[lojban] Response ro Robin's "Essay on the future of Lojban"
Robert LeChevalier
http://www.lojban.org/tiki/Official+Baseline+Statement
What I am saying makes no sense without close reference to that document.
The policy explicitly says that "let usage decide" is NOT applicable
until AFTER the byfy completes the 4 tasks assigned under "THE LANGUAGE
DESIGN COMMISSION" is the policy statement (read the second sentence
under INCORPORATION OF PRIOR STATEMENT).
The policy ALLOWS the byfy to consider usage in making decisions, but
its primary purpose has always been to make decisions.
As I see it, the problem has been that the procedures as written by Nick
and maintained by Robin
http://www.lojban.org/tiki/BPFK+Procedures
have largely conflated tasks 1 and task 4 of the byfy effort, raising
the standard for task 1 so high as to make it unachievable, with all
aspects of the language defined and justified to the utmost, whereas the
intent is only that change-by-fiat be justified.
task 1 alone would require that byfy sections include
> Expanded cmavo definitions. This should be considered a top priority in
> all sections where it is relevant (which is just about all of them),
> because the current cmavo definitions suck.
and possibly
> Examples of usage in every fashion that the items discussed in the
> proposal could feasibly be used, especially of cmavo. I'm serious about
> this: lack of examples is one of the major places the current cmavo list
> falls down. There needn't be an example for every single cmavo, but
> there certainly should be an example for every class thereof.
but all of the rest should be dealt with separately as change proposals
under task 4 and not even considered until after task 1 is done.
While usage is one reason to consider a change under task 4, point 7
under task 4 makes it clear that changes are not limited to what "usage
has decided", merely allows that a pattern of usage is one possible
argument for a formal change. So "let usage decide" isn't applicable to
either task 1 or task 4.
---------
The core of Robin's complaint seems to be:
> Here's what I think leads to the BPFK being such a black hole of people:
>
> * It will accept as much time and effort as you give it, which is scary
> and daunting
>
> * Similarly, how do you know when the BPFK is done? The goal is
> basically perfection: to define every relevant part of the language
> well enough to call it done, all at once, forever. Again, scary and
> daunting.
>
> * What happens if you get it wrong? People are going to be stuck with
> it forever (usage decides after all). Scary and daunting.
>
> * So, people stop working on it. But everyone involved knows that this
> is the most important thing in Lojban, so not working on leads to guilt.
>
> * If thinking about Lojban makes you feel guilty, scared and
> overwhelmed, you're going to stop thinking about it.
And I contend that his second point is the problem. The assignment for
byfy was NEVER "perfection". I thought the assignment was to achieve
"good enough", and that CLL brought us pretty close to "good enough",
but that a couple of areas like the cmavo list needed to be brought up
to a standard comparable to the rest of the language documentation.
Somehow, things morphed into byfy being required to define the language
so as to answer all the questions that anyone will ever ask. I never
supported that mission, and I'm not entirely sure how it came into being.
(It seems that Robin WANTS that to be the mission, but I'd like to see
the more limited job done first, before forming an opinion on that.)
The procedures were imposed by the jatna, and Robin can change them
pretty much any time he feels them counterproductive. The baseline
policy is harder to change, and should be.
After byfy finishes the four assigned tasks, it (actually the
membership, because the byfy has only delegated authority, but I can't
see the membership overruling byfy) is supposed to declare a "final"
baseline, whereupon the "let usage decide" policy would take effect. At
that point, no change proposals would be considered for at least 5
years. The question is left open as to what would happen after the 5
years, so the apocalyptic "forever" of Robin's complaint really isn't
"forever".
I would argue that the 7 years since the baseline policy was approved,
with no major proposals other than xorlo, shows that a 5 year freeze is
hardly onerous. I suspect that there have been a few changes in how
people have used the language, certain usages becoming more popular and
others fading away. That is what was meant by letting usage decide; it
has happened without byfy making any formal decisions.
But in any event, that is how things are supposed to be AFTER byfy
completes the 4 tasks.
----------
I can come up with one interpretation that makes sense to me about
Robin's extended focus on "let usage decide" in the context of a
discussion of the future of the language, and that is a concern for the
long term after the byfy tasks are done.
I would rather see that debate take place after the 4 tasks are done and
the baseline declared, and I would rather that the debate be limited to
debate in-language. This was the sort of thing Robin and others were
pushing for several years ago when they tried to have the annual meeting
conducted only in Lojban. It is also part of the formal policy.
> LLG makes the commitment, however, that should it ever decide to
> establish any such procedures after the 5 year period, that all
> discussions of possible changes will occur solely in the Lojban
> language, ensuring that only actual users of Lojban will participate
> in any decision process.
I envisioned, in effect, that byfy would be supplanted or supplemented
by the entire Lojban-using community. Whether some sort of official
body like byfy would make a formal decision is something the community
can decide then. We don't need to decide this now, do we?
---------
The above is the core of my argument. I am going to try to apply it
*briefly* to what Robin said in his essay, mostly my limiting what I
quote and respond to.
> As I see it, we have two options: # Throw out the BPFK, and let usage
> decide from where we stand today # Throw out the idea of usage deciding,
> and re-tool the BPFK to not have these problems
throwing out the byfy is clearly untenable, since people want decisions
to be made, and someone has to make those decisions.
throwing out the idea of usage deciding shouldn't be at issue now, but
clearly is, at least in Robin's mind. I don't see anything in Robin's
proposal that really eliminates the problem.
It would perhaps not be a big leap to have the rump-byfy described in
the baseline policy, which has the assignment post-baseline to certify
various levels of compliance with the baseline, have the additional
assignment to suggest answers to questions left unresolved in the
baseline, when people ask. One would hope that few such questions would
impinge upon the baseline (i.e. require change in what has been
documented in CLL and the various lists). Such answers would not be
part of the baseline itself, and would have limited prescriptive force.
And if any debate by the byfy about the answer were conducted
in-language, it would be perfectly compatible with what I stated above
about MY goal for the "let usage decide" policy. After the 5 year
freeze, such prescriptions could be formally incorporated in the
language definition, but really, I would expect that this would only be
necessary or appropriate if people have found the pronouncement useful.
I remain concerned about
> We're basically demanding that every newbie have a gigantic level of
> dedication just to use the language effectively. We might as well put
> up a sign that says "Warning: hard work within".
which seems to argue for a minimal specification (the section is
entitled "!! Lojban Is Too Well Specified", while
> The other big issue is that newbies are looking for a logical language.
> I know I was. Part of what "logical" means is "rigorous and well
> specified".
and the later
> The formal
> definition of the language must be complete for their sake: otherwise
> you end up with many tiny islands of unique interpretations,
seems to require an endlessly expanding specification, where every usage
question is formally pronounced upon, and the answer becomes part of the
spec, and that no one is really a master of the language until they have
mastered all of this endlessly expanding spec, seeking after an
impossible "complete" specification.
Robin says that newbies want all the answers to be documented in the
spec, and if they aren't
> Naturally, they expect there to be an answer to just about
> every question they have about the language (and I agree!). How are we
> to then turn around and say, "Oh, but the very obscurest, hardest bits
> of the language? Yeah, you get to figure those out yourself.
I can't figure out how Robin wants to resolve this dilemma. Throwing
out "let usage decide" doesn't do so. Putting the onus on byfy to
decide everything gives a decision, but the documentation adds to the
amount that the newbie has to know in order to be competent.
I see an analogy to formal law. We have a constitution, which sets
forth general principles. Then we have a set of statutes that define
the law to some arbitrary degree of specification. Most people manage to
be law-abiding without having memorized the constitution, and only on
occasion seeking out exactly what the statutes say. They may turn to a
lawyer or a bureaucrat to ask the latter, but their answers aren't
official. Instead, we have a layer of hundreds of pages of regulation
for each law, and then we have court cases to formally make decisions
that are binding interpretations of that law. The complete
specification of law includes the constitution, the statutes, the
regulations, and all of the court decisions ever made regarding all of
these. Only specialized lawyers come close to a mastery of even a
segment of "the law", and no one masters the whole.
I don't think Robin wants Lojbanists to require the skill and training
of a lawyer to speak the language. So at what level does the formal
specification stop? When do we say "you need to know this much, but
beyond that point we *aren't* going to tell you that you are wrong
provided that people understand what you say"?
> If we let usage decide, if no-one can ever legitimately tell another
> Lojbanist that they're doing it wrong,
That is not and never has been the policy. Even after the baseline, per
the policy, the rump byfy or some similar group is still charged with
certifying up to five degrees of baseline compliance. They don't tell
someone that "they're doing it wrong", but rather that they aren't
complying with the baseline. I would expect that most people will be
satisfied with the decisions of an "LLG-Approved Author/Editor", but
they will want textbooks written to the standard of "Baseline-Compliant".
> The formation of the BPFK itself is another example: when the community
> realized that the baseline was invalid, and that the language needed
> some polishing, what happened? Did people simply start changing the way
> they used the language? Did they let usage decide? No. Overwhelmingly
> the community voted/agreed to form a body (the BPFK) from which to
> officiate the language. I only recall one or two people even seriously
> suggesting letting usage decide.
Actually, what happened was that *I* realized that the baseline was
invalid. We broke the rules stated in 1997. The rest of the Lojban
community was going along blithely unaware of this until I brought it to
their attention. They were indeed "letting usage decide" insofar as
anyone was actually using the language. I don't think any decisions
from byfy were needed for la .alis to be written, and it was completed
before xorlo was decided, IIRC.
*I* proposed the byfy and the policy statement as an answer
to the problem that *I* recognized, and convinced the Board of the
seriousness of the problem, and it was approved with much debate but
IIRC only minimal change by both the Board and the membership.
That policy incorporated the text about letting usage decide, so I
cannot imagine why anyone would feel a need to "seriously suggest" what
was already in my proposal. I'm not sure I recall even one or two
people seriously suggesting to *remove* the "let usage decide" language
until now, though I think there was some discussion about "life after
byfy" with general acceptance that there would be a rump byfy that would
fill the certification role (which is somewhat less than a prescriptive
role).
> ...
> rather than people getting attacked
> for not conforming to the CLL, which is what actually happens.
Robin seems to disapprove of this, even while saying that it is a sign
of people rejecting "let usage decide".
But earlier, he says:
> If we let usage decide, if no-one can ever legitimately tell another
> Lojbanist that they're doing it wrong, we will end up with some very
> confused newbies;
Obviously people can and do tell others that they aren't following CLL,
which is one level of "doing it wrong", and there is nobody to say that
such "telling" *isn't* legitimate. The rump byfy will have the
authority to tell someone officially that they are "doing it
sufficiently right", and has implicit authority to insist that
LLG-official stuff comply with an appropriate certification standard.
> What we've learned from the free software movement, though, is that
> groups that all equally contribute to a great project almost never
> actually happens: you get a very small number of people (usually one)
> with near-total executive power,
Been there, done that. My executive power was tempered by my
willingness to consult with pc, Cowan, and Nora (and others as they came
and left the Board).
But I think things reached the point where one person could not
effectively exercise executive power over all of the business, the
language-definition, and the leadership of the community.
Robin and others booted me out, apparently because I wasn't delegating
that power enough (or fast enough). Robin now seems unhappy with the
result.
>or you get crap, or you get a dead project.
I'd like to think that the current situation is neither of these, though
obviously we can, and need to, do better.
> The other thing we've learned from the free software community is that
> it is possible to have strong authority without screwing the community.
I HOPE people learned that from my tenure in office.
> Projects
> like Linux and Perl make it clear, though, that it is possible to give
> control over major, hard decisions (like breaking backwards
> compatibility) into the hands of a few people without anything horrible
> happening. These groups still take lots of input from the larger
> community.
In LLG, we call this the "membership", and they in turn have delegated
control over some decisions to "the Board" and others to "the byfy",
while approving general policy guidelines (the statement) that govern
the latter.
> The idea behind usage deciding seems to be that people will be able to
> figure this out as they talk, and settle on one or the other. In
> practice, though, how could you do that? Imagine the confusion that
> could result when speaking English if someone didn't think that "the
> car" implied that there was actually a particular car. You'd be having
> totally different conversations, but how would you ever figure out where
> the problem lay?
Umm. In point of fact, that is EXACTLY what we do, and the power of the
human mind is sufficient so that even if a young kid calls every
4-legged animal "doggie", people still manage to understand the kid.
And everyone who has read a schoolkid's English essay (or a Usenet post)
knows that people use English words and grammar in far more deviant ways
than "the car" not meaning a particular car - and are still understood.
> Once you figured it out, what would you do? You'd grab a dictionary and
> show the other person to be wrong.
Not in most cases, because in most cases we don't carry a dictionary
handy. And when we do - well, I have plenty of experience on Usenet
trying precisely that tactic, and having the person cuss me out, or
ignore me, or sometimes even agree with me but then repeat the error in
succeeding postings.
> Formal officiation is part of how
> natural languages resolve these sorts of things.
French has its academy, but the French ignore academy pronouncements
when it suits them, and Quebecois French is apparently quite different
from usage in France.
English is entirely informal. It has a multiplicity of "style guides",
and different publishers subscribe to different guides, and some have no
formal style policy at all. No one would accuse Americans of speaking
"the Queen's English". (I'm not sure that the Queen does either, but who
would tell her if she didn't? %^)
Computer languages often resort to formal standards, but even
implementations of computer languages are often lacking in compliance
with formal standards, where such standards exist, and there is very
little one can do about it except to shop for another compiler.
> This lead to a bunch of
> conversations that started with "Are you using xorlo?". If we ever let
> usage decide, you can expect much more of that sort of crap, as people
> divide into camps behind their favorite proposals.
We actually addressed that, in MEX, among other places. SEI, and ti'o
in particular, were added to allow multiple conflicting sets of
mathematical rules to coexist. (Chapter 18, section 20)
xorxes says that using xorlo is almost always transparent. I believe
him, so I can't see why I would ever ask someone if they are using
xorlo. Beyond that, I can't comment, since I don't understand xorlo %^)
On the other hand, I can imagine someone using an experimental cmavo I
don't know, and my asking them what it means. I would hope that anyone
who creates such a cmavo considers how one would answer that question,
preferably in-language.
I also can't see any change to byfy or to the policy that would
eliminate this problem other than completely forbidding experimental
usages, which is unenforceable even if we wanted it.
> If I want natural, growing, living languages, I know where to find them.
If we never reach that stage, Lojban will never be more than a toy.
> This goes hand in hand with letting usage decide: since everyone's
> usage is valid, it doesn't really make sense to set goals.
More importantly, everyone's goals for the language are valid. Those
who don't need Lojban to be a "natural, growing, living language" have
to coexist with those who want it to be.
But I think Robin is referring to "design goals". byfy has the
authority within the policy statement to consider specific design goals
when considering changes.
> Certainly
> large-scale changes were enacted by the Lojban founders at various
> times. But after the baseline, the only way to make such changes will
> be to make your own fragment of the language, and hope it catches on.
The alternative is to have byfy impose large-scale change on the
community by fiat, when it suits them, and hope it catches on. The fact
that xorlo was approved, and then the membership reinforced that
approval, and yet people are apparently still asking "Are you using
xorlo?", it should be clear that imposing large-scale change on the
community is a problem no matter how it is done (and we knew that
already in the JCB era, because every such large-scale change caused
many people to leave)
> It completely disenfranchises participants based solely on the time of their birth.
I can't think of a polite response to this, so pretend I said something
rude and you'll probably be right.
> I know that the actual issue here is to avoid having to re-learn the
> language all the time, but that's a straw man: people deal with drift
> in natural languages all the time. All we need to do is make sure
> Lojban doesn't drift noticeably faster.
"Drift in natural language" = "natural, growing, living language", which
I thought you disparaged above. In any event, drift in natural language
does not involve "large-scale changes"
> I haven't yet seen anyone complain
> that it was too much to learn or that the language was changing too much
> for them to want to learn it.
Actually, you have. From me (and to some extent from Nora). Which is
why I have never made an attempt to learn xorlo. I'm relying on xorxes
claim that I don't need to learn it %^)
> The case of .ai nai really exemplifies the need for goals ''for the
> language itself''. It has been noted that ".ai nai broda" is exactly
> equal to ".ai na broda", as .ai nai is currently defined,
Not really true. But usually effectively true because of the semantic
nature of "ai". The same is generally true of .ianai and .ienai But
this is obviously a technical issue tangential to your essay, so I will
stop.
> This lack of consistency
> (essentially, an exception in our beautiful,
> supposed-to-be-exception-free language) really bothers some people, and
> they think it needs to be fixed. Others think past usage is more
> important. And... that's where we've been for at least a year now.
What you are saying is that there is NO consensus on the design goals of
the language, or at least on their relative priority, even within the
limited circle of those actively participating in byfy.
Of course, achieving such consensus on design goals has never been part
of the byfy process (and arguably shouldn't be, until tasks 1-3 are done
and byfy seeks to implement task 4, where it becomes relevant). The
procedures have been propose - hurry up and vote - move on to the next
topic, which is precisely how consensus political decision *doesn't* work).
> With no criteria to weigh the options by except "finish defining the
> language", who is to say who is right?
Right now, byfy is to say. They have the authority to define the status
quo. Regarding change proposals under task 4
> The byfy can choose at its discretion whether to abide by the intent
> of earlier language designers or by the strict wording used, and can add
> clarification or modify the wording based on its decisions.
Arguably, the only design goal that is not subject to possible change by
byfy is the only one made explicit in their charge, regarding single,
unitary meanings for words. There are probably other design goals
specified in CLL, but byfy has the authority to change CLL as part of
task 4.
> * The BPFK then finishes the dictionary, to whatever level of
> specificity can be acheived fairly quickly, which I expect to go
> relatively smoothly because of the goals themselves, and the lack of
> needing to worry about past usage very much.
byfy shouldn't be worrying about past usage at this point. Tasks 1-3 do
not involve considering past usage, only existing specification.
(though if there is usage, one would hope that it would inform discussion).
Task 4, dealing with proposals for change, does involve considering past
usage, as part of the justification process for change.
> ** Every once in a while, a vote should occur to place a list of changes
> officially into the language. This means documentation must be complete
> (see below), and there shouldn't be any feeling of all-or-nothing about
> it. We can make some things official while other things are not
> completely finished, and we can make mistakes and fix them in a later
> round (hopefully not many and no big ones).
The baseline policy regarding "let usage decide" agrees entirely with
this, with the explicit provision that after the baseline is declared,
no such vote will be even proposed for 5 years (and the implicit
provision that when such a vote takes place, actual usage will be
considered).
I don't think that the membership or the byfy should be making anything
more than the most nebulous plans for that time, because the mindset
post baseline will likely be quite different from the present mindset
(the stated considerations in the above quoted paragraph make that
clear), and planning major policies that won't come into play for 5
years "completely disenfranchises participants based solely on the time
of their birth".
> The BPFK is also responsible for evaluating conformance to particular
> versions of Lojban, as requested.
The existing policy statement pretty much covers this, and it is not
clear what Robin wants changed about the baseline compliance task. (What
he describes in his proposal seems qualitatively different from the
stated policy, but I am not sure why he feels the stated policy needs to
be changed.
> * It is also the duty of the BPFK to answer questions about Lojban posed
> to it that cannot be answered via the extant documentation, and to
> record the answers publicly, and possibly roll the answers back into the
> official documentation.
This is the one explicit change that I have absolutely no problem with,
if it is part of defining the post-baseline "rump-byfy" task, with the
proviso that "roll the answers back into official documentation" needs
to be consistent with the policy on only "every once in a while"
"placing a list of changes officially into the language".
A page of approved typo corrections and clarifications doesn't bug me.
The lack of a multi-year period without prescriptively imposed change,
(and without any discussion of such change, except in-language) would
bother me greatly.
I think most of the rest of Robin's proposal should only be considered
after tasks 1-4 are done, and I'd love it if the attempt were made to do
that consideration in a Lojban-only forum (even if it means I
disenfranchise myself by failing to acquire the skill to participate
effectively in such a forum).
lojbab
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Robin Lee Powell
> I call upon everyone involved in this discussion to reread the
> policy http://www.lojban.org/tiki/Official+Baseline+Statement
I think the success of that policy speaks for itself.
> The policy explicitly says that "let usage decide" is NOT
> applicable until AFTER the byfy completes the 4 tasks assigned
> under "THE LANGUAGE DESIGN COMMISSION" is the policy statement
> (read the second sentence under INCORPORATION OF PRIOR STATEMENT).
One place where we differ is that I no longer think usage should
decide *ever*. Unless the BPFK becomes totally controlled by a pack
of drooling morons, of course usage will be acknowledged and
respected, and the BPFK may *choose* to promote usage to the status
of officialness, but we should not let the language drift via usage.
It should be well specified.
I also don't think that describing the lanugage is what we
should be doing. We should be *declaring* the language.
