTC-4, la durka wrote:

litru already has that place, you don't have to add it.

Well, that was easy ;-)

Thanks!

[Michael Turniansky]

  Well, at the risk of nu morxirda'i,I have finally gotten a chance to read this thread.  And while nobody asked, I will add my two cents.

  I find myself pretty much in agreement with Wuzzy,  quoting lojbab:

 > They choose to use Lojban because it is DONE (even if not
 > fully documented). And they value our commitment against ad hoc
 > prescriptive change.

Oh yeah, this is true for me.
Yeah, it may sound crazy to some, but there are some people (like me)
out there who actually simply want to USE Lojban, not to change it all
the time. xD

 I learned Loglan in 1976 from the books that existed then (getting no response to my letters from the Institute back then, I assumed it was moribund), and then when I rediscovered it, post-internet inception in 2004, learning that I was going to have to relearn everything anyway, I learned lojban instead, which appeared to be much more vital.  So I did, from the CLL.  I learned all the gismu, all their places, and use them.  And yes, I don't want to have to relearn them.  At my age, it's a heavy memory load.  This same kind of discussion goes on all time with one of my other passions, tournament Scrabble. Of necessity, they have to reissue the dictionary every so often.  But the old-timers don't want to have to restudy lists that they already spent a long time memorizing, to add new words to them (or much worse, deletions from them).  The young bucks who are just starting out don't care, because they are tabulae rasae anyhow   Same goes with lojban, backwards compatibility aside.  So of course you are right to expect pushback from the oldtimers about the idea.

   That being said, I do find it kind of ironic that lojbab seems to be now in the position of JCB, despite his protestations of democratization of the language, it appears he finds it as much his baby as JCB did Loglan, and is loathe to make any changes simply because of that fact.  This despite the fact that he self-admittedly doesn't really use the language.  I don't think it's fair that he dismisses selpa'i as basically a young whippersnapper who doesn't care about the language.  selpa'i IS a major user of the language, and that position alone makes his opinions at least as worthy of being given an audience as those of xorxes.  Curmudgeonly derision is not productive.  I say all this despite the fact that I don't like many of the ideas that selpa'i has for the language, but I don't deny his right to have them.

  

 zu'unainai, The fact that whatever procedures are in place for change, even if that pace of change seems glacially slow, are looked upon as not worthy by the balningau crowd, instead of actually accomplishing them, speaks volumes about them, though.  So, it has the appearance that jsut like the lojbab-JCB dynamic, you want to your changes to be fast-tracked.  Well, you can do what he did and form your own language (since he cleared the way for you by getting the courts to agree that "loglan" is not copyrightable :-) ).  It's happened before.  That's why lojsk, gua\spi, Ceqli, etc.exist.  But you want to stay within the bounds of lojban?  So, do the work that had already been determined to be the next step.  Don't jump at revolution.  (If stuff IS done formally, and we end up with a new CLL, (and hopefully a next generation jbofi'e to go along with it), and/or a new gimste, I will reluctantly go along with it, but I won't do anything for something that's not gone through the formal channels.

                                    --gejyspa

--

[Alex Burka]

ni'o mi nau cusku lo se jinvi be mi po'o .iku'i mi ja'a cilre fo lo selsku ne'i lo dei mroxirma si mrilinsi ku (noi sarji ro lo re seldau)

.i mi tugni do so'o da .iku'i mi jinvi sai lo du'u sapselga'e fa lo du'u mu'i makau lo za'e "balningaugirzu" cu te smuni le banstika pruce poi zasti ku'o lo tolbanzu (to sei cumki lo za'i tolbanzu cu tolsnuti toi .u'i)

ni'o fau lo renopavomoi nanca ke lojbangirzu nunpenmi ku lo bi'unai catni ritli pruce co'a masno .akti .i za'a so'o da djica co cmibi'o lylygy. .iku'inai ma'a ba facki lo du'u xukau lo nu xagyfarvi cu cumki

.i mi pacna lo nu le bangu cu jai cumki fai lo ka xruti ce'u lo ka jmive kei gi'enai selja'e lo nu so'i se bangu be ce'u cu cliva

.i da'i zi'o badri lo nu la .lojban. ba na kakne lo ka se stika tezu'e lo se nitcu be lo je'a pilno be ri .iku'i ja'a cumki fa lo noi se stidi do nu porpi lo za'u bangu (to sa'u mi na djica co ganzu ri toi)

mu'o mi'e la durka

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[Gleki Arxokuna]

2014-11-12 2:52 GMT+03:00 Alex Burka <dur...@gmail.com>:

ni'o mi nau cusku lo se jinvi be mi po'o .iku'i mi ja'a cilre fo lo selsku ne'i lo dei mroxirma si mrilinsi ku (noi sarji ro lo re seldau)

.i mi tugni do so'o da .iku'i mi jinvi sai lo du'u sapselga'e fa lo du'u mu'i makau lo za'e "balningaugirzu" cu te smuni le banstika pruce poi zasti ku'o lo tolbanzu (to sei cumki lo za'i tolbanzu cu tolsnuti toi .u'i)

ni'o fau lo renopavomoi nanca ke lojbangirzu nunpenmi ku lo bi'unai catni ritli pruce co'a masno .akti .i za'a so'o da djica co cmibi'o lylygy. .iku'inai ma'a ba facki lo du'u xukau lo nu xagyfarvi cu cumki

lo nu le kamni na akti na nibli lo du'u ei galfi le bangu lo mabla 

i la gejyspa cu klina cusku lo sedu'u gy na djica lo nu gy. zgana lo nu lo jai se morji be gy co'u smudra