> As I see it, the problem has been that the procedures as written
> by Nick and maintained by Robin
> http://www.lojban.org/tiki/BPFK+Procedures have largely conflated
> tasks 1 and task 4 of the byfy effort, raising the standard for
> task 1 so high as to make it unachievable, with all aspects of the
> language defined and justified to the utmost, whereas the intent
> is only that change-by-fiat be justified.
The problem is that:
1. defining the cmavo requires making sense of them, which
routinely leads to discovering contradictions and having to make a
decision
2. no-one wants to do work that will shortly be made irrelevant; if
we *know* there's a problem, defining the current state and then
discussing the change at some future date feels like a waste of time
> task 1 alone would require that byfy sections include
> >Expanded cmavo definitions. This should be considered a top priority in
> > all sections where it is relevant (which is just about all of them),
> >because the current cmavo definitions suck.
> and possibly
> >Examples of usage in every fashion that the items discussed in the
> >proposal could feasibly be used, especially of cmavo. I'm serious about
> >this: lack of examples is one of the major places the current cmavo list
> > falls down. There needn't be an example for every single cmavo, but
> >there certainly should be an example for every class thereof.
> but all of the rest should be dealt with separately as change proposals
> under task 4 and not even considered until after task 1 is done.
I shouldn't have to say this after 7 years, but: it's not going to
happen. I explicitely refuse to try to document things we are later
going to change without working on the changes as part of the
documentation, and other BPFK members have told me they feel
similarily.
In other words: I refuse to do part 1 of
http://www.lojban.org/tiki/Official+Baseline+Statement by itself.
If you can find people who do not so refuse, let me know.
> And I contend that his second point is the problem. The
> assignment for byfy was NEVER "perfection". I thought the
> assignment was to achieve "good enough", and that CLL brought us
> pretty close to "good enough", but that a couple of areas like the
> cmavo list needed to be brought up to a standard comparable to the
> rest of the language documentation.
>
> Somehow, things morphed into byfy being required to define the
> language so as to answer all the questions that anyone will ever
> ask. I never supported that mission, and I'm not entirely sure
> how it came into being.
It's very simple: basically discussion that has occured in the BPFK
has *immediately* turned into a detailed discussion of what,
exactly, the cmavo actually means: what the CLL says it means, how
it's been used, where contradictions exist, whether what the CLL
says makes any sense, and so on. The only time anyone does
*anything* in the BPFK is when they're having discussions like that.
The point of the essay was to say "OK, great; this is how people
around here actually work. Let's harness that."
If what you want is a simple description, written by people who are
going to simply ignore the CLL's contradictions and actual usage and
so on, umm, you need to find a completely different group of people.
> After byfy finishes the four assigned tasks, it (actually the
> membership, because the byfy has only delegated authority, but I
> can't see the membership overruling byfy) is supposed to declare a
> "final" baseline, whereupon the "let usage decide" policy would
> take effect. At that point, no change proposals would be
> considered for at least 5 years. The question is left open as to
> what would happen after the 5 years, so the apocalyptic "forever"
> of Robin's complaint really isn't "forever".
It's been, what, 15 years since the first baseline was declared? I
think "forever" is quite an apt description.
> I envisioned, in effect, that byfy would be supplanted or
> supplemented by the entire Lojban-using community. Whether some
> sort of official body like byfy would make a formal decision is
> something the community can decide then. We don't need to decide
> this now, do we?
We need to do *SOMETHING* now.
> >As I see it, we have two options: # Throw out the BPFK, and let
> >usage decide from where we stand today # Throw out the idea of
> >usage deciding, and re-tool the BPFK to not have these problems
>
> throwing out the byfy is clearly untenable, since people want
> decisions to be made, and someone has to make those decisions.
>
> throwing out the idea of usage deciding shouldn't be at issue now,
> but clearly is, at least in Robin's mind. I don't see anything in
> Robin's proposal that really eliminates the problem.
I conflated two issues: (1) the forever-in-the-future when the BPFK
is done and usage rules the land, which I think is a bad idea and
(2) the built-in respect for the current state, implicit in the
ordering of the line items in section 4 of
http://www.lojban.org/tiki/Official+Baseline+Statement ,which I
*also* think is a bad idea.
> I remain concerned about
>
> >We're basically demanding that every newbie have a gigantic level
> >of dedication just to use the language effectively. We might as
> >well put up a sign that says "Warning: hard work within".
>
> which seems to argue for a minimal specification
Absolutely the opposite; it argues for a complete as possible
specification, so newbies do not have to work to understand how to
use the language.
> (the section is entitled "!! Lojban Is Too Well Specified", while
>
> >The other big issue is that newbies are looking for a logical
> >language. I know I was. Part of what "logical" means is
> >"rigorous and well specified".
>
> and then later
>
> >The formal definition of the language must be complete for their
> >sake: otherwise you end up with many tiny islands of unique
> >interpretations,
>
> seems to require an endlessly expanding specification, where every
> usage question is formally pronounced upon, and the answer becomes
> part of the spec, and that no one is really a master of the
> language until they have mastered all of this endlessly expanding
> spec, seeking after an impossible "complete" specification.
Yep, that's pretty much what I have in mind.
> Robin says that newbies want all the answers to be documented in the
> spec, and if they aren't
> >Naturally, they expect there to be an answer to just about
> >every question they have about the language (and I agree!). How are we
> >to then turn around and say, "Oh, but the very obscurest, hardest bits
> >of the language? Yeah, you get to figure those out yourself.
>
> I can't figure out how Robin wants to resolve this dilemma.
> Throwing out "let usage decide" doesn't do so. Putting the onus
> on byfy to decide everything gives a decision, but the
> documentation adds to the amount that the newbie has to know in
> order to be competent.
I expect there to be varying levels of documentation; a beginner's
book, the CLL, the online super-spec, that sort of thing. How much
people choose to learn is up to them; you can speak perfectly good
Lojban without ever opening the CLL, even now. But when people *do*
have a question, there should be an answer, somewhere.
> >rather than people getting attacked for not conforming to the
> >CLL, which is what actually happens.
>
> Robin seems to disapprove of this,
I neither approve nor disapprove; I acknowledge that this is how
Lojbanists actually work, and suggest we embrace that fact.
> Robin and others booted me out, apparently because I wasn't
> delegating that power enough (or fast enough). Robin now seems
> unhappy with the result.
I am unhappy only with the stagnation of the BPFK, which you have
not participated in at all to my knowledge. Everything else is
going just fine, IMO.
> >If I want natural, growing, living languages, I know where to
> >find them.
>
> If we never reach that stage, Lojban will never be more than a
> toy.
I disagree. You can have a large, popular language without it being
subject to random, unfettered linguistic; see, for example, French.
> >This goes hand in hand with letting usage decide: since
> >everyone's usage is valid, it doesn't really make sense to set
> >goals.
>
> More importantly, everyone's goals for the language are valid.
> Those who don't need Lojban to be a "natural, growing, living
> language" have to coexist with those who want it to be.
Perhaps you should go find me one of those people, then, because I
can't seem to find any.
> But I think Robin is referring to "design goals". byfy has the
> authority within the policy statement to consider specific design
> goals when considering changes.
No, we don't; the policy statement's ordered list in section 4 *is
the problem*.
> The fact that xorlo was approved, and then the membership
> reinforced that approval, and yet people are apparently still
> asking "Are you using xorlo?",
I don't know where you got that impression; I haven't heard anyone
say that since the approval. Which was my *point*: the formal
approval of xorlo suddenly made everything run more smoothly.
> >I haven't yet seen anyone complain that it was too much to learn
> >or that the language was changing too much for them to want to
> >learn it.
>
> Actually, you have. From me (and to some extent from Nora).
> Which is why I have never made an attempt to learn xorlo. I'm
> relying on xorxes claim that I don't need to learn it %^)
You weren't speaking the language *before* xorlo, so that's not
really interesting or relevant to me.
> >With no criteria to weigh the options by except "finish defining
> >the language", who is to say who is right?
>
> Right now, byfy is to say. They have the authority to define the
> status quo. Regarding change proposals under task 4
>
> >The byfy can choose at its discretion whether to abide by the
> >intent of earlier language designers or by the strict wording
> >used, and can add clarification or modify the wording based on
> >its decisions.
Task 4 explicitely orders the basis for such decisions. That
ordering *is the problem*.
> >** Every once in a while, a vote should occur to place a list of
> >changes officially into the language. This means documentation
> >must be complete (see below), and there shouldn't be any feeling
> >of all-or-nothing about it. We can make some things official
> >while other things are not completely finished, and we can make
> >mistakes and fix them in a later round (hopefully not many and no
> >big ones).
>
> The baseline policy regarding "let usage decide" agrees entirely
> with this, with the explicit provision that after the baseline is
> declared, no such vote will be even proposed for 5 years (and the
> implicit provision that when such a vote takes place, actual usage
> will be considered).
That was very much not my understanding; my understanding was that
after that 5 year period, usage *always* wins, even if it's
illogical or stupid. That at that time the BPFK is not empowered to
over-ride usage in the interests of the overall design goals of the
language, whatever those might be.
If I am misunderstanding, then I assure you I am not the only one to
so misunderstand, and clarification is needed regardless.
> A page of approved typo corrections and clarifications doesn't bug
> me. The lack of a multi-year period without prescriptively imposed
> change, (and without any discussion of such change, except
> in-language) would bother me greatly.
I really don't understand why you have this hard-on for the freeze
period? What difference does it make? People are coming into the
language all the time; some will be during the freeze, and some
won't. How does it help anybody?
People who want to learn to speak the language seem to deal just
fine with changes; people like you and Nora who don't don't seem to
be able to catch up even over the 5+ years the language *was*
frozen. Seriously: I don't get who the freeze is supposed to
benefit, or how.
> I think most of the rest of Robin's proposal should only be
> considered after tasks 1-4 are done, and I'd love it if the
> attempt were made to do that consideration in a Lojban-only forum
> (even if it means I disenfranchise myself by failing to acquire
> the skill to participate effectively in such a forum).
I explicitely refuse to spend time writing definitions based on the
current documentation without stopping to consider whether that
documentation makes any sense internally. This means I refuse to do
tasks 1-3 without also doing task 4. Task 4, and its ordering of
requirements, was what caused the deadlock.
You seem to think that everything is fine with the BPFK's charter as
is, yet clearly it isn't, because we've been stuck for 5 years on
{.ai nai} (yes, really, on *just* that issue, for that long).
I'm very, very close to being past caring, but: what do *you* want
to do to fix it? (and would this involve you yourlself actually
doing anything? because it if would, you might as well keep it to
yourself; I simply don't trust you to actually do any BPFK work.
Too many broken promises)
-Robin
--
They say: "The first AIs will be built by the military as weapons."
And I'm thinking: "Does it even occur to you to try for something
other than the default outcome?" See http://shrunklink.com/cdiz
http://www.digitalkingdom.org/~rlpowell/ *** http://www.lojban.org/
Pierre Abbat
> One place where we differ is that I no longer think usage should
> decide *ever*. Unless the BPFK becomes totally controlled by a pack
> of drooling morons, of course usage will be acknowledged and
> respected, and the BPFK may *choose* to promote usage to the status
> of officialness, but we should not let the language drift via usage.
> It should be well specified.
What will happen once there is a critical mass of verclijbo?
> I also don't think that describing the lanugage is what we
> should be doing. We should be *declaring* the language.
Does this include declaring the meaning of lujvo and fu'ivla?
> I disagree. You can have a large, popular language without it being
> subject to random, unfettered linguistic; see, for example, French.
Twenty years ago the AF declared an orthographic reform. (The way I found out
about it was seeing the word "cigüe" (hemlock (umbellifer), new spelling) in
Wiktionary.) Some parts of the reform I agree with ("ciguë" looks strange
with the dieresis on the silent letter), some I don't ("coût" (cost) should
retain the circumflex because it represents a lost "s"). Can we have some
Lojbanists accepting some, but not all, of the rulings of the BPFK?
Pierre
--
Don't buy a French car in Holland. It may be a citroen.
Jonathan Jones
On Thursday 08 April 2010 21:47:09 Robin Lee Powell wrote:What will happen once there is a critical mass of verclijbo?
> One place where we differ is that I no longer think usage should
> decide *ever*. Unless the BPFK becomes totally controlled by a pack
> of drooling morons, of course usage will be acknowledged and
> respected, and the BPFK may *choose* to promote usage to the status
> of officialness, but we should not let the language drift via usage.
> It should be well specified.
Does this include declaring the meaning of lujvo and fu'ivla?
> I also don't think that describing the lanugage is what we
> should be doing. We should be *declaring* the language.
I expect that lujvo and fu'ivla are exempt from this, except in cases of mass usage. For example, if ro jbopre use gerzda to mean "dog house", then it is possible that that meaning will be declared.
Twenty years ago the AF declared an orthographic reform. (The way I found out
> I disagree. You can have a large, popular language without it being
> subject to random, unfettered linguistic; see, for example, French.
about it was seeing the word "cigüe" (hemlock (umbellifer), new spelling) in
Wiktionary.) Some parts of the reform I agree with ("ciguë" looks strange
with the dieresis on the silent letter), some I don't ("coût" (cost) should
retain the circumflex because it represents a lost "s"). Can we have some
Lojbanists accepting some, but not all, of the rulings of the BPFK?
Pierre
--
Don't buy a French car in Holland. It may be a citroen.
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mu'o mi'e .aionys.
.i.a'o.e'e ko klama le bende pe denpa bu
Bob LeChevalier
much more to discuss to achieve whatever resolution you want to achieve NOW.
Robin Lee Powell wrote:
> On Thu, Apr 08, 2010 at 01:55:23PM -0400, Robert LeChevalier wrote:
>
>>I call upon everyone involved in this discussion to reread the
>>policy http://www.lojban.org/tiki/Official+Baseline+Statement
>
> I think the success of that policy speaks for itself.
I think it has been quite successful in achieving a stable language.
Obviously not in getting the baseline done.
>>The policy explicitly says that "let usage decide" is NOT
>>applicable until AFTER the byfy completes the 4 tasks assigned
>>under "THE LANGUAGE DESIGN COMMISSION" is the policy statement
>>(read the second sentence under INCORPORATION OF PRIOR STATEMENT).
>
> One place where we differ is that I no longer think usage should
> decide *ever*. Unless the BPFK becomes totally controlled by a pack
> of drooling morons, of course usage will be acknowledged and
> respected, and the BPFK may *choose* to promote usage to the status
> of officialness, but we should not let the language drift via usage.
> It should be well specified.
>
> I also don't think that describing the lanugage is what we
> should be doing. We should be *declaring* the language.
At this point, I agree with you. The long term is where we still are
apart. But we don't need to solve the long term yet.
With regard to the stuff that is presently covered by the baseline
documents, I can live with your position, which is easier to sell to
computer people and harder to sell to linguists. I am also sure that if
it gets to be a problem, you are a reasonable person and would reconsider.
> The problem is that:
>
> 1. defining the cmavo requires making sense of them, which
> routinely leads to discovering contradictions and having to make a
> decision
>
> 2. no-one wants to do work that will shortly be made irrelevant; if
> we *know* there's a problem, defining the current state and then
> discussing the change at some future date feels like a waste of time
As you defined the procedures (and as I intended it), defining the
current state was supposed to be part of the job of proposing a change.
If there are contradictions, explicating them might be sufficient for
task 1, and it serves as a major justification for change in task 4.
The point is that defining the current state *should* be relatively easy
to get agreement on, ideally a 100% consensus. The language is what it
is, warts and all. Can we agree on what the warts are?
Once we've agreed that there is a problem (and an explicitly stated
existing contradiction is such), even "conservatives" have no basis to
oppose a fix, though we might have differences on how large a fix is
necessary.
If task 1 had been done relatively quickly, as I had intended, the delay
of discussion would have been minimal, and the clearer agreement and
understanding of what the problem is would make discussing the necessary
change more efficient.
(But I accept that you aren't willing to try this now).
> I shouldn't have to say this after 7 years, but: it's not going to
> happen. I explicitely refuse to try to document things we are later
> going to change without working on the changes as part of the
> documentation, and other BPFK members have told me they feel
> similarily.
>
> In other words: I refuse to do part 1 of
> http://www.lojban.org/tiki/Official+Baseline+Statement by itself.
> If you can find people who do not so refuse, let me know.
Can you get people include what is necessary for part 1 as part of their
writing the change proposal? (And I am thinking something far more
minimal than correcting CLL to describe something that we know we are
going to change; just an agreed upon description of what is. If out of
all this, you can get change proposals that match what Cowan wrote in
justifying changes to the YACC grammar, that well-define what is being
fixed, I'll be quite satisfied)
If so, then my position becomes no more than having byfy vote that the
part 1's accurately reflect the status quo before trying to finalize
agreement on the solutions. Ideally, we'd have a complete set of task 1
description before we start formally trying to approve the changes, but
I can bend there.
The status quo has been that checkpoints aren't final until the whole
thing is done and voted on as a package. That would not be necessary
under the above. If we have a set of task 1 checkpoints complete, then
I (and possibly others) have far less basis to oppose a change
considered in isolation of other changes, provided the change is fully
documented.
> If what you want is a simple description, written by people who are
> going to simply ignore the CLL's contradictions and actual usage and
> so on, umm, you need to find a completely different group of people.
I'd be satisfied to simply have us agree that the contradictions and any
actual usage exists and what they are, before trying to fix them.
>>After byfy finishes the four assigned tasks, it (actually the
>>membership, because the byfy has only delegated authority, but I
>>can't see the membership overruling byfy) is supposed to declare a
>>"final" baseline, whereupon the "let usage decide" policy would
>>take effect. At that point, no change proposals would be
>>considered for at least 5 years. The question is left open as to
>>what would happen after the 5 years, so the apocalyptic "forever"
>>of Robin's complaint really isn't "forever".
>
> It's been, what, 15 years since the first baseline was declared? I
> think "forever" is quite an apt description.
But the current policy requires only 5 years after the next baseline.
Unlike the present situation, there would be no procedural reason why
one or many changes couldn't be voted on, on the 5th anniversary of the
baseline.
>>I envisioned, in effect, that byfy would be supplanted or
>>supplemented by the entire Lojban-using community. Whether some
>>sort of official body like byfy would make a formal decision is
>>something the community can decide then. We don't need to decide
>>this now, do we?
>
> We need to do *SOMETHING* now.
Agreed. If only because you, as byfy jatna, want something done now.
> I conflated two issues: (1) the forever-in-the-future when the BPFK
> is done and usage rules the land, which I think is a bad idea and
You've convinced me more is needed than is promised in the statement.
But I still would rather not decide what it is until we reach the point
where we have a baseline.
Give me a baseline first, and I might be willing to grant a blank check
for whatever some sufficient number of people are able to debate and
document solely in Lojban. And I see no problem with byfy as answerer
of questions and documenter thereof. (But the documentation should be in
Lojban, shouldn't it? What level of documentation of what kind would be
necessary for the answer to be sufficiently authoritative? I don't know
the answer, and I am not prepared to think about it).
> (2) the built-in respect for the current state, implicit in the
> ordering of the line items in section 4 of
> http://www.lojban.org/tiki/Official+Baseline+Statement ,which I
> *also* think is a bad idea.
Other than the statement of defaults in 1-3, I don't think that order
was supposed to be significant. It was merely a list of possible things
that the byfy is authorized to do, and the factors we wanted to be
considered. The defaults basically say that you have explicitly approve
a change - what is unchanged stays the same. Respect for the status quo
is explicit (point 8) rather than implicit, but also says it applies "in
case of uncertainty".
Minimizing relearning is certainly an argument that can be made against
a major change, but nothing in the section 4 points actually requires
that as a factor - it was more or less assumed that the need to achieve
consensus would ensure that the sorts of things covered by your goals
are considered to a degree people find appropriate. Item 8 simply
provides a tie-breaker if all else fails. As does item 9's passing the
decision to the Board in case of deadlock. I think NO ONE wants the
Board to *ever* have to decide such things, so that comes into play only
if the byfy-internal process is desperately broken.
>>>We're basically demanding that every newbie have a gigantic level
>>>of dedication just to use the language effectively. We might as
>>>well put up a sign that says "Warning: hard work within".
>>
>>which seems to argue for a minimal specification
>
> Absolutely the opposite; it argues for a complete as possible
> specification, so newbies do not have to work to understand how to
> use the language.
They have to understand the specification to use the language competently.
Two year olds learn natural language without any specification. Two
year olds don't learn programming languages that are specified in
detail. The fewer the formal rules, the easier it is to know them all.
(And this ignores the problem that the specification is written in
English, and the larger it is, the less likely it will ever be
translated into Lojban, which I think people agree is how it should be).
> I expect there to be varying levels of documentation; a beginner's
> book, the CLL, the online super-spec, that sort of thing. How much
> people choose to learn is up to them; you can speak perfectly good
> Lojban without ever opening the CLL, even now. But when people *do*
> have a question, there should be an answer, somewhere.
I'd like to accept all this. But to say that "you can speak perfectly
good Lojban without ever opening the CLL, even now" implies that someone
who doesn't ever open CLL and is still speaking perfect Lojban even if
he violates CLL.
If you can beat someone about the head and shoulders and say "you are
doing it wrong" if they don't follow some part of the prescription, then
they have to know that part.
In language, older people are less willing to take risks that might be
seen as mistakes, which is a major reason why adults have trouble
achieving the fluency of young people. Rather than say something wrong,
they say nothing. And NORMALLY in language, if people don't know that
there is a rule governing something in the language, they wing it
(though they may ask for an opinion later).
You seem to be turning this around, suggesting that if there are no
rules people tend to say nothing, but ask for the rule, but if there are
an infinite number of rules people will be willing to use the language
more because they know there is a definitive RIGHT WAY (even though they
probably don't know it and would have to look it up in the super-spec to
find out).
>>Robin and others booted me out, apparently because I wasn't
>>delegating that power enough (or fast enough). Robin now seems
>>unhappy with the result.
>
> I am unhappy only with the stagnation of the BPFK, which you have
> not participated in at all to my knowledge.
Certainly not under your jurisdiction. My form of participation was
part of what drove Nick from the job, and I don't want to do the same to
you.
I tried a few times to take some chunk no one was working on, go off on
my own and try to come up with something that others could "shepherd",
so I wouldn't be obliged to work under the dynamic of the web-based byfy
procedures, but I found I couldn't do it by myself, Nora didn't have the
time, and while Cowan said he was willing, it never seemed to happen.
(Perhaps what I should have done was work one-on-one with Jorge via
email, who has the patience to deal with me even though we disagree on
many issues. I can deal with email, just not with web-interaction.)
> Everything else is
> going just fine, IMO.
Good.
>>>If I want natural, growing, living languages, I know where to
>>>find them.
>>
>>If we never reach that stage, Lojban will never be more than a
>>toy.
> I disagree. You can have a large, popular language without it being
> subject to random, unfettered linguistic; see, for example, French.
French isn't a "natural, growing, living language"??
And yes, it is subject to random, unfettered linguistic forces,
especially in regards to the lexicon. Borrowed English words are used
frequently despite official opposition.
When people are speaking a language fluently, they don't look at specs
or check items in the dictionary. While I like the concept that Lojban
might have a better defined spec than any natural language, I know that
if the language is successful, then people won't generally be following
it religiously. (The ways that they end up NOT following it will likely
be linguistically significant, especially when their "incorrect usage"
doesn't reflect their native language)
>>The fact that xorlo was approved, and then the membership
>>reinforced that approval, and yet people are apparently still
>>asking "Are you using xorlo?",
>
> I don't know where you got that impression; I haven't heard anyone
> say that since the approval.
Okay. I misunderstood what you were saying.
>>Actually, you have. From me (and to some extent from Nora).
>>Which is why I have never made an attempt to learn xorlo. I'm
>>relying on xorxes claim that I don't need to learn it %^)
>
> You weren't speaking the language *before* xorlo, so that's not
> really interesting or relevant to me.
Actually, I was. I never achieved Nick's fluency, but for many years
Nora and I were among the only people who could sustain a conversation
without a word list handy. Nora and I spoke ONLY proto-Lojban for
several hours during our honeymoon in October 1987 when neither of us
knew more than 300 words (and they weren't the same ones). One Logfest
we called up Jorge and had a short conversation, and we several times
did so with Nick.
No, I didn't try to do this at LogFest, except for brief periods. I was
wearing too many hats to do so.
> Task 4 explicitely orders the basis for such decisions. That
> ordering *is the problem*.
It states criteria and gives byfy permission to override them when
appropriate. Again, I don't think I intended any ordering of those
criteria.
>>The baseline policy regarding "let usage decide" agrees entirely
>>with this, with the explicit provision that after the baseline is
>>declared, no such vote will be even proposed for 5 years (and the
>>implicit provision that when such a vote takes place, actual usage
>>will be considered).
>
> That was very much not my understanding; my understanding was that
> after that 5 year period, usage *always* wins, even if it's
> illogical or stupid.
After the 5 years period it is up to whatever Lojbanists speaking the
language decide, which could include any amount of formal change. My
vision incorporated a great deal of recognition of what will really
happen when the community has a large skilled base of users. It never
hurts to have my vision for the language match what will really happen,
since it makes me look wise and prescient %^)
> That at that time the BPFK is not empowered to
> over-ride usage in the interests of the overall design goals of the
> language, whatever those might be.
We did not explicitly provide for a byfy at that time. If the
Lojban-speaking community wants to have an academy working only
in-language, and is willing to abide by their decisions to whatever
extent, that is fine by me. My vision doesn't require it. With only
relatively fluent users making the decisions, it will be "usage
deciding" with the usage of the "deciders" being dominant.
"Let usage decide" never meant that all usages, and all users, are equal
in influence. That isn't true in natural language (ref. "the Queen's
English", "Ebonics", etc) and it won't be true in Lojban. Whether I
agree with xorxes or not, his usage is probably at least as strong a
model for others as any words in CLL could be (which means that even
now, "usage is deciding").
> If I am misunderstanding, then I assure you I am not the only one to
> so misunderstand, and clarification is needed regardless.
Agreed.
>>A page of approved typo corrections and clarifications doesn't bug
>>me. The lack of a multi-year period without prescriptively imposed
>>change, (and without any discussion of such change, except
>>in-language) would bother me greatly.
>
> I really don't understand why you have this hard-on for the freeze
> period? What difference does it make? People are coming into the
> language all the time; some will be during the freeze, and some
> won't. How does it help anybody?
1) There have been and still are people who will not invest in learning
the language because things aren't nailed down. You've more or less
said so yourself in this discussion, but think that making a decision
solves the problem. But especially in this community, there will always
be more proposal being considered and as yet undecided, and your
proposed change means that the situation you described for xorlo will be
constantly recurring, from the date a change is proposed to the date the
formal change pages to CLL and other documents are approved.
(It also means that any copy of a second edition CLL is obsolete the day
the first change is approved. For the sorts of people active now and
buying the 1st edition CLL even with known problems in it, this isn't a
problem. But there are others for whom the obsolescence of CLL means
that they won't use it at all, and won't bother to learn the language.)
2) Regardless of point 1), a gap when there is no formal change means
that there will be a significant period of time for the numbers and
level of fluency to grow, so as to enable what I think we both want -
that change ideas be discussed in Lojban rather than English, and the
user base becomes large enough that xorxes alone isn't enough to
"decide" usage.
As long as it is common for people to announce or propose changes in
English, we lose credibility as an effective language, the sorts of
changes being considered will tend to have a strong English bias (either
to be very much like English or very much unlike English), and not
necessarily well informed in the dynamics of Lojban communication.
2a) Lots of talk of change and reform in English makes things look
unstable for newbies. If discussion occurs in Lojban, they have to
learn the language in order to even understand that change is being
discussed.
The 5-year period is somewhat arbitrary, but more or less reflects how
long I think it would take for the Lojban speaking community to be large
enough and skilled enough (and for the lexicon to be well-enough
developed) to discuss change without recourse to English (and maybe to
enable CLL and the baselined word lists to be translated into Lojban)
(Actually, the history of byfy suggests that the latter would take MUCH
longer, because people don't exist willing to do that much work - CLL
took 4 years to write in English with Cowan at the peak of his
productivity. But I'm willing to say that if we can't get that far in 5
years, I will support a Plan B that more or less moves things in the
right direction.)
> People who want to learn to speak the language seem to deal just
> fine with changes; people like you and Nora who don't don't seem to
> be able to catch up even over the 5+ years the language *was*
> frozen.
???
We haven't tried to catch up. There is nothing to catch up to until the
baseline is done. The language remains that of CLL except for a
supposedly transparent xorlo.
> I explicitely refuse to spend time writing definitions based on the
> current documentation without stopping to consider whether that
> documentation makes any sense internally.
By all means, so consider.
> This means I refuse to do tasks 1-3 without also doing task 4.
As stated above, as long as you finish task 1 before asking me to *vote*
on task 4 changes, I can probably live with this. (And if I don't
personally try to participate in byfy, I can probably live with less
even while not approving. I really do think as jatna you can do what
you want unless overruled, and I can't foresee the Board even trying to
overrule you if things are getting done. Your being 1/3 of the Board
makes this even less likely %^).
> Task 4, and its ordering of requirements, was what caused the deadlock.
Can you produce a rewording of task 4 (or a statement of byfy
policy/procedures that would override the text) that eliminates this
apparent ordering of requirements that I don't think we intended, and
which would end the deadlock?
If you can do so, will you try it?
Since I think byfy has the power to prioritize requirements on its own,
and in any event the Board has the interim power to interpret the
baseline statement and you can easily get a Board majority, this aspect
of your issues might be resolved quickly and without acrimony.
Then, if you are correct, no more deadlock?
> You seem to think that everything is fine with the BPFK's charter as
> is, yet clearly it isn't, because we've been stuck for 5 years on
> {.ai nai} (yes, really, on *just* that issue, for that long).
Alas, Nora and I don't really even know what the issue is (and didn't
even know that there was an issue till you mentioned it), so I'll have
to get back to you on that. You can be as nasty as you want about my
failure to keep up, but I simply haven't been able to follow the
discussion, or even to distinguish that there WAS a discussion amidst
the overwhelming volume of Lojban List traffic that I have also been
trying and failing to follow.
Something you said to another about restarting the byfy mailing list may
be part of it. If it stopped, I immediately ceased to recognized that
any discussion was going on. in many years, I haven't learned how to
read and follow a wiki discussion (or indeed any sort of web-based
forum) effectively.
For task 1, I would be happy with a clear statement of the issue and the
relevant contradictions involved.
For resolving the issue, this seems inherently *much* smaller than
something like xorlo, and I'd likely go along with anything that was
clear and not egregiously weird. I doubt that there is enough usage of
.ainai for a usage or relearning argument to count for much.
As for byfy being stuck on one issue for a long time, the way it ideally
would have worked would have been to drop it and get all the
noncontroversial stuff out of the way and come back to the tough issues.
You had a new person come in today and write a cmavo definition. I
don't know if it is good enough, but I imagine a couple dozen people
could do something similar for all the remaining cmavo in a few weeks,
even if some of them only do a couple of words. Then debate and vote on
individual definitions if necessary rather than entire sections.
Especially at a preliminary stage, I suspect that the number of issues
unresolved would rapidly drop.
95% of the recent health care reform legislation was done before the
meaningful negotiations on the sticking points really got moving. And
what the Democrats had to do to pass the legislation over 100%
Republican opposition such that they couldn't lose more than a trivial
number of votes on their side make it a excellent example of how
consensus politics works (at least within the Democratic caucus).
> I'm very, very close to being past caring, but: what do *you* want
> to do to fix it? (and would this involve you yourself actually
> doing anything? because it if would, you might as well keep it to
> yourself; I simply don't trust you to actually do any BPFK work.
> Too many broken promises)
I won't make any promises because of that.
When this discussion ends, I WILL look at the cmavo definition someone
new proposed and comment and I will try to dig up the Eaton stuff some
want to work on. Again, not a promise. Just my intent. I am satisfied
to be judged on my results and not my promises.
lojbab
And Rosta
> And I contend that his second point is the problem. The assignment for
> byfy was NEVER "perfection". I thought the assignment was to achieve
> "good enough", and that CLL brought us pretty close to "good enough",
> but that a couple of areas like the cmavo list needed to be brought up
> to a standard comparable to the rest of the language documentation.
>
> Somehow, things morphed into byfy being required to define the language
> so as to answer all the questions that anyone will ever ask. I never
> supported that mission, and I'm not entirely sure how it came into being.
>
> the more limited job done first, before forming an opinion on that.)
A language is a system of rules mapping between sounds and meanings. By that sensible definition, Lojban is nowhere near "pretty close to good enough". The so-called 'grammar' doesn't deserve to be called a grammar, since all it does is give meaningless structures to phonological strings. CLL does make a start on the definition of the rules of Lojban, but only a start.
Some users of Lojban don't realize how meaningless or semantically indeterminate their utterances are. Some, I presume, don't care. Others are frustrated. And perhaps in a small Lojban-speaking enclave of Argentina, they've created their own much more complete dialect.
I would have felt much more vehemently about all this, had I not become convinced that Lojban can never be Logban3, i.e. can never be a usuable logical language; and since I care about a usable logical language, the failures of Lojban pain me less.
Robin Lee Powell, On 09/04/2010 02:47:
> On Thu, Apr 08, 2010 at 01:55:23PM -0400, Robert LeChevalier wrote:
>> The policy explicitly says that "let usage decide" is NOT
>> applicable until AFTER the byfy completes the 4 tasks assigned
>> under "THE LANGUAGE DESIGN COMMISSION" is the policy statement
>> (read the second sentence under INCORPORATION OF PRIOR STATEMENT).
>
> One place where we differ is that I no longer think usage should
> decide *ever*. Unless the BPFK becomes totally controlled by a pack
> of drooling morons, of course usage will be acknowledged and
> respected, and the BPFK may *choose* to promote usage to the status
> of officialness, but we should not let the language drift via usage.
> It should be well specified.
>
> I also don't think that describing the lanugage is what we
> should be doing. We should be *declaring* the language.
Exactly. Declaring the language.
What users do should be neither here nor there: the language should be a tool, consisting of a set of sound--meaning correspondence rules, available for whatever use people wish to make of it.
Pierre:
> Can we have some Lojbanists accepting some, but not all, of the rulings of the BPFK?
The usage of Lojbanists would and should be unregulated. The declaration of Lojban would exist to be used freely however people choose.
Robin again:
>> As I see it, the problem has been that the procedures as written
>> by Nick and maintained by Robin
>> http://www.lojban.org/tiki/BPFK+Procedures have largely conflated
>> tasks 1 and task 4 of the byfy effort, raising the standard for
>> task 1 so high as to make it unachievable, with all aspects of the
>> language defined and justified to the utmost, whereas the intent
>> is only that change-by-fiat be justified.
>
> The problem is that:
>
> 1. defining the cmavo requires making sense of them, which
> routinely leads to discovering contradictions and having to make a
> decision
>
> 2. no-one wants to do work that will shortly be made irrelevant; if
> we *know* there's a problem, defining the current state and then
> discussing the change at some future date feels like a waste of time
This is partly why my contributions to BPFK were never more than desultory. Description of prior usage is dreary and time wasting if the goal is to create a declaration that satisfies the main design goals. Of course, the original BPFK founders did mainly want a body that would primarily describe usage, but nobody was interested in doing that work.
>> task 1 alone would require that byfy sections include
>>> Expanded cmavo definitions. This should be considered a top priority in
>>> all sections where it is relevant (which is just about all of them),
>>> because the current cmavo definitions suck.
>> and possibly
>>> Examples of usage in every fashion that the items discussed in the
>>> proposal could feasibly be used, especially of cmavo. I'm serious about
>>> this: lack of examples is one of the major places the current cmavo list
>>> falls down. There needn't be an example for every single cmavo, but
>>> there certainly should be an example for every class thereof.
>> but all of the rest should be dealt with separately as change proposals
>> under task 4 and not even considered until after task 1 is done.
>
> I shouldn't have to say this after 7 years, but: it's not going to
> happen. I explicitely refuse to try to document things we are later
> going to change without working on the changes as part of the
> documentation, and other BPFK members have told me they feel
> similarily.
>
> In other words: I refuse to do part 1 of
> http://www.lojban.org/tiki/Official+Baseline+Statement by itself.
> If you can find people who do not so refuse, let me know.
If a versioning system exists, it might make sense for the default position to be that cmavo are abolished unless a good clear case can be made for retaining them.
--And.
Bob LeChevalier
> A language is a system of rules mapping between sounds and meanings.
A language is first and foremost a means of communication (and need not
use sound BTW)
> What users do should be neither here nor there: the language should be a
> tool, consisting of a set of sound--meaning correspondence rules,
> available for whatever use people wish to make of it.
>
> Pierre:
>
>> Can we have some Lojbanists accepting some, but not all, of the
>> rulings of the BPFK?
>
> The usage of Lojbanists would and should be unregulated. The declaration
> of Lojban would exist to be used freely however people choose.
A bunch of rules that no one will ever use - sounds like a form of
mental masturbation (or since this is a group effort, an orgy thereof).
But then I've always tended to disparage conlang-making, where the
process of language-making is the point, and not the result.
Some people do want to work with Lojban as a mental toy, and we have to
allow for that. But more, I think, want to communicate with it, which
is what sets Lojban apart from most of the hundreds of conlangs that are
out there.
lojbab
Christopher Doty
And Rosta wrote:A language is first and foremost a means of communication (and need not use sound BTW)
A language is a system of rules mapping between sounds and meanings.
Robin Lee Powell
> On Thursday 08 April 2010 21:47:09 Robin Lee Powell wrote:
> > One place where we differ is that I no longer think usage should
> > decide *ever*. Unless the BPFK becomes totally controlled by a
> > pack of drooling morons, of course usage will be acknowledged
> > and respected, and the BPFK may *choose* to promote usage to the
> > status of officialness, but we should not let the language drift
> > via usage. It should be well specified.
>
> What will happen once there is a critical mass of verclijbo?
Ragnarok? The Second Coming? Shiva dancing the end of time?
I have no idea, but I would like it to include them respecting (and
being part of!) the BPFK, and vice versa. This isn't supposed to be
an antagonistic relationship!
> > I also don't think that describing the lanugage is what we
> > should be doing. We should be *declaring* the language.
>
> Does this include declaring the meaning of lujvo and fu'ivla?
For dictionary purposes, absolutely. Between dictionary releases,
enh.
> Can we have some Lojbanists accepting some, but not all, of the
> rulings of the BPFK?
That question is nonsense to me. What, you think the BPFK will hire
jackbooted thugs to knock down people's doors if they use the
language wrong? We can't *stop* anyone, we can only say "That's not
Lojban [in this fashion]".
Timo Paulssen
> A language is a system of rules mapping between sounds and meanings.
> By that sensible definition, Lojban is nowhere near "pretty close to
> good enough". The so-called 'grammar' doesn't deserve to be called a
> grammar, since all it does is give meaningless structures to
> phonological strings. CLL does make a start on the definition of the
> rules of Lojban, but only a start. Some users of Lojban don't realize
> how meaningless or semantically indeterminate their utterances are.
> Some, I presume, don't care. Others are frustrated. And perhaps in a
> small Lojban-speaking enclave of Argentina, they've created their own
> much more complete dialect.
I'm neither in the "don't care" nor in the "is frustrated" camp. Please
explain what you mean by "meaningless or semantically indeterminate"?
mu'o mi tolmencre
Robin Lee Powell
> Robin Lee Powell wrote:
> >On Thu, Apr 08, 2010 at 01:55:23PM -0400, Robert LeChevalier wrote:
> >
> >>I call upon everyone involved in this discussion to reread the
> >>policy http://www.lojban.org/tiki/Official+Baseline+Statement
> >
> >I think the success of that policy speaks for itself.
>
> I think it has been quite successful in achieving a stable language.
>
> Obviously not in getting the baseline done.
Pretty sure it's called "the baseline statement", so I call that a
total fail.
> >I also don't think that describing the lanugage is what we should
> >be doing. We should be *declaring* the language.
>
> At this point, I agree with you. The long term is where we still
> are apart. But we don't need to solve the long term yet.
>
> With regard to the stuff that is presently covered by the baseline
> documents, I can live with your position, which is easier to sell
> to computer people and harder to sell to linguists. I am also
> sure that if it gets to be a problem, you are a reasonable person
> and would reconsider.
What I want is to understand what you want, right now, to fix the
deadlock.
It looks like it might be sufficient if you just expand on the last
two paragraphs: where do you think we agree? what does "declaring
the language" look like to you? What does "I can live with your
position" mean, *exactly*?
I'm glad you think I'm reasonable; I'm not *feeling* reasonable
right now. :)
> The point is that defining the current state *should* be
> relatively easy to get agreement on, ideally a 100% consensus.
Certainly, but who is going to do the work? *No-one* wants to do
what you're describing.
> The language is what it is, warts and all. Can we agree on what
> the warts are?
We can always agree on what the warts are; what we can't always see
is what the face underneath looks like. If the CLL directly
contradicts itself, what are we to say the current state is?
There's another big issue here: I do not recall ever understanding
that what you wanted was to define cmavo *solely* based on the cmavo
list and the CLL, without any reference to anything else. That's
really quite a surprise to me. I don't know that it makes a
difference to me, but a surprise none the less.
And another issue: none of this is relevant to the matter at hand,
in my mind. The matter at hand is that, for better or worse, the
BPFK was trying to do description-of-current-state and changes at
the same time; perhaps that was a mistake, but it's besides the
point. At some point, there will be change proposals. The matter
at hand is: what happens to those proposals? We have been
deadlocked for *five years* because one camp believed that the
silent majority wanted the language to be as stable as possible, and
the other simply wanted the language to be awesome. I wanted to
find out which was actually true, and head in that direction.
So. The BPFK has been doing things in not the order you intended.