[Michael Turniansky]

doi durka mi ckire do lo nu milxe dragau zo morxirda'i noi juxre degji ve ciska zi'e ne mi ge'u ja'e tu'a zo mroxirma .i mi pu tavla fi lo bevri danlu poi ge ba'o jmive ginai selkra lo berti friko 

ni'o pe'u do ko fraxu mi lo nu na ciska bau la lojban .i mi pu ciska sevau lo prenu poi se nandu lo nu tcidu cei bu'a bau ly .i lo nu da bu'a cu narcu'i .i se'o lo nu mi bu'a cu xaksu lo dirba besna nejni .i lo nu go'i cu tolcu'i  lo nu claxu lo kafxu'i zo'o

       --gejyspa

[John E Clifford]

Gee, sorry about not getting back to you in 1976.  I thought we had most of the backlog cleared up fairly early on, but some pieces must have gone missing.  I doubt lojbab could be as possessive as JCB, though degrees probably don't matter at this point.  However, JCB was willing to scrap quite a bit for what he took to be a major improvement, where as lojbab seems unwilling to change even minor things for any purpose at all.  Admittedly, JCB was able to convince himself that the changes were his idea whereas lojbab doesn't ever think about (let alone in) the language and so does not have that out.  Unfortunately, this indifference has not loosed his grip as it has done with other language creators, hence the impasse.

[Dustin Lacewell]

Brutal.

[Michael Turniansky]

  That's okay, John, I won't hold it against you.  You will probably find my letter in a cardbox box in some storage close of TLI.  About the only thing I remember how to say in Loglan75 is "lemi pingu ga blanu ze nigro" (~="lo mi pinji cu blanu joi xekri")  Actually, that's not really true. I do remember many predicates (both primitives and complex), and most of the little words.   I had used Loglan as the Ancient tongue in my D&D campaigns (theoretically switched since then to lojban, but that's only academic, since I only DMed once since learning lojban).

  Were Loglan 2 and 3 ever actually written?  Could have used a good tutorial.

   Did JCB actually use the language himself?  Was he fluent?

          --gejyspa

[And Rosta]

Bob has just called the AGM and ensured that new blood will be able to join LLG and get things moving again. I don't see any signs of proprietoriality on his part, just the sort of investedness that many others have too.

And.

[Dustin Lacewell]

With that said, how is the AGM progressing? Its been a few weeks now since it was announced. Are there any meeting minutes we can look at from all the productive happenings?

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[Alex Burka]

It's been one week since it was called to order, and there has been no business as of yet.

[Dustin Lacewell]

It was one week ago you said it had been called one week ago. I think you're stuck in a time dilation. It was called Nov 3rd for everyone keeping track at home.

[Alex Burka]

Please do forgive me for rounding down from 9 days to 7 days.

On Wednesday, November 12, 2014 at 2:12 PM, Dustin Lacewell wrote:

It was one week ago you said it had been called one week ago. I think you're stuck in a time dilation. It was called Nov 3rd for everyone keeping track at home.

--

[John E. Clifford]

I doubt they will turn up.  I and at least two other people went through all those boxes, alphabetized them and checked that replies were sent to questions.  

JCB talked Loglan a lot when I was around ( and several others report the same) but that was all before the great morphological revolution.  I don't know about after that.  As to how fluent he was,I can't say, since I could not keep up with him.  I assume whatever he said meant what he intended by fiat.

The textbooks never got beyond drafts, very primitive programmed texts of very primitive parts, while I was there (1984).

Sent from my iPad

[Jonathan Jones]

Sorry, I've been really busy and haven't been keeping abreast of things. AGM? What is that, how do I get myself informed of happenings with it, etc.?

[Alex Burka]

The AGM would be the Annual General(?) Meeting of the LLG, which is taking place on the llg-m...@lojban.org list. I'm not exactly sure who has the permissions to add people to that list, but I think la mukti is one.

On Wednesday, November 12, 2014 at 3:13 PM, Jonathan Jones wrote:

Sorry, I've been really busy and haven't been keeping abreast of things. AGM? What is that, how do I get myself informed of happenings with it, etc.?

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[Ilmen]

In the ByLaws, I can read the following:

Section 4. Annual Meeting. The annual meeting of the members shall nominally be held at such place and time as the Directors shall designate. The Secretary/Treasurer shall serve personally, or by personal telephone conversation,[3] or send through the post office or by electronic mail[3] addressed to each member at his last known address, at least fifteen (15)[1] days before such meeting a notice thereof.

So I guess the roll call is to last for about 15 days, unless I'm misunderstanding something.

mi'e la .ilmen. mu'o

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[Jonathan Jones]

I don't really want to be a part of it, I've been busy with personal and work things for so long I doubt I'd be able to usefully contribute. I was just wanting to know how we would be informed of the results.

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