I had forgotten that, but it's not interesting or relevant to me.
What is important to me is that in the fullness of time, there will
be change proposals, and if they're going to be deadlocked, I don't
want any part of the BPFK.
That expresses, I think, the heart of what I want: a way to resolve
deadlocks in the PBFK when change proposals *do* occur. It seemed
to me that changing the current ordering of the stuff in task #4,
and making it more explicitely ordered, would do the trick nicely,
so I went to the community to find out what was actually wanted.
In direct contradiction to what I said mere minutes ago, I'm willing
to push the BPFK to start by describing the current state of the CLL
and cmavo, even though that seems like mindless grunt work and I'm
going to hate every minute of it (I expect to be the only one doing
it, and if it works out this way *I expect a fucking *medal* for
it*), but if it'll make things smoother, I'll do it.
What I am *not* willing to do:
1. Publish *anything* before a dictionary.
2. Publish a dictionary before all non-trivial outstanding change
proposals are completed.
3. Continue working on the BPFK for even one more *second* under
the prior conditions, which were that Broca and you and Nora would
block any change short of a direct internal contradiction *just
because it was a change*. That behaviour is what task #4's list
calls for, and it's not working. I want the BPFK aligned behind a
set of goals *for the language*, and committed to acheiving them,
before I will do *any* further work on it.
This obviates much of what you said, so, trimming.
I think we can turn that into a middle-ground proposal. Your turn.
> If task 1 had been done relatively quickly,
I *really* didn't understand task 1, it seems.
> >I shouldn't have to say this after 7 years, but: it's not going to
> >happen. I explicitely refuse to try to document things we are later
> >going to change without working on the changes as part of the
> >documentation, and other BPFK members have told me they feel
> >similarily.
> >
> >In other words: I refuse to do part 1 of
> >http://www.lojban.org/tiki/Official+Baseline+Statement by itself.
> >If you can find people who do not so refuse, let me know.
>
> Can you get people include what is necessary for part 1 as part of
> their writing the change proposal?
For the record: it has *always* been the case that BPFK proposals
have included detailed reference to the various parts of the current
state(s).
> If so, then my position becomes no more than having byfy vote that
> the part 1's accurately reflect the status quo before trying to
> finalize agreement on the solutions. Ideally, we'd have a
> complete set of task 1 description before we start formally trying
> to approve the changes, but I can bend there.
I'm not at all sure I get why that (re-writing the CLL in the form
of cmavo definitions before anything else) is *so* important to you,
but if that's really all you want in the short term, that's quite
reasonable.
> >>I envisioned, in effect, that byfy would be supplanted or
> >>supplemented by the entire Lojban-using community. Whether some
> >>sort of official body like byfy would make a formal decision is
> >>something the community can decide then. We don't need to decide
> >>this now, do we?
> >
> >We need to do *SOMETHING* now.
>
> Agreed. If only because you, as byfy jatna, want something done now.
No. We need to do something now because the BPFK has been stuck for
five years, and I'm not sure I can count on the fingers of only one
hand the major, active Lojbanists that are ready to walk out.
> Give me a baseline first, and I might be willing to grant a blank
> check for whatever some sufficient number of people are able to
> debate and document solely in Lojban. And I see no problem with
> byfy as answerer of questions and documenter thereof. (But the
> documentation should be in Lojban, shouldn't it? What level of
> documentation of what kind would be necessary for the answer to be
> sufficiently authoritative? I don't know the answer, and I am not
> prepared to think about it).
The problem with documentation in Lojban is that it's totally
useless for someone learning the language; changes need to make
their way back into the CLL and L4B and the dictionary and such.
However, as long as someone's willing to step up and turn our
in-Lojban discussion into changes to those documents, I *love* the
idea of the BPFK being a Lojban-only forum. It'll be all
me-and-xorxes, all the time. :D
> Minimizing relearning is certainly an argument that can be made
> against a major change, but nothing in the section 4 points actually
> requires that as a factor - it was more or less assumed that the
> need to achieve consensus would ensure that the sorts of things
> covered by your goals are considered to a degree people find
> appropriate.
Yeah, it's the need to acheive consensus, in absence of clear goals,
that's killing us.
> >>>We're basically demanding that every newbie have a gigantic
> >>>level of dedication just to use the language effectively. We
> >>>might as well put up a sign that says "Warning: hard work
> >>>within".
> >>
> >>which seems to argue for a minimal specification
> >
> >Absolutely the opposite; it argues for a complete as possible
> >specification, so newbies do not have to work to understand how
> >to use the language.
>
> They have to understand the specification to use the language
> competently.
Only parts of it; that's why you have tiered learning materials.
> (And this ignores the problem that the specification is written in
> English, and the larger it is, the less likely it will ever be
> translated into Lojban, which I think people agree is how it
> should be).
Only the most formal part (i.e. the CLL). There needs to be a
hierarchy of learning materials, and the lowest level needs to be in
something other than Lojban, obviously. I still would *love* to do
an autodidakte (a book that teaches Lojban starting only with
pictures, and never using any other language).
> >I expect there to be varying levels of documentation; a
> >beginner's book, the CLL, the online super-spec, that sort of
> >thing. How much people choose to learn is up to them; you can
> >speak perfectly good Lojban without ever opening the CLL, even
> >now. But when people *do* have a question, there should be an
> >answer, somewhere.
>
> I'd like to accept all this. But to say that "you can speak
> perfectly good Lojban without ever opening the CLL, even now"
> implies that someone who doesn't ever open CLL and is still
> speaking perfect Lojban even if he violates CLL.
>
> If you can beat someone about the head and shoulders and say "you
> are doing it wrong" if they don't follow some part of the
> prescription, then they have to know that part.
If all you do is [optional UI] [sumti] [selbri] [optional sumti],
you will never be wrong, and you will never need to open the CLL.
You'll also be limited in what you can express, but add NU to that,
and not *very* limited at all.
It should be possible for people to speak the language correctly
after reading L4B or similar, without ever opening the CLL.
Sometimes they'll do something wrong, and people will point them at
why, in the CLL, and maybe they'll read the surrounding section, or
maybe not. Sometimes they'll want to say something they don't know
how to say yet, and people will point them at why, in the CLL, and
maybe they'll read the surrounding section, or maybe not.
Even internally within the CLL, the chapters should start with
"here's a seblri" and end with "so if you have se te xe nu ke klama
bangu ke'e du'u zarci, it means [this]", so that the deeper you go
in a chapter, the less relevant to normal speech it becomes.
I'd expect a lot of *really* finicky stuff to never be put into a
book.
My expectation is that beyond a certain point, the "ever expanding
specification" will be dealing with really, *really* finicky
edge-cases that almost never come up. What happens if you have a
termset on each side of a ga...gi..., and the moon is in the seventh
house that day? That sort of thing. Stuff that really, actually
doesn't matter the vast majority of the time.
I've read the whole CLL, and I've forgotten more than half, and I
routinely converse in Lojban.
Hierarchy of learning documents. This is the key.
> You seem to be turning this around, suggesting that if there are
> no rules people tend to say nothing, but ask for the rule,
That's my experience on IRC, yes.
> but if there are an infinite number of rules people will be
> willing to use the language more because they know there is a
> definitive RIGHT WAY (even though they probably don't know it and
> would have to look it up in the super-spec to find out).
I don't think there ever will be an infinite number of rules, and
I'm saying that the vast majority of "how do I say X?" conversations
will begin and end with L4B or similar.
> >>The baseline policy regarding "let usage decide" agrees entirely
> >>with this, with the explicit provision that after the baseline
> >>is declared, no such vote will be even proposed for 5 years (and
> >>the implicit provision that when such a vote takes place, actual
> >>usage will be considered).
> >
> >That was very much not my understanding; my understanding was
> >that after that 5 year period, usage *always* wins, even if it's
> >illogical or stupid.
>
> After the 5 years period it is up to whatever Lojbanists speaking
> the language decide, which could include any amount of formal
> change. My vision incorporated a great deal of recognition of
> what will really happen when the community has a large skilled
> base of users. It never hurts to have my vision for the language
> match what will really happen, since it makes me look wise and
> prescient %^)
I really don't like the idea of the 5 year freeze anymore, but I
concede that planning for after it is probably silly at this time.
> 2) Regardless of point 1), a gap when there is no formal change
> means that there will be a significant period of time for the
> numbers and level of fluency to grow,
That's where we disagree: I don't think that the gap will make any
difference, at all, to the growth of the language, and the level of
activity in #lojban on IRC bears me out quite well on this point.
We've been getting *way* more new users since the xorlo weirdness
then we were before it.
I think people who find the language and are interested won't even
notice whether we're in the freeze or not.
> As long as it is common for people to announce or propose changes
> in English, we lose credibility as an effective language, the
> sorts of changes being considered will tend to have a strong
> English bias (either to be very much like English or very much
> unlike English), and not necessarily well informed in the dynamics
> of Lojban communication.
I can certainly agree with that.
I think that rather than having a fixed time for freezing, we should
simply say: "the language is currently good enough; future
discussion of changes in Lojban only". I think that would slow down
the rate of change *quite* enough for your purposes.
> The 5-year period is somewhat arbitrary, but more or less reflects
> how long I think it would take for the Lojban speaking community
> to be large enough and skilled enough (and for the lexicon to be
> well-enough developed) to discuss change without recourse to
> English (and maybe to enable CLL and the baselined word lists to
> be translated into Lojban)
Again, I don't think a freeze will make any difference to
popularity, because nothing about a freeze will advertise the
language to people who wouldn't otherwise find it.
It *may* make a difference to fluency, but I'm not even sure about
that.
> >Task 4, and its ordering of requirements, was what caused the
> >deadlock.
>
> Can you produce a rewording of task 4 (or a statement of byfy
> policy/procedures that would override the text) that eliminates
> this apparent ordering of requirements that I don't think we
> intended, and which would end the deadlock?
>
> If you can do so, will you try it?
That's pretty much what my plan was anyways (see mail entitled
"That's *not* my formal proposal").
> Since I think byfy has the power to prioritize requirements on its
> own, and in any event the Board has the interim power to interpret
> the baseline statement and you can easily get a Board majority,
> this aspect of your issues might be resolved quickly and without
> acrimony.
>
> Then, if you are correct, no more deadlock?
*nod*
> >You seem to think that everything is fine with the BPFK's charter as
> >is, yet clearly it isn't, because we've been stuck for 5 years on
> >{.ai nai} (yes, really, on *just* that issue, for that long).
>
> Alas, Nora and I don't really even know what the issue is (and
> didn't even know that there was an issue till you mentioned it), so
> I'll have to get back to you on that. You can be as nasty as you
> want about my failure to keep up, but I simply haven't been able to
> follow the discussion, or even to distinguish that there WAS a
> discussion amidst the overwhelming volume of Lojban List traffic
> that I have also been trying and failing to follow.
We havn't discussed it in at least 3 years. It's just been a silent
deadlock.
> For resolving the issue, this seems inherently *much* smaller than
> something like xorlo, and I'd likely go along with anything that
> was clear and not egregiously weird. I doubt that there is enough
> usage of .ainai for a usage or relearning argument to count for
> much.
I agree, but Broca was blocking it simply because it was a change.
This was the core of the issue.
> As for byfy being stuck on one issue for a long time, the way it
> ideally would have worked would have been to drop it and get all
> the noncontroversial stuff out of the way and come back to the
> tough issues.
That's the problem: this issue isn't tough at all; it was a total
50-50 deadlock (because of the consensus requirement).
But i know what you mean.
> You had a new person come in today and write a cmavo definition.
That's the first time in something like 5 years.
> I don't know if it is good enough, but I imagine a couple dozen
> people could do something similar for all the remaining cmavo in a
> few weeks, even if some of them only do a couple of words.
I do to, but I have no idea where to find those people. I'll try
again after the mailing list is updated, though.
Robin Lee Powell
> > >beginner's book, the CLL, the online super-spec, that sort of
> > >thing. How much people choose to learn is up to them; you can
> > >speak perfectly good Lojban without ever opening the CLL, even
> > >now. But when people *do* have a question, there should be an
> > >answer, somewhere.
> >
> > I'd like to accept all this. But to say that "you can speak
> > perfectly good Lojban without ever opening the CLL, even now"
> > implies that someone who doesn't ever open CLL and is still
> > speaking perfect Lojban even if he violates CLL.
> >
> > If you can beat someone about the head and shoulders and say
> > "you are doing it wrong" if they don't follow some part of the
> > prescription, then they have to know that part.
>
> If all you do is [optional UI] [sumti] [selbri] [optional sumti],
> you will never be wrong, and you will never need to open the CLL.
> You'll also be limited in what you can express, but add NU to
> that, and not *very* limited at all.
>
> It should be possible for people to speak the language correctly
> after reading L4B or similar, without ever opening the CLL.
As a specific example of "no-one needs to memorize this, but we need
to document it anyway", I present
http://www.lojban.org/tiki/Magic+Words
99.999% of the time, you'll never have to worry about what "zo zei
bu" means. The first couple of tiers of documentation don't even
need to suggest that this is a possibility, beyond perhaps "for more
information see CLL Chap N Sec M". That doesn't mean it should be
left undefined (as is the current state: the YACC does not touch on
those words at all).
And Rosta
> Robin Lee Powell wrote:
>> On Thu, Apr 08, 2010 at 01:55:23PM -0400, Robert LeChevalier wrote:
>> I also don't think that describing the lanugage is what we
>> should be doing. We should be *declaring* the language.
>
> computer people and harder to sell to linguists.
I'm a linguist, and I think you're wrong on criteria for sellability to linguists. Even setting aside the question of what 'selling' means here. Not that selling to linguists is an important or especially desirable goal. Currently I think Lojban's main interest to linguistics would be (ingloriously, IMO) for interactional sociolinguistics studying geek culture.
--And.
And Rosta
> And Rosta wrote:
>> Pierre:
>>
>>> Can we have some Lojbanists accepting some, but not all, of the
>>> rulings of the BPFK?
>>
>> The usage of Lojbanists would and should be unregulated. The
>> declaration of Lojban would exist to be used freely however people
>> choose.
>
> A bunch of rules that no one will ever use - sounds like a form of
> mental masturbation (or since this is a group effort, an orgy thereof).
> But then I've always tended to disparage conlang-making, where the
> process of language-making is the point, and not the result.
>
> Some people do want to work with Lojban as a mental toy, and we have to
> allow for that. But more, I think, want to communicate with it, which
> is what sets Lojban apart from most of the hundreds of conlangs that are
> out there.
Need I spell out the contempt that your similes deserve? Perhaps you would dismiss the sphere of the arts and sciences, of intellectual inquiry and intellectual production, as masturbation and toys. It's not that the similes are inapt, for most intellectual production, e.g. in the universities, is done for its own sake, and so could be likened to masturbation or play; the objectionableness is in your dismissal of this work that enriches our world and our knowledge of it.
And anyway, you've missed the point in various ways. The fact that a language is a set of rules (definitional rules, not rules regulating behaviour) does not entail that nobody uses the rules or that nobody wants to use them.
As for how many people want to communicate in Lojban, it's open to question what proportion want to communicate in Lojban and what proportion want to communicate in a still hypothetical language that succeeds in satisfying the key speakable-logic design goals of the Loglan/Lojban project. But whatever the proportions, surely I am not alone in thinking that the Lojban community is of interest precisely because there is no other community with a desire to work together to create and bring into use a logical language. The Lojban language itself is a failure as a logical language, but the community itself, despite Robin's well-warranted hand-wringing, is a relative success.
--And.
Bob LeChevalier
> On Fri, Apr 09, 2010 at 08:11:41AM -0400, Bob LeChevalier wrote:
>>>>I call upon everyone involved in this discussion to reread the
>>>>policy http://www.lojban.org/tiki/Official+Baseline+Statement
>>>
>>>I think the success of that policy speaks for itself.
>>
>>I think it has been quite successful in achieving a stable language.
>>
>>Obviously not in getting the baseline done.
>
> Pretty sure it's called "the baseline statement", so I call that a
> total fail.
The purpose of a baseline (and a baseline statement) is to reassure
people about the importance of a stable language. That part was
successful. I agree that finishing the job was not.
>>With regard to the stuff that is presently covered by the baseline
>>documents, I can live with your position, which is easier to sell
>>to computer people and harder to sell to linguists. I am also
>>sure that if it gets to be a problem, you are a reasonable person
>>and would reconsider.
>
> What I want is to understand what you want, right now, to fix the
> deadlock.
What I *want* is not something I can have, so at this point I am not
worrying about it %^) It would include John Cowan, who had the skills
to resolve deadlocks merely by the force of his personality and his
credibility in the language.
Doing the minimum necessary differently to eliminate the perception that
there is a deadlock (because I think it is a perception and needs to be
changed in ways that perceptions are changed).
Because your frustration has hit the level it has, and because YOU are
critical to any solution as jatna, a key priority for me is to find a
solution that reduces that frustration while getting the job done. This
means NOT relying on the medal performance you refer to below.
> It looks like it might be sufficient if you just expand on the last
> two paragraphs: where do you think we agree?
Most importantly, that the status quo is unacceptable, and that you are
going to take action which will make things more acceptable. NOW (which
I actually understand as zipu'o rather than ca, if I remember my tense
stuff)
> what does "declaring the language" look like to you?
Completing something the community will be satisfied with as a
prescriptive baseline.
Coming up with a way to satisfy those who want more than the baseline
statement requires in terms of question answering or continued logical
specification, when it arises after the baseline is done. But this is
not an immediate priority.
> What does "I can live with your position" mean, *exactly*?
I THINK it means that, having reached the point we are at, I accept that
some things will have to be done that I disapprove of, but that I can
tolerate if it a) gets the job done and b) again makes you happy to be
doing the job. (I'm not sure that "happy" is the right word there, but
someone carrying the responsibilities you have assumed deserves to get
some positive feelings out of fulfilling them.
What this means is that for those aspects of what you wish to do that
affect the short term job of getting the baseline done, I want to speak
my piece, but otherwise don't intend to fight you.
I am willing to help in the ways that I am good at helping. This
demonstrably does not include writing sections. I am not sure what it
does include, but I think we can come up with some things that will make
dealing with me more positive than negative %^). Maybe I can even find
a way to get Nora involved. Or maybe I can just stay out of the way,
and as president, handle more of the non-byfy stuff, so you can do more
of what I cannot do.
-------
On the other hand, Nora just said something that I think profoundly
reflects my misgivings. She's tried (far more than I have) to
understand xorlo, but she just can't get her mind around it. That makes
her feel incompetent at the language, which is the strongest demotivater
for actually using it, much less doing byfy work.
I actually hit that phenomenon several years ago. I barely understood
Nick's formalization of sumti-raising. I still cannot wrap my mind
around lambda calculus. People can explain it over and over, and the
next day I remember nothing and understand even less.
If Nora and I are at our limit, and we're reasonably bright and were at
one time among the most skilled of Lojbanists, then the concept of byfy
continuing to refine and formalize things even more than they are (and
more than minimally necessary to USE the language) stands to make our
investment in learning the language a waste of time.
And a lot of people aren't nearly as dedicated to the language as we've
been. They hit their limit, and give them something new, and they
leave. Indeed for some people, to say that CLL isn't enough belies the
claim that Lojban is a "simple, easy to learn, language" (because they
don't realize that English described at the CLL level would be several
times as long and have many more holes).
Arguing with And Rosta gets me upset because it seems clear to me that
he isn't much interested in whether the language is something people can
and will use to communicate - he wants more formalization and logic.
And your essay suggests that the "activists" of the community may be
closer to his camp. I am less certain where you personally are, but you
have considerable credibility with me because you can and do use the
language competently as it is (as does xorxes)
"I can live with your position" therefore means that at this point I
trust you to not change the language so far out of my recognition that
even Nora and I give up, and I have a reasonable hope that by being
reasonable and helpful myself, we can achieve something we can both be
satisfied with.
> I'm glad you think I'm reasonable; I'm not *feeling* reasonable
> right now. :)
Hey, you have put up with reading several of my endless posts now, and
have answered them politely, and considerately, and indeed showing
you've read them all - and you haven't blown up. I consider that
*extremely* reasonable on your part, given that I know how you dislike
any post of mine longer than a few paragraphs. %^)
And if you survive this one, we may be at the point of agreement.
>>The point is that defining the current state *should* be
>>relatively easy to get agreement on, ideally a 100% consensus.
>
> Certainly, but who is going to do the work? *No-one* wants to do
> what you're describing.
What you've said and what others have said makes me think that there is
a solution. Here, off the top of my head ... (sorry about length, of
course)
BYFY has no fixed membership. It consists of you and whoever else is
helping at the moment. It is a concept and a function rather than an
organization. At some later time post-baseline we can constitute a
Lojban Academy if the community wants one, with fixed membership. How
people perform *now* should be considered part of the qualification for
membership *then*.
There seems to be a group of relative newcomers that would be happy to
copy and/or paraphrase the CLL materials (which are now online, right?)
and the cmavo list, on each cmavo onto the web page definitions. That
is the most basic step. Some can comb through the wiki and even the
lojban list archives and find where people have raised issues about that
cmavo. I think that treating the problem more like contributing to a
wiki page on each individual word will get us pretty close to a
description of the status quo without any actual decisions needing to be
made.
You don't have to do any boring grunt work. Newcomers to the language
will do what you find boring, but it will probably be helpful for them
in learning, and we can perhaps use that to sell them on contributing.
And the issues THEY raise are the ones that really need answering,
although I'm sure xorxes will have his fepni remei to throw in.
This was done in the last day for one word by two people and xorxes
partially on the page and partially on the list. If they were doing it
on the wiki page, that word might be well on the way to being done. At
some point a "shepherd" would have to go through and smooth things out,
and maybe the set of issues to be decided goes into a "trouble report
bin" to be dealt with. But with luck shepherding wouldn't be a very
onerous job, and maybe more editorial than technical.
And by all means make use of Matt's idea for a funny hat or a merit
badge (an LLG-paid CafePress T-shirt, with appropriate design, for
someone who contributes a certain number of definitions seems like a
winner to me. I don't know much about hats %^) Maybe a
Robin-autographed LS-book containing the set of byfy definitions when
done would be a *real* unique prize, especially as a prequel of the
dictionary. If we can spend hundreds of dollars to bring people to
LogFest, I'll support spending more to promote byfy work (but not
actually paying people to do work - the business aspects of "employees"
would drive us all mad).
Someone far more competent than I am at wiki-work can try to coordinate
all this activity, point out definitions that are ignored, and maybe do
some of the page smoothing.
The point is that these are tasks many in the community know how to do,
whether they are "skilled Lojbanists" or not. And we've reduced the
individual task size to chunks that people can do in an hour or less as
they have time.
I don't know if it will get everything done as quickly as you want, but
I think it will get things moving forward again without taking too much
on your part (or mine).
(There is more to this, below, when you ask a related question).
>>The language is what it is, warts and all. Can we agree on what
>>the warts are?
>
> We can always agree on what the warts are; what we can't always see
> is what the face underneath looks like. If the CLL directly
> contradicts itself, what are we to say the current state is?
"CLL says X, Y, Z. Analysis has shown that X and Z contradict each
other because .... Usage examples 1 and 2 show this problem, which is
to be resolved by byfy." Then file the issue in the problem report bin.
You or xorxes or someone else can append some possible solutions
asynchronously, but before the problem is taken up for debate. (Below I
link to a real example of what I find ideal).
The creativity comes when all the words are done, and hopefully we then
have a complete set of problems that need to be addressed. How you take
up those problems (individually, in groups, etc) will probably influence
how they are solved.
> There's another big issue here: I do not recall ever understanding
> that what you wanted was to define cmavo *solely* based on the cmavo
> list and the CLL, without any reference to anything else. That's
> really quite a surprise to me. I don't know that it makes a
> difference to me, but a surprise none the less.
I'm not sure that I do. Those two are the baseline documents, and thus
the status quo. It is commonly agreed that the cmavo list is inadequate
for dictionary definitions, which is the desired product, and that we
want more examples showing how the words are used in various grammatical
contexts
(Back in the day, I wanted CLL to have examples of every selma'o in
every place it is found in the YACC grammar. But that was too much for
John to produce on his own. If something like this emerges out of the
cmavo dictionary effort, that would be great, and would probably bring
out most issues that need deciding.)
At this point, with several years of usage, I think byfy should
reasonably be able to consider if that actual usage contradicts CLL in
coming up with Task 4 changes. But a small number of usages, or all by
one person is a weak case. I was concerned back in the day that xorxes,
by writing ten times as much as everyone else combined, would
effectively define correct usage as being "what xorxes does". I am
still a little afraid of this, though less so, because I can still read
and understand what xorxes writes in Lojban, so his usage is not all
that radical even if his proposals sometimes sound like 'too much'. And
we now have other writers of the language, who I'm sure are not xorxes
clones. You certainly aren't.
> And another issue: none of this is relevant to the matter at hand,
> in my mind. The matter at hand is that, for better or worse, the
> BPFK was trying to do description-of-current-state and changes at
> the same time; perhaps that was a mistake, but it's besides the
> point. At some point, there will be change proposals. The matter
> at hand is: what happens to those proposals? We have been
> deadlocked for *five years* because one camp believed that the
> silent majority wanted the language to be as stable as possible, and
> the other simply wanted the language to be awesome. I wanted to
> find out which was actually true, and head in that direction.
OK. Though I think the way you asked the question did not really
produce a useful answer (and I'm not a skilled pollster to know how to
do better). I want an awesome language which is as stable as possible.
And the silent majority is still silent; many of them are like Nora,
and unable to keep up with the traffic.
> What is important to me is that in the fullness of time, there will
> be change proposals, and if they're going to be deadlocked, I don't
> want any part of the BPFK.
I can't promise that there won't be deadlock. But ...
> That expresses, I think, the heart of what I want: a way to resolve
> deadlocks in the PBFK when change proposals *do* occur. It seemed
> to me that changing the current ordering of the stuff in task #4,
> and making it more explicitely ordered, would do the trick nicely,
> so I went to the community to find out what was actually wanted.
The approach I would like to see? (Not promising that it will work)
Here is how I see consensus politics in byfy:
We have models for how to write a change proposal.
http://www.lojban.org/publications/formal-grammars/techfix.300.txt
See especially Change 20, which refers to an article in JL18. Probably
the best presentation of a problem and solution I've seen. A month
after the problem was raised, I was able to use the material to teach
the solution to a Lojban class.***
If we have a problem, someone writes it up like this and someone
proposes a solution. People add commentary. If it seems that things
are ripe for a vote, open it for voting. Leave it open. Move to the
next problem.
The jatna or shepherd monitors voting. If not enough people are voting,
post the proposal to Lojban List and ask people to vote and/or comment,
but trying to keep to one item at a time. Include a link to the prior
discussion. If there was much controversy, a couple of paragraphs
summarizing the sides is in order. Changes 28 and 41 are change
proposals that were not approved, and have suitable summary paragraphs
of the opposition.
Likewise, if things are deadlocked, post the summary to Lojban List.
Let people discuss. If nothing happens after a few days to indicate
progress, then issue some sort of "deadlock alert" giving people a week
to show progress towards a resolution. If progress is being made, allow
more time, but not too much. If not, pick your solution of choice,
write it up and flag it as a deadlock.
When all issues but the deadlocks are resolved, you get to apply lots of
pressure. You have a writeup, you have the solution you want if all
else fails. Again on Lojban List, you post the issue and your proposed
solution. People have n days to either accept your solution OR to
propose an alternative AND convince others that it is a better solution.
Feel free to use all sorts of backchannels and the list. Apply
pressure liberally. Threaten to quit if people won't come to an
agreement %^) Offer a funny hat to anyone who can produce an agreement
that others will subscribe to. And point out that if they can't reach
agreement that they lose the right to decide that question.
NO formal voting at this point. You decide whether consensus has been
reached or not, and you decide how much support means "consensus" so
long as it meets the baseline statement criterion that no one objector
defeats consensus. There will be others including me who will help you
if you don't want to decide this. But you are the jatna, and to some
extent a benevolent dictator within your jurisdiction.
If even that fails, you go to the Board, say that byfy cannot reach a
consensus, and the Board votes on whatever choices you offer them. In
all likelihood, even if you aren't on the Board (ha!) you will get
whatever you want because the Board knows that to overrule you probably
guarantees that you will quit, and would risk the antipathy of the
community and membership.
But in any case, things are decided.
The complications are when issues are dependent on the resolutions of
other issues. Ideally, all changes are decided independently, but you
in your infinite wisdom as jatna will be able to look at the issues and
say that issues X Y and Z really need to be resolved before anything
else. So you carry those issues through the full process above before
tackling the other issues.
Otherwise, the norm is that the most contentious items are saved for
last. The closer things get to the end, the more pressure there is to
get things done. In the recent health care reform, enough people who
said they would not support the bill without anti-abortion language
found a symbolic way to surrender, while holding to their principles (an
executive order that might have no real effect)
Now recall that I am committed to consensus politics. I may oppose a
change every step of the way, but when we get to the final crunch, and
you are putting the pressure on, then I have no choice but to put up or
shut up. To continue to fight when we are at the final buzzer, is to
admit that I was wrong about consensus being achievable. Moreover, if I
were willing to destroy the chance for a consensus baseline, which is so
important for the language, I sincerely hope that the community would
collectively vote no confidence in me and ask me to leave. I WILL NOT
be another JCB.
And if the community can choose to ostracize me, then they also can do
so to anyone else who is obstructive. But Lojban has had plenty of
chances to destructively schism, and I don't think it's too likely. Too
many people have invested too much time to throw it all away.
--------------
***I don't know how to effectively search googlegroups's archives yet.
http://nuzban.wiw.org/archive/9207/maillist.html
has links to 2 posts (part 1 and part 2) from Colin Fine which started
what became Change 20.
> In direct contradiction to what I said mere minutes ago, I'm willing
> to push the BPFK to start by describing the current state of the CLL
> and cmavo, even though that seems like mindless grunt work and I'm
> going to hate every minute of it (I expect to be the only one doing
> it, and if it works out this way *I expect a fucking *medal* for
> it*),
Solid gold if I have my way.
But I think you have the leadership skills and the respect of the
community enough that we collectively won't allow you to waste so much time.
> but if it'll make things smoother, I'll do it.
>
> What I am *not* willing to do:
>
> 1. Publish *anything* before a dictionary.
>
> 2. Publish a dictionary before all non-trivial outstanding change
> proposals are completed.
>
> 3. Continue working on the BPFK for even one more *second* under
> the prior conditions, which were that Broca and you and Nora would
> block any change short of a direct internal contradiction *just
> because it was a change*.
I agree, without reservation.
The above discussion shows one way you can prevent me from blocking
anything, with my advance blessing. That you got broca's public support
for your platform/poll suggests that he is easier than I am %^)
> I want the BPFK aligned behind a
> set of goals *for the language*, and committed to acheiving them,
> before I will do *any* further work on it.
I'd rather you wait on this one, in part because my suggestions above
kinda obviate a formal BPFK that needs to be aligned.
If the community won't do the job and you are having to do it yourself
and earning that solid gold medal, then you yourself are the byfy, and
you are aligned behind any set of goals you can agree with yourself on %^)
If such a set of prioritized goals is needed at the last stage to
resolve a set of deadlocks, I think it will emerge by itself (or it can
be a technique you use to resolve them. Under goals XYZ, deadlocks ABC
are resolved such and how. Rather than presenting goals in the abstract
as you have, you are showing how you think they should apply to the
specific problems we are facing. People will agree or disagree, but the
process will get their de facto alignment, not by the BPFK per se, but
by the active community acting as the BPFK auxiliary.
> I think we can turn that into a middle-ground proposal. Your turn.
I hope I said yes enough and offered enough positives that no more turns
are needed.
>>If so, then my position becomes no more than having byfy vote that
>>the part 1's accurately reflect the status quo before trying to
>>finalize agreement on the solutions. Ideally, we'd have a
>>complete set of task 1 description before we start formally trying
>>to approve the changes, but I can bend there.
>
> I'm not at all sure I get why that (re-writing the CLL in the form
> of cmavo definitions before anything else) is *so* important to you,
> but if that's really all you want in the short term, that's quite
> reasonable.
Its getting all the grunt work out of the way so that ALL that is left
is the hopefully small percentage of issues that are controversial.
>>>We need to do *SOMETHING* now.
>>
>>Agreed. If only because you, as byfy jatna, want something done now.
>
> No. We need to do something now because the BPFK has been stuck for
> five years, and I'm not sure I can count on the fingers of only one
> hand the major, active Lojbanists that are ready to walk out.
I agree because YOU want something done now. That others want it is
icing on your cake. You alone deciding that it must be NOW is
sufficient for me to agree NOW. I'll try to influence what is done NOW,
but I won't stop you from doing *SOMETHING*
If you don't get from that, the importance I feel YOU, and your
good-feeling are right now to the community, I don't know what I can say.
> The problem with documentation in Lojban is that it's totally
> useless for someone learning the language; changes need to make
> their way back into the CLL and L4B and the dictionary and such.
>
> However, as long as someone's willing to step up and turn our
> in-Lojban discussion into changes to those documents, I *love* the
> idea of the BPFK being a Lojban-only forum. It'll be all
> me-and-xorxes, all the time. :D
One hopes that, post-baseline, there will be others who will be willing
and qualified. But I'm willing to risk it being you-and-xorxes if
absolutely necessary.
>>You seem to be turning this around, suggesting that if there are
>>no rules people tend to say nothing, but ask for the rule,
>
> That's my experience on IRC, yes.
I think that is the nature of the medium, and the willingness of people
to answer in English with the rule, and perhaps the sort of people who
habituate IRC as well.
We did not have that in Lojban conversation sessions here. Several
people would try, sometimes needing correction in order to make sense,
and in most cases the conversation didn't get all that sophisticated,
but I remember modeling a three-level deep abstraction bridi with at
least one relative clause. I had to repeat it slowly a couple of times
before people understood it, but they did.
In sessions of The Phone Game, asking someone else was pretty much
against the rules. People made mistakes and learned from them when
there was commentary afterwards..
I don't remember exactly what happened at Logfest several years ago, but
xod, who was almost certainly not at xorxes skill level or your present
skill level, seemed to be willing to go without checking the rules.
(Whatever happened to xod, anyway?)
If we had been forced to conduct annual meetings in Lojban, and we
provided translators like Shoulson for the incompetent, I think the time
pressure would have eliminated requests for the rules (people might have
done word lookups, but that is not the same thing).
It wouldn't necessary be awesome Lojban, but it would work. And awesome
will come from lots of non-awesome no matter how we get there.
> I think that rather than having a fixed time for freezing, we should
> simply say: "the language is currently good enough; future
> discussion of changes in Lojban only". I think that would slow down
> the rate of change *quite* enough for your purposes.
Probably, but then, as you said above, it might just be you-and-xorxes,
at least at first, and the two of you almost certainly can act quickly
with no one else involved in the decision. (Not saying you would, of
course, but you have the competence)
> Again, I don't think a freeze will make any difference to
> popularity, because nothing about a freeze will advertise the
> language to people who wouldn't otherwise find it.
We haven't talked about advertising and promotion, but up till now it
has been word of mouth since 1989 Worldcon, and maybe a couple of other
cons where we've handed out brochures.
A 2nd edition CLL, dictionary, and the other materials, available both
in print and on the web, and we can comfortably do some real marketing
in multiple communities. I have some ideas but really this is where
Matt should be asked (as well as anyone else with real marketing
experience).
If there is a freeze then that is the answer to anyone who asks whether
the materials are up-to-date. We have experience of this. The key
papers that went into CLL were largely written in 1994. 1994-1998, the
community stagnated, JL ceased, discussion on Lojban List closely
resembled your deadlocked byfy threads, with limited participation. The
debates themselves drove people away. No matter how many baselines we
declared, having people argue about the language in great volume and
length drove away most everyone but the diehards.
CLL came out, sold several dozen copies the first couple of months, and
Lojban List and the community size and activity exploded. Then the
reports came in about the random blank pages in the book due to printer
incompetence, and Nora and I effectively shut down for a few months to
try to solve the problem, some of the steam went out of the growth, book
fulfillment went to hell and never came back.
Even so, language use kept growing, even without a dictionary, and I
don't think there was much talk about changing the language - as I said,
la .alis was "usage deciding" - until I raised the issue 5 years later
with the baseline statement.
If Matt had been marketing and order fulfilling in starting in 1997, the
Lojban community would likely have been 10 times its current size by
2002, and MUCH larger if we had gotten the dictionary done, since that
has been the key obstacle to growth.
> It *may* make a difference to fluency, but I'm not even sure about
> that.
The commitment to our product makes a difference to some people's
motivation to make the time investment.
Of course, just committing CLL to paper had enormous effect. On-line
source documents are too ephemeral for some people. That heft TOME
meant Lojban was real and here to stay (which is why whatever is issued
for a baseline needs to include some sort of hardbound, even if we have
cheaper softbound as well)
>>Can you produce a rewording of task 4 (or a statement of byfy
>>policy/procedures that would override the text) that eliminates
>>this apparent ordering of requirements that I don't think we
>>intended, and which would end the deadlock?
>>
>>If you can do so, will you try it?
>
> That's pretty much what my plan was anyways (see mail entitled
> "That's *not* my formal proposal").
I understand (I may not have seen that when I wrote the above.) There
certainly was nothing in your essay that I saw, suggesting that you had
a different proposal in mind. I responded to what you said, and what
you asked people to read.
>>For resolving the issue, this seems inherently *much* smaller than
>>something like xorlo, and I'd likely go along with anything that
>>was clear and not egregiously weird. I doubt that there is enough
>>usage of .ainai for a usage or relearning argument to count for
>>much.
>
> I agree, but Broca was blocking it simply because it was a change.
> This was the core of the issue.
One person alone cannot block, per the baseline statement.
>>I don't know if it is good enough, but I imagine a couple dozen
>>people could do something similar for all the remaining cmavo in a
>>few weeks, even if some of them only do a couple of words.
>
> I do to, but I have no idea where to find those people. I'll try
> again after the mailing list is updated, though.
Post what you want people to do to Lojban List (and maybe even beginners
list). If the tasks are small, and require no expertise, and especially
if you have a Matt style reward system, which SEVERAL people agreed
would be very motivating, they'll emerge from the woodwork.
And maybe Matt will be willing to work at keeping them motivated and
recruiting new people, especially after his con ends. Some signs of
positive movement might encourage him again.
--
Bob LeChevalier loj...@lojban.org www.lojban.org
President and Founder, The Logical Language Group, Inc.
Bob LeChevalier
> Bob LeChevalier, On 09/04/2010 19:49:
>> And Rosta wrote:
>>
>>> Pierre:
>>>
>>>> Can we have some Lojbanists accepting some, but not all, of the
>>>> rulings of the BPFK?
>>>
>>> The usage of Lojbanists would and should be unregulated. The
>>> declaration of Lojban would exist to be used freely however people
>>> choose.
>>
>> A bunch of rules that no one will ever use - sounds like a form of
>> mental masturbation (or since this is a group effort, an orgy
>> thereof). But then I've always tended to disparage conlang-making,
>> where the process of language-making is the point, and not the result.
>>
>> Some people do want to work with Lojban as a mental toy, and we have
>> to allow for that. But more, I think, want to communicate with it,
>> which is what sets Lojban apart from most of the hundreds of conlangs
>> that are out there.
>
> Need I spell out the contempt that your similes deserve?
No. I understand, and I apologize for any contempt that seemed implicit
in the simile. I got a little carried away and thought it was a
sufficiently funny mixed metaphor to override the potential
offensiveness. My humor has gotten more salty in recent years.
> Perhaps you would dismiss
I "dismiss" nothing at all.
I'm not particularly appreciative of art for its own sake. I know
others are, but I am me. People who invent conlangs that they do not
intend people to use, engaging in "the secret vice" - I recognize they
are doing something they love and they are often quite talented and
gifted people. But I feel none of that myself, and think that mindset
is poison to something like Lojban, where it is important, indeed vital,
to several goals, that it be used, skillfully, by people.
And unfortunately, in the first few years, I was dealing with lots of
such people, who didn't understand me and what we were trying to do any
more than I understood them.
And I was dealing with academic linguists who associated artificial
language solely with that sort of thing, or with Esperanto evangelism.
I fought hard, for several years, to neutralize that negativism, and I
think I succeeded - Lojban has managed a couple of academic citations,
and I started getting enough positives in correspondence and at
interactions at a couple of linguistic conferences I attended, that
people started thinking we were bona fide and serious about making
Lojban linguistically credible. (Getting called Dr LeChevalier was a
bit of egoboo, even if the title is unearned.)
My feelings aren't hostile or dismissive towards such things, *except*
in the context of Lojban. And especially when those things threaten to
be schismatic - you and I went round on that issue several years ago.
> And anyway, you've missed the point in various ways. The fact that a
> language is a set of rules (definitional rules, not rules regulating
> behaviour) does not entail that nobody uses the rules or that nobody
> wants to use them.
I disagree with the definition.
Merriam-Webster
> 1 a : the words, their pronunciation, and the methods of combining them
> used and understood by a community
used, community
> b (1) : audible, articulate, meaningful sound as produced by the action of the vocal organs
> (2) : a systematic means of communicating ideas or feelings by the use of conventionalized signs, sounds, gestures, or marks having understood meanings
communication
> (3) : the suggestion by objects, actions, or conditions of associated ideas or feelings <language in their very gesture — Shakespeare>
> (4) : the means by which animals communicate
> (5) : a formal system of signs and symbols (as FORTRAN or a calculus in logic) including rules for the formation and transformation of admissible expressions
only at definition 5 does your definition appear, and it is lower than
animal communications in list. And yet I've known lots of linguists who
don't consider computer languages to be language (nor animal
communications).
Indeed some don't consider pidgins to be "language", and artificial
languages are dismissed as are computer languages.
I also refer to Lojban "bangu" which also requires communicative usage.
bangu is not the tanru for "sign-system". If my use of English
"language" is malylojbo, it wouldn't be a first time.
> The Lojban language itself is a failure as a logical language,
Not as JCB defined the phrase. The trouble is, to the linguists I've
dealt with (excepting you, since you just self-identified as one in
another post), Lojban is not YET a success as a language period, and
won't be a language until it has a native speaker community.
I've been able to talk with some such people and bring them around to
ways that they might consider Lojban linguistically interesting without
being a proper "language". But it always requires demonstrable and
probably fluent usage for communication.
Michael Everson
> The trouble is, to the linguists I've dealt with (excepting you, since you just self-identified as one in another post), Lojban is not YET a success as a language period, and won't be a language until it has a native speaker community.
Allow me to be the second linguist you know who thinks that Lojban is a success as a language. Whatever its imperfections may be -- ;-) typographic and otherwise -- it's got translatable (and back-translatable) literature, and there is evidence of people using it to communicate over beer in a pub.
Cornish (which died out in the 18th century but was revived in the 20th) has hardly a native speaker community. There are some isolated native speakers who grew up with the language as their parents spoke it to them. But there are many revivalists who can speak and write the language, natively or not.
Michael
Jorge Llambías
>
> On the other hand, Nora just said something that I think profoundly reflects
> my misgivings. She's tried (far more than I have) to understand xorlo, but
> she just can't get her mind around it. That makes her feel incompetent at
> the language, which is the strongest demotivater for actually using it, much
> less doing byfy work.
That is a bit worrying.
That you claim not to understand it doesn't bother me so much, because
I suspect you are not really that interested, but I think Nora
shouldn't have any problems. She may be looking in the wrong place.
The definition is most clearly given in Lojban itself (as included in
the corresponding BPFK section):
lo broda = zo'e noi ke'a broda
Is it really that hard to understand? If you like, you can expand by
pointing out that there is nothing about quantifiers or existence or
"in the world" or definiteness/indefiniteness, or things like that in
there, but that's just in order to contrast it with possible
misunderstandings. Or compare it with "fi'o":
fi'o: convert selbri to sumti tag.
lo: convert selbri to sumti
What more needs to be said? Nobody has problems with "fi'o", right?
> If Nora and I are at our limit, and we're reasonably bright and were at one
> time among the most skilled of Lojbanists, then the concept of byfy
> continuing to refine and formalize things even more than they are (and more
> than minimally necessary to USE the language) stands to make our investment
> in learning the language a waste of time.
If I may offer advice, you should stop right now any investment you
are making in learning, and start using. The additional learning will
come free as a bonus.
mu'o mi'e xorxes
And Rosta
> Arguing with And Rosta gets me upset because it seems clear to me that
> he isn't much interested in whether the language is something people can
> and will use to communicate - he wants more formalization and logic. And
> your essay suggests that the "activists" of the community may be closer
> to his camp. I am less certain where you personally are, but you have
> considerable credibility with me because you can and do use the language
> competently as it is (as does xorxes)
You misunderstand my views and (without malign intent) caricature them. Here are my key views.
1. A language is a tool for communication.
2. A usable logical language (which I take to be one that unambiguously encodes predicate--argument structure in a way that is no more longwinded than natural language and that is within general human cognitive abilities) would be a wonderful tool to have. Partly this is because we could potentially learn so much from the tool itself. But partly it is because *using* such a tool to *communicate* could be a great boon to the world.
3. Lojban is not a usable logical language and can't be tinkered into one. [I used to think it could perhaps be tinkered into one.]
4. The community of Loglan/Lojban project is the focal community for people with an interest into bringing into being and into use a usable logical language. Not everybody in the community has that interest, and not everybody with that interest is in the community, but there is no other community of people with this interest.
It seems to me that those views take me outside the scope of the debate Robin has initiated, since they don't pertain to Lojban proper. With regard to Lojban proper, I have no particular personal stake or agenda, merely goodwill to the community. I naturally find it easier to sympathize with those who wish for the key foundations of the language to be regular and explicitly declared rather than to merely emerge, in the manner of a pidgin, from usage, so I'm happy to give Robin what support I can. And I *genuinely* can't understand on what grounds you think it would be a good thing for the specification ('prescription' in your words) to remain unchanged and for such a language's speech community to grow, or on what grounds you think that the possession and lack of comparative fluency in this pidgin respectively confer and deny credibility.
--And.
And Rosta
Bob would be in the Don't Care camp and Robin in the Frustrated, for a large chunk of BPFK work had to do with the attempt to specify what stuff means.
For many syntagms (phrases, etc) one is simply not sure what the meaning of the whole is, even though one knows the meaning of the parts -- because the specifications of the language don't state how the meaning of the whole is formed. I'm not talking about tanru vagueness but rather clear semantic ambiguities such as over quantifier scope. Lojban list used to be absolutely awash with discussion of these, in the days before the BPFK. I'm reasonably sure that a workable set of rules for compositional semantics exists in xorxes's mind, so the prospects for Lojban, under Robin's reforms, getting an adequate compositional semantics strike me as fairly rosy.
--And.
And Rosta
> I'm not particularly appreciative of art for its own sake. I know
> others are, but I am me. People who invent conlangs that they do not
> intend people to use, engaging in "the secret vice" - I recognize they
> are doing something they love and they are often quite talented and
> gifted people. But I feel none of that myself, and think that mindset
> is poison to something like Lojban, where it is important, indeed vital,
> to several goals, that it be used, skillfully, by people.
I think the Logban project's goal is a work of science rather than art. A good analogy would maybe be a group whose aim is to produce an awesome piece of open-sourced software, from whose design we could learn much and from whose use the world could benefit. You'd want the software to be used, but others would be free to modify the code for their own ends, and you wouldn't baseline inadequate code just in order to gain users.
>> And anyway, you've missed the point in various ways. The fact that a
>> language is a set of rules (definitional rules, not rules regulating
>> behaviour) does not entail that nobody uses the rules or that nobody
>> wants to use them.
>
> I disagree with the definition.
Nevertheless, such a definition does not entail the conclusions you drew from it.
> > The Lojban language itself is a failure as a logical language,
>
> Not as JCB defined the phrase.
That's true (I believe), but it is a failure as a logical language under the prevailing understanding of the phrase (encoding logical structure unambiguously in a speakable way), and it's that prevailing understanding that attracts many to the Logban project in the first place.
> And I was dealing with academic linguists who associated artificial
> language solely with that sort of thing, or with Esperanto evangelism. I
> fought hard, for several years, to neutralize that negativism, and I
> think I succeeded - Lojban has managed a couple of academic citations,
> and I started getting enough positives in correspondence and at
> interactions at a couple of linguistic conferences I attended, that
> people started thinking we were bona fide and serious about making
> Lojban linguistically credible. (Getting called Dr LeChevalier was a
> bit of egoboo, even if the title is unearned.)
The massive increase in public visibility of invented languages in the last twenty years has noticeably increased tolerance of their existence.
I understand that what JCB alleged to be his original vision for Loglan, i.e. an experimental Sapir-Whorf test, (and I remain skeptical about whether this aim ever received more than mere lip-service from him) necessitated the involvement of academic linguistics in assessing the outcomes of the experiment. So I understand why you felt you had to recruit the interest of linguists. But I see several different ways in which the experiment failed in its design and execution, and no right-minded linguist would study it from this perspective. (They might study it as a failed experiment -- where and why things went wrong -- or as a social phenomonon -- the desire of a bunch of people to work together to create the experiment.)
> The trouble is, to the linguists I've
> dealt with (excepting you, since you just self-identified as one in
> another post), Lojban is not YET a success as a language period, and
> won't be a language until it has a native speaker community.
>
> I've been able to talk with some such people and bring them around to
> ways that they might consider Lojban linguistically interesting without
> being a proper "language". But it always requires demonstrable and
> probably fluent usage for communication.
98% of the interest in Lojban shown by professional linguists has been mine (or mine and pycyn's if he counts himself as a linguist), so you might consider whether to give more weight to my views... (I can think of decent reasons not to, mind, such as my eccentricity and my opinion that Lojban isn't ripe for interesting academic research.)
I of course wasn't privy to your conversations with linguists, but I suspect part of linguists' response might have been a polite brush-off, and part might have been based on taking at face value Lojbanists' claims about the language, without checking the veracity of those claims (and finding it lacking). It's true that for many linguists a language would become worthy of study only when it demonstrably being used as languages are used; but the same would go for any invented language, and Lojban would be of no more interest than Klingon or Toki Pona or Esperanto. I think also that the responses you'd have got from linguists would have been a function of the way you made the case for Lojban being of interest; you've never cared about the logical language aspects or shared my vision of the value and scholarly interest of such a thing.
--And.
Seth
Yoav Nir
Michael Everson
> Well, linguists consider linguistics to be a science, not a branch of engineering, and science is always descriptive, not prescriptive.
Nonsense. Linguists also study orthography and the relation between "standard" dialect and orthography and literacy and a host of other topics which relate to "prescription".
> So, yes, they consider all conlangs as games, as opposed to languages people actually speak, which are "natural" phenomena worthy of study.
Oh, do keep your generalizations to yourself. This is really annoying.
> As And said, a language is real to them only if it has native speakers, and all constructed languages, including even Esperanto, are at best second languages.
Untrue. Untrue. Untrue.
> (now somebody's going to link to some parents raising their kids in esperanto,
Thousands of kids were raised as native speakers of Esperanto.
> or to that guy who tried to teach his kid Klingon as a first language,
Anomaly, everyone knows that.
> but these are very small exceptions, and those kids grow up to speak the environment's language, not the constructed language they heard at home)
Please go do some homework.
Michael
Seth
From: Michael Everson <michael...@gmail.com>
To: loj...@googlegroups.com
Sent: Sat, Apr 10, 2010 3:15 pm
Subject: Re: [lojban] Response ro Robin's "Essay on the future of Lojban"
On 10 Apr 2010, at 21:52, Yoav Nir wrote: > Well, linguists consider linguistics to be a science, not a branch of engineering, and science is always descriptive, not prescriptive. Nonsense. Linguists also study orthography and the relation between "standard" dialect and orthography and literacy and a host of other topics which relate to "prescription". > So, yes, they consider all conlangs as games, as opposed to languages people actually speak, which are "natural" phenomena worthy of study. Oh, do keep your generalizations to yourself. This is really annoying. > As And said, a language is real to them only if it has native speakers, and all constructed languages, including even Esperanto, are at best second languages. Untrue. Untrue. Untrue. > (now somebody's going to link to some parents raising their kids in esperanto, Thousands of kids were raised as native speakers of Esperanto. > or to that guy who tried to teach his kid Klingon as a first language, Anomaly, everyone knows that. > but these are very small exceptions, and those kids grow up to speak the environment's language, not the constructed language they heard at home) Please go do some homework. Michael -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "lojban" group. To post to this group, send email to loj...@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to lojban+un...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/lojban?hl=en.
Michael Everson
> i dont know... all but a few of my classmates and professors all but spit when prescriptivism, conlangs, or orthographies are mentioned. those things aren't "real linguistics" to them. when i have told them about Esperanto having natives, they entirely disregard the phenomenon as "not important". maybe my ling department is just particularly biased, but it is a large department, not just one isolated nazi.
Then they are just bigots with their own narrow agenda.
Seriously, that's just dumb. Neologisms are no different from conlang engineering. Iceland has a whole institute (Íslensk málstöð) for devising new terminology. That's not any different from what Zamenhof or his followers did, or what Gode did for Interlingua. Real linguists study Tolkien's languages both because he was a great linguist (lexicographer as well as conlanger).
Linguistics is a lot bigger than what some universities think it is, apparently. But if your colleagues can't take joy in Quenya or Lojban, that's evidence for their blinkeredness, nothing more.
Michael
Christopher Doty
Michael
Robert LeChevalier
And I *genuinely* can't understand on what grounds you
> think it would be a good thing for the specification ('prescription' in
> your words) to remain unchanged and for such a language's speech
> community to grow, or on what grounds you think that the possession and
> lack of comparative fluency in this pidgin respectively confer and deny
> credibility.
Simple. If we don't have a really *substantial* number of people
comparatively fluent, then because this is an avocational language where
99% of usage takes place, there won't be a lot of uncontrolled usage,
nor people learning it primarily from interacting with such usage, for
any form of Lojban to ever arguably become a creole/language.
(And remember please that my experience is of an era where written
language, which would include IRC, isn't all that "real" for linguists,
and it is the fluent uncontrolled spoken language that is necessary.
With Lojbanists so geographically dispersed, even a quasi-fluent speaker
like Nick has negligible chance for spontaneous conversation, and won't
until there are a handful of Lojbanists in the Melbourne area.)
The Klingonists have quasi-attempted to have a kid learn Klingon as they
would a native language. Lojbanists have talked about it, but I don't
think any have tried it.
The fact that Esperantists DO have native speakers, even though they
aren't numerous, and don't dominate the community or serve as the
standard or model for usage, and may not speak Esperanto as their
primary language, has been an argument for Esperanto being a "real"
language. It cuts through a lot of the negativism from academia.
lojbab
Alan Post
> There seems to be a group of relative newcomers that would be happy to
> copy and/or paraphrase the CLL materials (which are now online, right?)
> and the cmavo list, on each cmavo onto the web page definitions. That
> is the most basic step. Some can comb through the wiki and even the
> lojban list archives and find where people have raised issues about that
> cmavo. I think that treating the problem more like contributing to a
> wiki page on each individual word will get us pretty close to a
> description of the status quo without any actual decisions needing to be
> made.
>
> You don't have to do any boring grunt work. Newcomers to the language
> will do what you find boring, but it will probably be helpful for them
> in learning, and we can perhaps use that to sell them on contributing.
> And the issues THEY raise are the ones that really need answering,
> although I'm sure xorxes will have his fepni remei to throw in.
>
+1.
-Alan
--
te djuno lo do sevzi
Seth
From: Michael Everson <michael...@gmail.com>
To: loj...@googlegroups.com
Sent: Sat, Apr 10, 2010 3:45 pm
Subject: Re: [lojban] Response ro Robin's "Essay on the future of Lojban"
On 10 Apr 2010, at 22:31, Seth wrote: > i dont know... all but a few of my classmates and professors all but spit when prescriptivism, conlangs, or orthographies are mentioned. those things aren't "real linguistics" to them. when i have told them about Esperanto having natives, they entirely disregard the phenomenon as "not important". maybe my ling department is just particularly biased, but it is a large department, not just one isolated nazi. Then they are just bigots with their own narrow agenda. Seriously, that's just dumb. Neologisms are no different from conlang engineering. Iceland has a whole institute (Íslensk málstöð) for devising new terminology. That's not any different from what Zamenhof or his followers did, or what Gode did for Interlingua. Real linguists study Tolkien's languages both because he was a great linguist (lexicographer as well as conlanger). Linguistics is a lot bigger than what some universities think it is, apparently. But if your colleagues can't take joy in Quenya or Lojban, that's evidence for their blinkeredness, nothing more. Michael -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "lojban" group. To post to this group, send email to loj...@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to lojban+un...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/lojban?hl=en.
Robert LeChevalier
>>So, yes, they consider all conlangs as games, as opposed to languages people actually speak, which are "natural" phenomena worthy of study.
>
>
> Oh, do keep your generalizations to yourself. This is really annoying.
It may be annoying, but a lot of us have had precisely that reaction
from a lot of academic linguists.
There are exceptions, but unless things have changed, the pages of
"Language" and other professional journals are not well studded with
articles citing Esperanto, Lojban, or any other conlang, but might have
cites from obscure natlangs with fewer speakers than Lojban has. And
submitting a paper could indeed get a hostile reaction from peer
reviewers (or as the other poster indicated, from the professor teaching
your class).
Things MAY be easing up a little, because people like Nick Nicholas with
his PhD in Linguistics knows how to talk the professional lingo, and say
the right words to sell the language as being linguistically
interesting. He has managed a journal article about Lojban, but not in
a major journal.
pc is probably more qualified than I am to talk about the difficulty of
being an academic supporting artificial language research. The 8 years
he spent editing JCB's "journal" were not exactly good for his
professional career.
lojbab
tijlan
The issue is not, I think, one of narrow-mindedness. Most linguists are interested in theoretical frameworks of understanding how languages work, and what they do in the wild. Conlangs don't really help with this. Although Lojban and Toki Pona and a few others have interesting linguistic facts, they nonetheless fail to provide insight into what language is and how it works and develops* (since, by definition, they have been designed and not developed naturally). And, since most conlangs completely lack anything of linguistic interest, it isn't surprising that the few that do tend to be missed.What's more, most conlangs (again with a few notable exceptions) look very, very much like the native language of their designer(s). Lojban is included in this category, by the way: in terms of word order, general morphological processes, etc., Lojban looks very much like a nicely behaved Indo-European language, albeit one with extensions for the aspects of predicate logic. There isn't much reason to look at conlangs for linguistic evidence or theory (although sociolinguistic aspects and other things could certainly be of interest).
As to the word order, Lojban can realise both SVO and SOV without marking the arguments:
mi viska ra (eng: I see it)
mi ra viska (jpn: watasi-wa sore-o miru)
If by word order you meant branching, Lojban is not entirely right-branching:
lo cmana poi mi viska ke'a (eng: a mountain which I see)
lo poi mi viska ke'a ku'o cmana (jpn: watasi-ga miru yama)
And some experimental forms like:
le mlatu sepo le ratcu (jpn: neko-no nezumi) = le ratcu po le mlatu (eng: the rat of the cat)
There are more to the similarity between Lojban and Japanese, but I'm having difficulty putting it into English. For one thing, briefly, the distinction between the subject, object, and complement in Japanese is not as important as in English, which has led some notable Japanese linguists to suggest that every verb argument in this language is basically a complement of equal significance in its relation to the predicate, which sounds like what terbri are to its selbri in Lojban.
I'm not a linguist, but I have been interested in the subjects since when I started learning Lojban.
mu'o mi'e tijlan
Jorge Llambías
> Also worth
> noting is that, unlike Esperanto, Lojban isn't overtly specific about its
> morphosyntactic alignment; while Esperanto is explicitly
> nominative-accusative, Lojban is not. (In fact, I'm not sure which Lojban
> belongs to. Could it be the active-stative?)
I agree with your other points, but why do you say Lojban is not
nominative-accusative? It seems to me that it is exactly that: the
single case of intransitive predicates (the x1-case) is treated
exactly like one of the cases of transitive predicates (the x1-case
again), and for transitive predicates the x1-case is the one that
usually corresponds to the agent, just like the subject case in
nominative-accusative.
Active-stative would require that some intransitive verbs have an
x1-case only while others have an x2-case only, which is never the
case (unless you are thinking of things like "zi'o broda", but I doubt
it's fair to use such unusual cases for the classification).
> There are more to the similarity between Lojban and Japanese, but I'm having
> difficulty putting it into English. For one thing, briefly, the distinction
> between the subject, object, and complement in Japanese is not as important
> as in English, which has led some notable Japanese linguists to suggest that
> every verb argument in this language is basically a complement of equal
> significance in its relation to the predicate, which sounds like what terbri
> are to its selbri in Lojban.
I would agree that the distinction is less important than in English,
but there is still a distinction. The x1-case especially has very
distinct properties compared with the other cases, and the x2-case to
a lesser extent also has some special properties with respect to the
rest.
Stela Selckiku
>
> On the other hand, Nora just said something that I think profoundly reflects
> my misgivings. She's tried (far more than I have) to understand xorlo, but
> she just can't get her mind around it. That makes her feel incompetent at
> the language, which is the strongest demotivater for actually using it, much
> less doing byfy work.
I agree that this can only be a sign that you've thought about it too
hard. Under xorlo (which is the same as saying, with apologies to any
holdbacks, under modern Lojban) the meaning of the article "lo" (which
is the only one you need to learn to use) is simply "lo broda = zo'e
noi ke'a broda". In other words it's simply something that is an x1
of broda. Nothing more is specified.
> There seems to be a group of relative newcomers that would be happy to copy
> and/or paraphrase the CLL materials (which are now online, right?) and the
> cmavo list, on each cmavo onto the web page definitions. That is the most
> basic step. Some can comb through the wiki and even the lojban list
> archives and find where people have raised issues about that cmavo. I
> think that treating the problem more like contributing to a wiki page on
> each individual word will get us pretty close to a description of the status
> quo without any actual decisions needing to be made.
A wiki page on each individual word! That. That is what I want. A
wiki is only one option, of course, but some sort of open forum
dedicated to each word. I would prefer to see it as a new, separate
project, clean, specific. (I suggest the name za'e "vlasnu".) I
could maybe be convinced that it could be hosted on the tiki or in
jbovlaste entry discussions, but so far it's seemed to me like the
organization and structure and vibe of those places isn't conducive to
the conversation I'd like to see.
Most importantly I'd like to encourage questions from new students
about particular words to be asked and answered in that forum. We've
discussed most of the words in Lojban repeatedly, in depth, but we've
lost those conversations to a lack of organization.
I would also volunteer to go around myself writing a few informal
paragraphs about my understanding of the meaning (and history!) of
various words. My perspective on it is: I'm glad to talk informally
in English about what I think the words mean, or attempt to specify
them carefully in Lojban, but having to try to craft a brief yet
unambiguous English definition, well, that's just the sort of thing I
came to Lojban to avoid. :P Not that I don't think that's work worth
doing, but I'm not the person to do it, as I can't get my head around
it.
> And the silent majority is still silent; many of them are like Nora,
> and unable to keep up with the traffic.
Would you please ask Nora, and anyone else without the time to follow
our main forums, if they would please consider tuning into Lojbanistan
some other way?
For instance one option is to glance sometimes at the front page of
Jbotcan: http://jbotcan.org/jbo It's been quiet lately, but that
means it's very easy to keep up with, and even if it were to get busy
you wouldn't have to catch everything that goes by in order to enjoy
it. It's a great place to pick up vocabulary!
> One hopes that, post-baseline, there will be others who will be willing and
> qualified. But I'm willing to risk it being you-and-xorxes if absolutely
> necessary.
mi ji'a pu'i kakne
mi'e la stela selckiku
mu'o
Robert LeChevalier
> On Sat, Apr 10, 2010 at 3:37 AM, Bob LeChevalier <loj...@lojban.org> wrote:
>>On the other hand, Nora just said something that I think profoundly reflects
>>my misgivings. She's tried (far more than I have) to understand xorlo, but
>>she just can't get her mind around it. That makes her feel incompetent at
>>the language, which is the strongest demotivater for actually using it, much
>>less doing byfy work.
>
> I agree that this can only be a sign that you've thought about it too
> hard.
That tends to be what happens to people who work on language definition
for years %^(, (and especially those who participate in discussions with
xorxes on language definition - one HAS to think about it too much to
keep up with him %^)
> Under xorlo (which is the same as saying, with apologies to any
> holdbacks, under modern Lojban) the meaning of the article "lo" (which
> is the only one you need to learn to use) is simply "lo broda = zo'e
> noi ke'a broda". In other words it's simply something that is an x1
> of broda. Nothing more is specified.
Nora would have to speak for herself, but her misgivings extend to the
old loi/lei pair (and I won't pretend to know any more, because I have
no idea what xorlo did to them).
One thing to remember is that Nora and I used pre-xorlo in Lojban for
around 20 years, and Nora used the TLI Loglan articles for around a
decade before that. Our usage was ingrained, habitual, fluent (at least
with regard to choosing articles). Unlearning for us is non-trivial - I
still on occasion use the gismu "gumri", even though it was eliminated
more than 15 years ago.
> A wiki page on each individual word! That. That is what I want. A
> wiki is only one option, of course, but some sort of open forum
> dedicated to each word. I would prefer to see it as a new, separate
> project, clean, specific. (I suggest the name za'e "vlasnu".) I
> could maybe be convinced that it could be hosted on the tiki or in
> jbovlaste entry discussions, but so far it's seemed to me like the
> organization and structure and vibe of those places isn't conducive to
> the conversation I'd like to see.
>
> Most importantly I'd like to encourage questions from new students
> about particular words to be asked and answered in that forum. We've
> discussed most of the words in Lojban repeatedly, in depth, but we've
> lost those conversations to a lack of organization.
There was a concept proposed for preserving such conversations called
"The Elephant", pre-byfy. I'm not sure what happened to it, but it
never manifested.
I personally would like to see something you describe as the way of
addressing questions raised by newbies (or old-timers) post-baseline,
rather than having an academy-like byfy making formal decisions, and
possibly modifying the baseline.
Regardless of the last paragraph, I am not sure how such a project would
fit into the concepts in Robin's posting on documentation. Perhaps he
or someone else could speak to that.
> My perspective on it is: I'm glad to talk informally
> in English about what I think the words mean, or attempt to specify
> them carefully in Lojban,
If someone were to try to add a careful Lojban definition of a word to a
tiki webpage on the word, that would be a valuable long-term addition,
Pragmatically, for the pages to be useful, we would probably want to
keep English definitions and discussions separate from Lojban (though
the two could perhaps cross-reference each other - I don't know the
limits of hyperlinking in wikis).
> but having to try to craft a brief yet
On a wiki page, I don't think that they have to be brief. Obviously,
there has to be an extract thereof which is of reasonable printable
length for inclusion in a dictionary.
> unambiguous English definition,
There is no such thing, so trying to write one is of uncertain virtue.
As I said in another post, the idea of byfy was to produce something
"good enough" for the cmavo list, for a definition of "good enough"
comparable to that implicit in the gismu list and CLL (leaning towards
the latter, which was later).
The gismu and cmavo lists were originally designed for use in the
LogFlash flashcard program and were not intended to be baseline items,
nor the primary source for the dictionary.
For gismu and cmavo, the primary things were the lojban word and the
English keyword, which had to be as short as possible because they were
memorized and typed (without misspelling) multiple times by the learner,
and the English keywords had to be uniquely deterministic of one Lojban
word, rather than definitional. The full place structures were included
as a third field because we did not want people to think that the
keyword they were typing was a real definition, and we wanted people to
be continually exposed to the idea that Lojban brivla are predicates
linking multiple sumti. They were displayed in full as part of the
English to Lojban (recall) prompt, and computer limitations led to fixed
length fields of the current length.
cmavo "descriptions" (they were never really considered "definitions")
were given because the cmavo keywords rarely were enough by themselves
to make the Lojban word clear, usually being chosen to be quickly typed,
and thus somewhat more of a English-based "code" for the Lojban. The
descriptions and keywords had the same length to keep the Logflash
programming simple, and maintainable when we had versions for gismu,
rafsi, and cmavo.
The rafsi were included on the Lojban-to-English (recog) prompt to help
them be learned, but also to enable the same file to be used for the
rafsi/lujvo-making version of LogFlash.
(All three LogFlash programs were produced, and still exist, but I think
only Nora and I ever used the cmavo program to mastery, and only I used
the rafsi/lujvo program, and not to the point of mastery.)
It was only when I failed to produce a "real" dictionary within a year
or two, while people were concerned about having an unchanging language
to learn, that we basedlined the LogFlash lists as the definitive
statements of gismu, cmavo, and rafsi, until a dictionary was produced.
People were using the lists in lieu of a dictionary (and we were
distributing them as being the best lists we had).
But of course the cmavo were never defined. Trying to define them into
dictionary form, Cowan and I started producing a "selma'o catalog"
defining the selma'o in a standard way, which could be used in defining
the cmavo in each selma'o without excessive redundancy and verbosity.
The selma'o catalog eventually grew into CLL (with the catalog found in
chapter 20). When CLL was done, neither Cowan nor I had the time or
energy to define all the words (both of us had school-age kids, and I
was bogged down in order fulfillment, trying to keep the mailing list
uptodate and are businessy stuff, none of which I was good at)
> well, that's just the sort of thing I
> came to Lojban to avoid. :P Not that I don't think that's work worth
> doing, but I'm not the person to do it, as I can't get my head around
> it.
If people can write non-brief definitions, I think it wouldn't be that
hard for a dictionary editor to turn them into usable brief definitions.
>> And the silent majority is still silent; many of them are like Nora,
>>and unable to keep up with the traffic.
>
> Would you please ask Nora, and anyone else without the time to follow
> our main forums, if they would please consider tuning into Lojbanistan
> some other way?
In Nora's case, especially trying to support me resuming the presidency,
staying with the main show is the only feasible option.
Gary Burgess, another co-founder, raising a young grandson and an older
teen while working a lot of overtime, doesn't even have time for that.
If he could consistently spend 15 minutes a week on Lojban, he would be
lucky. Nothing in the community really supports the sort of people who
have time for Lojban only a few times a month (or less). So he usually
spends no time on it, except when I bring him up to date with a
phonecon. (Doing such stuff as Lojban while at work is professionally
verboten, even if they had the time).
If we ever found a way to produce a good digest of the main list (which
would require a heavy-handed but neutral editor), to reduce the reading
load to a small fraction of the current effort, going elsewhere a little
more often might be possible. But neither Nora nor I do well with
web-based interfaces, coming from the unformatted, single-window,
text-only DOS era (actually Nora can do it, but it is too much like what
she does at work, programming in VB with heavy customer interaction).
We've both tried IRC (not recently), but rarely had the fortune to find
more than one other live reader (and rarely even that), and neither of
us can work with an occasionally changing or interrupting page in the
background (both of us are single-tasking fossils who don't work well in
"interrupt mode" - cell phones and text messaging drives me to
distraction even thinking about them), so if nothing is going on right
that moment, we aren't sticking around.
I dunno if it exists or even is possible, but a constantly available and
updating IRC log, where one would log in and see the last couple of
pages of discussion, regardless of how-long-ago it took place, would
help, especially if it were possible to search back further if a topic
of especial interest came up. (If volume were heavy, being able to
quickly look at what was being talked about last, an hour ago, 2 hours
ago, etc, would make it possible to keep up even if like Nora she can't
read more than once a day for a few minutes.) Turning an IRC channel
into a threaded newsgroup might work for me - you know I have
occasionally read and responded to you on Usenet.
We occasionally look at other Lojban sites, as well as the wiki, but
there is no single place where we can, in a short time (and for Nora
this means minutes per day on weekdays) keep the pulse of the language
community. (At one point, Nora and I tried to follow the latest-updated
and most-frequently-read links of the wiki, but I don't even know if
they exist anymore.)
lojbab
John E Clifford
----- Original Message ----
From: Stela Selckiku <selc...@gmail.com>
To: loj...@googlegroups.com
Sent: Sat, April 10, 2010 10:46:44 PM
Subject: Re: [lojban] Response to Robin's "Essay on the future of Lojban"
I agree that this can only be a sign that you've thought about it too
hard. Under xorlo (which is the same as saying, with apologies to any
holdbacks, under modern Lojban) the meaning of the article "lo" (which
is the only one you need to learn to use) is simply "lo broda = zo'e
noi ke'a broda". In other words it's simply something that is an x1
of broda. Nothing more is specified.
_________
Well, not exactly. For one thing, 'lo broda' has to refer to an intensional object, at least sometimes (and how to tell when?), regardless of what 'broda' means. So, if it has a single meaning, it must be of something that is at once extensional and intensional -- not something that brodas are likely to be (maybe even can be). This is a major flaw, but one that could be removed fairly simply, basically by going (back) to the definition you suggestand sticking to it (this involves getting xorxes to update his notion of universe of discourse and accept a standard write-around, but anything is possible).
Jorge Llambías
> From: Stela Selckiku <selc...@gmail.com>
>
> "lo broda = zo'e noi ke'a broda". In other words it's simply something that is an x1
> of broda. Nothing more is specified.
> _________
>
> Well, not exactly.
Yes, that's exactly how it works.
> For one thing, 'lo broda' has to refer to an intensional object, at least sometimes (and how to tell when?), regardless of what 'broda' means.
What's an intensional object? Things like "lo se nitcu"? "lo se
claxu"? "lo se djica"? "lo xanri"?
>So, if it has a single meaning, it must be of something that is at once extensional and intensional -- not something that brodas are likely to be (maybe even can be).
Brodas are not likely to be two and three things at once, and yet "lo
broda" can sometimes refer to two things and sometimes to three, and
sometimes be completely unspecified as to number.
> This is a major flaw, but one that could be removed fairly simply, basically by going (back) to the definition you suggestand sticking to it (this involves getting xorxes to update his notion of universe of discourse and accept a standard write-around, but anything is possible).
The definition Stela gave is the one given in the BPFK gadri section,
so there is nothing to go back to, we are already there.
John E Clifford
----- Original Message ----
From: Jorge Llambías <jjlla...@gmail.com>
To: loj...@googlegroups.com
Sent: Sun, April 11, 2010 9:54:25 AM
Subject: Re: [lojban] Response to Robin's "Essay on the future of Lojban"
On Sun, Apr 11, 2010 at 10:44 AM, John E Clifford <kali9...@yahoo.com> wrote:
> From: Stela Selckiku <selc...@gmail.com>
>
> "lo broda = zo'e noi ke'a broda". In other words it's simply something that is an x1
> of broda. Nothing more is specified.
> _________
>
> Well, not exactly.
Yes, that's exactly how it works.
Apparently not.
> For one thing, 'lo broda' has to refer to an intensional object, at least sometimes (and how to tell when?), regardless of what 'broda' means.
What's an intensional object? Things like "lo se nitcu"? "lo se
claxu"? "lo se djica"? "lo xanri"?
Well, yes and no. Some things that these might refer to are intensional objects, others are not. It depends on how the reference is made (I am speaking here, of course, of the real 'lo' -- in the xorlo these are probably all intensional object just li lo gerku.)
>So, if it has a single meaning, it must be of something that is at once extensional and intensional -- not something that brodas are likely to be (maybe even can be).
Brodas are not likely to be two and three things at once, and yet "lo
broda" can sometimes refer to two things and sometimes to three, and
sometimes be completely unspecified as to number.
The relevance of the analogy escapes me. If it is important, we have ways of letting people know how many brodas are involved. Do we have corresponding ways of telling people that this case of 'lo broda' is intensional? The point is that intensionality makes a logical difference, which a logical language ought to show. If the weight of this is to be carried on the gadri (I don't see why it should be), then xorlo doesn't do it.
> This is a major flaw, but one that could be removed fairly simply, basically by going (back) to the definition you suggestand sticking to it (this involves getting xorxes to update his notion of universe of discourse and accept a standard write-around, but anything is possible).
The definition Stela gave is the one given in the BPFK gadri section,
so there is nothing to go back to, we are already there.
Going back to the time before the BPFK wandered off to cloud-cuckoo-land gets a rather different result.
mu'o mi'e xorxes
--
Jorge Llambías
> From: Jorge Llambías <jjlla...@gmail.com>
>>
>> "lo broda = zo'e noi ke'a broda". In other words it's simply something that is an x1
>> of broda. Nothing more is specified.
>> _________
>>
>> Well, not exactly.
>
> Yes, that's exactly how it works.
>
> Apparently not.
Yes, exactly so.
> What's an intensional object? Things like "lo se nitcu"? "lo se
> claxu"? "lo se djica"? "lo xanri"?
>
> Well, yes and no. Some things that these might refer to are intensional objects, others are not.
OK, so it seems you agree that "lo se claxu" can sometimes refer to an
intensional object, and sometimes not.
> It depends on how the reference is made (I am speaking here, of course, of the real 'lo' -- in the xorlo these are probably all intensional object just li lo gerku.)
I meant the references made as I made them, namely: "lo se nitcu", "lo
se claxu", "lo se djica", "lo xanri". I don't know why you need to
make any assumptions about xorlo, since I have just told you how it
works, why that "probably"? It's simple:
lo se nitcu = zo'e noi ke'a se nitcu
lo se claxu = zo'e noi ke'a se claxu
lo se djica = zo'e noi ke'a se djica
lo xanri = zo'e noi ke'a xanri
lo gerku = zo'e noi ke'a gerku
> If it is important, we have ways of letting people know how many brodas are involved.
Indeed.
> Do we have corresponding ways of telling people that this case of 'lo broda' is intensional?
Probably yes, but "lo" by itself doesn't do it.
> The point is that intensionality makes a logical difference, which a logical language ought to show.
Of course it does, just like number, manner of distribution, etc, make
logical differences, that sometimes matter and sometimes don't.
> If the weight of this is to be carried on the gadri (I don't see why it should be),
Neither do I see why it should be. We agree!
>then xorlo doesn't do it.
Of course it doesn't, that's the whole point. It is not something that
has to be carried on the gadri. (Unless perhaps the gadri "lo'e" has
something to do with it, but nobody really knows how "lo'e" really
works yet, and in that case the keyword "typical" would be nonsense.)
John E Clifford
----- Original Message ----
From: Jorge Llambías <jjlla...@gmail.com>
To: loj...@googlegroups.com
Sent: Sun, April 11, 2010 10:27:58 AM
Subject: Re: [lojban] Response to Robin's "Essay on the future of Lojban"
Yes, exactly so.
Indeed.
--
Jorge Llambías
> That's nice to know, but then I suspect (as I noted) that our difference is in how 'lo broda' is interpreted and that brings up the universe of discourse (the range of bound variables). Or perhaps it is what is the right way to express a non-specific desire: "I want a dog", say.
Discussing "I want a dog" will inevitably bring in the definition of
"djica", which according to the gi'uste requires an event in the x2,
and that will obscure the issue, which is not really about whether "lo
se djica" has to be an event or whether it can also be an object.
Consider instead the equally non-specific desire "I want to talk to
John". That's (hopefully uncontroversially) "mi djica lo nu mi tavla
la djan". Now "lo nu mi tavla la djan" could also refer to a
particular event of my talking to John, as in "lo nu mi tavla la djan
cu nau fasnu", or it could be used to quantify over events of my
talking to John, as in "ro lo nu mi tavla la djan cu cinri", in which
case any wanted but as yet unrealized event probably doesn't enter
into the picture. If I am currently talking to John and happy to be
doing so, then my current talking to John is something I do want and I
could say "mi djica lo nu mi tavla la djan" meaning that the current
event is not something that I'm doing against my will. That's an
unlikely interpretation without more context though, because if I say
that I want something, it is probably something I don't have at the
moment. Then I could also say "lo nu mi tavla la djan cu cafne", which
obviously cannot refer to any particular event of my talking to John,
because a particular single event cannot occur frequently, a
particular single event only occurs that once. I don't really see you
objecting to any of that.
You will probably want to say that what's good for "lo fasnu" is no
good for "lo gerku", but I don't, and I think that's where our
(seemingly unresolvable) difference is.
sigvaldi
On Apr 10, 9:45 pm, Michael Everson <michael.ever...@gmail.com> wrote:
> On 10 Apr 2010, at 22:31, Seth wrote:
>
> > i dont know... all but a few of my classmates and professors all but spit when prescriptivism, conlangs, or orthographies are mentioned. those things aren't "real linguistics" to them. when i have told them about Esperanto having natives, they entirely disregard the phenomenon as "not important". maybe my ling department is just particularly biased, but it is a large department, not just one isolated nazi.
>
> Then they are just bigots with their own narrow agenda.
>
> Seriously, that's just dumb. Neologisms are no different from conlang engineering.Icelandhas a whole institute (Íslensk málstöð) for devising new terminology.
Íslensk málstöð has got nothing to do with creating words or terms,
that is something that the population, the users of the language does.
The job that Íslensk málstöð had (it was merged with another institute
a few years back) was to do research on the Icelandic language.
They did not create any words.
tijlan
On Sat, Apr 10, 2010 at 10:06 PM, tijlan <jbot...@gmail.com> wrote:I agree with your other points, but why do you say Lojban is not
> Also worth
> noting is that, unlike Esperanto, Lojban isn't overtly specific about its
> morphosyntactic alignment; while Esperanto is explicitly
> nominative-accusative, Lojban is not. (In fact, I'm not sure which Lojban
> belongs to. Could it be the active-stative?)
nominative-accusative? It seems to me that it is exactly that: the
single case of intransitive predicates (the x1-case) is treated
exactly like one of the cases of transitive predicates (the x1-case
again)
For instance:
senci has only one argument, so it's an intransitive predicate with a subject. sumne has two arguments, one of which is defined as "experiencer" and as the x1, but it's not unambiguously the agent (the participant in a situation that carries out the action in this situation) so long as the x2 can be considered as the primary cause of the experience of smelling but yet not unambiguously as the agent either from a common viewpoint. According to Wikipedia, the linguist David Dowty suggests (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agent_%28grammar%29) that, in
His energy surprised everyone.
, His energy is the agent, "even though it does not have most of the typical agent-like qualities such as perception, movement, or volition". From that viewpoint, it would be reasonable to say sumne's x2 is the agent. In fact, the gimste offers varying definitions in terms of the arguments' roles:
a. x1 smells/scents x2
b. x2 smells/has odor/scent to observer x1
And the interpretation of cases starts to appear even more undecided/speaker-dependent when we take into account the following situation.
If native English speakers see da sumne de, they would probably generally take the definition (a) and consider the x1 nominative:
[NOMINATIVE] [verb] [ACCUSATIVE]
The same for native Japanese speakers, despite their different word order:
[NOMINATIVE] [ACCUSATIVE] [verb]
But what if native Basque speakers see da de sumne? It syntactically corresponds to the Basque ergative allignment:
[ERGATIVE] [ABSOLUTIVE] [verb]
That is, they would by tendency see de (sumne's x2) in the same way that they see an intransitive predicate's subject like the x1 of blabi; da blabi syntactically corresponds in Basque to
[ABSOLUTIVE] [verb]
And it's the same for predicates the x1 of which appears in the English version of the gimste as nominative and the x2 as accusative, such as viska:
x1 sees/views/perceives visually x2 under conditions x3
For Basque speakers, this x2 would naturally appear as absolutive and they would treat it in the same way as they would treat an intransitive predicate's x1 and describe it as such if they ever make a Lojban-Basque dictionary. Wikipedia has a Basque example of The man saw the boy. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ergative%E2%80%93absolutive_language#Morphological_ergativity):
Gizonak mutila ikusi du.
[gizon-ak] [mutil-a] [ikusi du]
[man-ERG] [boy-ABS] [saw]
, which naturally corresponds to
[lo nanmu] [lo nanla] [pu viska]
Unlike Esperanto, Lojban does not morphologically (and syntactically, for that matter) mark cases, so the interpretation is usefully up to the listener/reader.
> and for transitive predicates the x1-case is the one that
> usually corresponds to the agent, just like the subject case in
> nominative-accusative.
Active-stative would require that some intransitive verbs have an
x1-case only while others have an x2-case only, which is never the
case (unless you are thinking of things like "zi'o broda", but I doubt
it's fair to use such unusual cases for the classification).
For one thing, Lojban has certain characteristics of fluid-S, a subtype of active-stative. Wikipedia defines fluid-S (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Active_stative) as:
Consider single-argument intransitive predicates like sipna. In da sipna, da, unmarked, is either agentive or patientive: when da ri'a sipna, it's patientive; when da segau sipna, it's agentive.
It's the same for multiple-argument intransitive predicates like sakli. In da sakli de, da, unmarked, is again either agentive or patientive: when da ri'a sakli de, it's patientive; when da segau sakli de, it's agentive.
Also, tu'a and jai can make the intransitive argument either the agent or the object of a transitive verb -- the arbitrary marking of which is what is commonly defined as the main feature of active-stative.
> There are more to the similarity between Lojban and Japanese, but I'm havingI would agree that the distinction is less important than in English,
> difficulty putting it into English. For one thing, briefly, the distinction
> between the subject, object, and complement in Japanese is not as important
> as in English, which has led some notable Japanese linguists to suggest that
> every verb argument in this language is basically a complement of equal
> significance in its relation to the predicate, which sounds like what terbri
> are to its selbri in Lojban.
but there is still a distinction. The x1-case especially has very
distinct properties compared with the other cases, and the x2-case to
a lesser extent also has some special properties with respect to the
rest.
They may have distinct properties, but the point is that one argument is not more significant than the others. viska's x1 is not more important than its x2, while in English see's x1 (the subject) is more important than its x2 as evidenced by such facts as that I see that. can be reduced to I see. but not formally to See that. In Lojban and Japanese, mi viska | watasi-wa miru, viska ra | sore-o miru and viska | miru are equally valid. (Such ellipsis is also possible in some European languages like Spanish and Polish, but they differ from the pair in question in that their arguments inflect.) English prioritises the subject and formally requires its presence in an indicative sentence, as in It rains., which cannot formally be Rains.
Also: as I attempted to explain above, the x1-case as well as the x2-case in Lojban are by default indefinite, user-dependent. So I don't think one can objectively prescribe the properties of the x1/x2 as a definite representation of one grammatical case.
I'm not an expert, so I might have said some stupid things, in which case I would be happy to be corrected and educated.
Michael Everson
>> Seriously, that's just dumb. Neologisms are no different from conlang engineering.Icelandhas a whole institute (Íslensk málstöð) for devising new terminology.
>
> Íslensk málstöð has got nothing to do with creating words or terms, that is something that the population, the users of the language does.
In point of fact, I knew people who worked there in the early 1990s, and they said that they did in fact receive calls from people who wanted to know what the Icelandic words for new things were. I knew people who worked on the Tölvuorðasafn (the computer terminology dictionary), published by the Málstöð.
Having *myself* been involved with the development of Irish computer terminology, I can tell you that much vocabulary *is* created by committees of people, and does not just "well up" from the populace.
I recall one story that someone had build a bowling alley and named it "Bóling" but people were unhappy at a barely-assimilated loanword being used. At length "Keila" was chosen, if I remember correctly.
Michael
John E Clifford
----- Original Message ----
From: Jorge Llambías <jjlla...@gmail.com>
To: loj...@googlegroups.com
Sent: Sun, April 11, 2010 12:15:49 PM
Subject: Re: [lojban] Response to Robin's "Essay on the future of Lojban"
--
sigvaldi
On Apr 11, 5:35 pm, Michael Everson <michael.ever...@gmail.com> wrote:
> On 11 Apr 2010, at 12:41, sigvaldi wrote:
>
> >> Seriously, that's just dumb. Neologisms are no different from conlang engineering.Icelandhas a whole institute (Íslensk málstöð) for devising new terminology.
>
> > Íslensk málstöð has got nothing to do with creating words or terms, that is something that the population, the users of the language does.
>
> In point of fact, I knew people who worked there in the early 1990s, and they said that they did in fact receive calls from people who wanted to know what theIcelandicwords for new things were. I knew people who worked on the Tölvuorðasafn (the computer terminology dictionary), published by the Málstöð.
Yes, the Málstöð collected and made public the collections and could
direct callers to those who were creating the words.
> Having *myself* been involved with the development of Irish computer terminology, I can tell you that much vocabulary *is* created by committees of people, and does not just "well up" from the populace.
Yes, committees of computer users just as the committe on aviation
terms are people associated with aviation in some way. None of them
worked at the Íslensk Málstöð but their findings were published by
them.
The committe on aviation terms came about because of a general lack of
Icelandic words in the field so a few aviation minded people met and
formed a committe. They were assisted by the Málstöð when that started
but I think the committee was older.
Most of the best known neologisms (sími (telephone or as ritsími, the
telegraph) tölva (for computer) etc, were created long before the
Íslensk málstöð was formed.
Íslensk Málstöð does not exist anymore, they became part of another
institute but Icelanders are still creating new words nonetheless.
> I recall one story that someone had build a bowling alley and named it "Bóling" but people were unhappy at a barely-assimilated loanword being used. At length "Keila" was chosen, if I remember correctly.
Yes, and not by someone from the Málstöð I guess.
> Michael
Stela Selckiku
>
> Nora would have to speak for herself, but her misgivings extend to the old
> loi/lei pair (and I won't pretend to know any more, because I have no idea
> what xorlo did to them).
Simplified them. Made them comprehensible. Made them immediately,
basically obvious. And if it wasn't xorlo that made Lojban's articles
so simple that they are immediately obvious, well then, SOMETHING did,
because now they are.
The only and entire distinction between lo and loi is that the latter
is a mass. Specifically, "loi broda" means exactly "lo gunma be lo
broda", a mass composed of broda. All usages of "loi" could in fact
be systematically rewritten as phrases using "lo" and "gunma". For
instance "loi remna cu bevri lo pipno", the (mass of) humans carry the
piano, is exactly equivalent to "lo gunma be lo remna cu bevri lo
pipno", a mass whose components are humans carries the piano.
The distinction between lo/loi and le/lei is a separate and equally
simple distinction. In this case in the deep structure the meaning is
accomplished by "skicu", describe. So "le broda" transforms to "zo'e
noi mi ke'a do skicu lo ka ce'u broda", something which I describe it
to you as being broda.
The only extent therefore to which the meaning of "le" is still
uncertain is the extent to which we have not nailed down the meaning
of "skicu". Here is how I understand it: The x1 (skicu) is easy
enough, it's the person describing, and the x3 (terski) is the
audience. The x2 (selski) is the thing being described, which could
be anything at all, as anything can be described somehow. The x4
(velski) is the only possibly tricky one, the description. It's
listed as a quality, as opposed to say a sedu'u, which to me suggests
that you can also skicu something without using words. So to skicu
something, you somehow reveal or illustrate one or more of its
properties to someone.
As far as what flavor that gives to a sumti using "le", this is my
impression, based on how people have been using it: As a skicu, you
have a particular something in mind, the selski, that you're
describing to the terski. You're describing it to the terski by
showing them one particular quality, the velski, but that's probably
not the only quality of the selski that you know or have in mind.
Often the selski is a particular instance, something concrete, but
even if it's abstract it is usually a somewhat rich abstraction in
your (the skicu's) mind. For instance it would be more likely to be
something like "the sort of apple that I'd like to eat", where you
could describe it to a listener as having various qualities, such as
"being an apple" and "not being rotten" and "being delicious" and "not
belonging to anyone else so that I won't get in trouble for eating
it", etc., as opposed to just a truly generic abstract "apple" with no
other qualities.
It does not entirely matter though exactly what "skicu" means, if that
worries you, because there is no circumstance at all where you NEED to
implicitly assert that you skicu by saying "le". You can simply go
ahead and use "lo" all the time-- it's never ever wrong. And that is
indeed what every Lojban teacher that I know of tells their students
to do, and that is also what I recommend to you.
> One thing to remember is that Nora and I used pre-xorlo in Lojban for around
> 20 years, and Nora used the TLI Loglan articles for around a decade before
> that. Our usage was ingrained, habitual, fluent (at least with regard to
> choosing articles).
I feel safe in saying that I speak for almost everyone here when I say
that we would much rather hear Lojban with funny articles from you
than silence! We don't even pay any attention to what articles people
use anymore. :)
> Unlearning for us is non-trivial - I still on occasion use the gismu "gumri",
> even though it was eliminated more than 15 years ago.
So do I!
In fact I teach "gumri" to my students. I teach them the history of
the word, of course, and that they shouldn't usually use it, because
it "doesn't exist" even though we all actually know it! :D
Some other words that "don't exist" that I teach my students (because
they'll actually encounter them in Lojbanistan, going around not
existing) include laldo, kibro, zvero, nuzlo, lo'ai sa'ai le'ai,
la'oi...
> (All three LogFlash programs were produced, and still exist, but I think
> only Nora and I ever used the cmavo program to mastery, and only I used the
> rafsi/lujvo program, and not to the point of mastery.)
I first learned the gismu from LogFlash, but I only tried the other
versions a few times.
> I dunno if it exists or even is possible, but a constantly available and
> updating IRC log, where one would log in and see the last couple of pages of
> discussion, regardless of how-long-ago it took place, would help,
This is exactly how IRC works. It's a beautiful, harmoniously
balanced, elegant model. Unfortunately it is also deeply geeky, so
the elegance is not immediately apparent, hidden as it is behind an
entirely mysterious interface-- a geek's idea of elegance, after all,
almost never includes visible, clearly-labeled controls. :)
Unfortunately IRC is also such a geeky idea that to use it properly
requires you have a computer always running-- to some I suppose that
seems only as onerous a requirement as that you have electricity or
running water. :) Even while you're not there, your computer is
always "idling" in the IRC channel, receiving all of the messages for
you. At any time you can come to the computer and check the channel,
and the most recent messages will be ready for you, regardless of how
long ago they were. It's not expected that you'll read all of the
"backlog", as it's called, but it is expected that you'll skim it for
mentions of your own name, which your IRC client will helpfully
highlight for you. If people in the channel want to bring something
to your attention, they mention your name, perhaps just saying "hey,
read this conversation we just had, above". They can tell that your
computer is saving the messages for you, because they can see your
name in the list of users in the channel.
It's also fine to drop in on a channel for a while, chat, and then
leave again. People who happen to be there at the time can read your
messages and respond to them, but also other people might read them
later when they read their backlog, and you can mention particular
people's usernames to make sure they notice what you said.
Anyway IRC totally isn't for everything or everyone. Especially these
days, there's a lot of other options. For instance Twitter is another
chatty medium, and everything said there is immediately on the web, so
that's useful in some ways. I like to follow this search for
instance, which isn't hard to keep up with at all:
http://search.twitter.com/search?q=lojban It's cool because not only
do you see Lojbanists' tweets to #lojban, but also there's usually a
funny comment or two in there every day from some random stranger
finding out about Lojban and saying what they think of it! Here's the
latest:
"CorentinGallet: @CorentinGallet Korean is GREAT. And Lojban is
supposed to be HIGLY SUPERIOR. Doesn't matter. I'm speaking in Caml."
.u'i
Robert LeChevalier
> It does not entirely matter though exactly what "skicu" means, if that
> worries you, because there is no circumstance at all where you NEED to
> implicitly assert that you skicu by saying "le". You can simply go
> ahead and use "lo" all the time-- it's never ever wrong.
Which is completely alien to the way Nora and I have used Loglan and
later Lojban, alas. It was "le" that was always right, and lo meant
something a lot more restricted, though we argued over whether that
something could be defined consistently. But most importantly, it had
to actually BE the thing described and therefore wasn't "always right".
lo blabi zdani would never issue a political statement. le blabi zdani
might, though la'ele blabi zdani would be more clear.
But I'm not going to reargue xorlo. I will use the language the way I
know it, and if people correct me when what I say is incomprehensible,
then I may someday manage to speak the same language as them.
> And that is
> indeed what every Lojban teacher that I know of tells their students
> to do, and that is also what I recommend to you.
The fact that every Lojban teacher does so means that I am no longer a
Lojban teacher. It is the fact that Nora and I no longer seem to know
the language that we used to be the main teachers of, that has kept me
silent for so long.
> I feel safe in saying that I speak for almost everyone here when I say
> that we would much rather hear Lojban with funny articles from you
> than silence! We don't even pay any attention to what articles people
> use anymore. :)
We didn't much back then, either. That was the whole thing about
"letting usage decide". No matter how much we prescribed, the language
was whatever people actually used.
>>I dunno if it exists or even is possible, but a constantly available and
>>updating IRC log, where one would log in and see the last couple of pages of
>>discussion, regardless of how-long-ago it took place, would help,
>
> This is exactly how IRC works. It's a beautiful, harmoniously
> balanced, elegant model. Unfortunately it is also deeply geeky, so
> the elegance is not immediately apparent, hidden as it is behind an
> entirely mysterious interface-- a geek's idea of elegance, after all,
> almost never includes visible, clearly-labeled controls. :)
The real problem, as showed up yesterday, is that it is too chaotic.
Get more than a couple people there and there are suddenly 15
conversations going on at once, and you are trying to follow all of them
(or at least I do, instinctively). It feels like being at a large noisy
party, even with relatively few people actively participating, and for
me becomes rather too draining.
The culture of IRC is one that welcomes the multi-conversation, whereas
Nora and I prefer a conversation about one topic at a time (though the
conversation may wander). That is hard to do in real time with typing
(and typing in Lojban with my typo rate is even worse).
What an intermittent Lojbanist needs is closer to the ideal of Usenet
threads, in Usenet groups, so they can look at an area of the language
and see what is going on, and if something is interesting, dive in more
deeply. But it also needs to be persistent and less focused on what is
going on right now, because the things being talked about today may not
be of interest, but last week's discussion might be. I've seen some
webforums that come close to that, but I've never been comfortable with
web-based interfaces. It feels too much like filling out forms rather
than conversation.
The other problem for the intermittent Lojbanist is the level of detail,
volume, and technicalese. While a webforum, threaded email, or Usenet
thread can be easier to follow as a long-lasting conversation on more or
less one topic, if too many people are interested, or if a couple are
very intensely interested, the volume quickly gets too much to actually
read. Someone coming in now and seeing this thread will find a hundred
plus messages and considerable fragmentation of subject matter. But if
they have an hour or two for Lojban, reading through 100 messages is an
impossible chore.
So you need people willing to be digesters and editors of the activity
going on, that can turn the buzz of the multitudinous activities in the
community, into a Reader's Digest aimed at their level.
That was what I used to try to do with ju'i lobypli and with le lojbo
karni. Aimed for the serious but intermittent reader, and for the
uninvolved who still want to be informed as to what's going on. I think
I was doing pretty well, but it was quite all consuming to put out an
issue, since I also had to manage the mailing lists, do the printing,
etc. Just as Robin has just reached the point where managing the lists
was keeping him from actually doing something himself, in 1994 I was
forced to choose between being a magazine editor and helping get what
became CLL done. I made the right choice, but I think the intermittent
Lojbanist has been largely ignored since then, and that community was
and probably still is perhaps 10-20 times the size of the active community.
> Unfortunately IRC is also such a geeky idea that to use it properly
> requires you have a computer always running-- to some I suppose that
> seems only as onerous a requirement as that you have electricity or
> running water. :) Even while you're not there, your computer is
> always "idling" in the IRC channel, receiving all of the messages for
> you. At any time you can come to the computer and check the channel,
> and the most recent messages will be ready for you, regardless of how
> long ago they were. It's not expected that you'll read all of the
> "backlog", as it's called,
That's the problem, I want to read it all. And for someone with limited
time, "too much information" is the worst problem.
> but it is expected that you'll skim it for
> mentions of your own name,
I have never been a good skimmer. I *read*, fairly fast and
voluminously, but if there is too much for my available reading time, I
just tune out completely.
And of course with interactive media, I have to resist the temptation to
respond and get involved, or that starts chewing up my time. Some sort
of digesting service that makes the volume less, and reduces the
temptation to respond is helpful. You can write letters to your
newspaper and thus respond, but most don't - they just read. But with
online news-articles with commenting, you can find news-articles with
hundreds of responses. Who has time to read them? I've been tempted
many times to respond, but I'm glad that there is a registration
requirement, because that bit of bureaucracy is sufficient to keep me
from wasting time in the commenting, so I can read much more. (On
Usenet however, I can waste much more time, since I don't need to
register to respond to someone).
> which your IRC client will helpfully highlight for you.
That is fine if you are an active participant and your name will
therefore crop up. But for someone like me, who as president will feel
a need to keep abreast on what everyone is doing (just as Robin does),
while still choosing only a small number of things to work on himself,
we need more than to look for our name.
The "most-recently-updated" on the wiki used to tell me what people have
been talking about there, though there was still no filter short of
actually reading the full pages to get any detail, once I chose a topic.
> Anyway IRC totally isn't for everything or everyone. Especially these
> days, there's a lot of other options. For instance Twitter is another
> chatty medium, and everything said there is immediately on the web, so
> that's useful in some ways.
I don't want "chat", and one-liners are sometimes entertaining but
seldom really informative. Twitter, Facebook, instant messaging drive me
up the wall just watching my kids doing it. Perpetual interrupt mode,
never spending an hour actually following through on something because
there is too much new stuff coming in.
I want news with enough length that I can feel informed. A
well-hyperlinked blog might fill the role for intermittent Lojbanists,
but it would become a job to produce it often enough, because the person
who does it has to have a mainstream blogger's mentality and read all
the stuff others don't have time for, while getting involved in
relatively little so that they have time to produce the blog more than
once in a blue moon.
Could a shared digestive blog work? I dunno. I am as unaware of the
blogging world as of many other online things.
lojbab
John E Clifford
'le broda' refers to something(s) I have in mind and am calling brodas with the hope that you will pick out the right thing. Thus, it always has a referent, though that may not actually be a broda. Having gotten rid of obligatory though implicit quantifiers, we can still say that there is at least one such object and that the expression unadorned refers to all of them collectively.
'lo broda' refers to some thing(s) that actually broda. Which ones is determined contextually in a broad sense. Again there is at least on referent and the expression refers to all of them collectively.
'lei broda' introduces a fairly unclear notion of a mass, but otherwise behaves like 'le broda', that is the mass is of things I'm calling brodas, whether they are or not. At the best interpretation, masses are L-sets and so behave exactly like the members collectively. I suppose there is some difference in the way quantifiers are used with the two expressions, but that's a later issue.
'loi broda' is the same with the exception that the things actually are brodas,
OK so far?
----- Original Message ----
From: Stela Selckiku <selc...@gmail.com>
To: loj...@googlegroups.com
Sent: Mon, April 12, 2010 1:20:00 AM
Subject: Re: [lojban] Response to Robin's "Essay on the future of Lojban"
So do I!
.u'i
--
And Rosta
> The distinction between lo/loi and le/lei is a separate and equally
> simple distinction. In this case in the deep structure the meaning is
> accomplished by "skicu", describe. So "le broda" transforms to "zo'e
> noi mi ke'a do skicu lo ka ce'u broda", something which I describe it
> to you as being broda.
After some googling I found <http://www.lojban.org/tiki/BPFK+Section:+gadri>, and while the informal definition of E gadri as specific is as expected, this formal definition seems erroneous, for two reasons. The first is that "zo'e noi mi ke'a do skicu lo ka ce'u broda" does not encode specificity (aka referentiality). The second is that the contents of the noi phrase fall within the truth-conditions of the containing bridi. You could probably argue that this is trivial, because "mi ke'a do skicu" is true by virtue of being uttered, so affects the truth-conditions vacuously, but that performativity is not encoded, so "mi ke'a do skicu" is not in fact true by virtue of being uttered, so is not truth-conditionally inert. I'd have thought the second problem could have been remedied by using "voi" rather than "noi", though I expect this must have been considered and rejected for some reason, and it still leaves the first problem.
I'm also wondering whether there exists an experimental specific KOhA, a nonanaphoric "it/them". (I think I used to use "le du" in lieu of such.) If there were, then E gadri could be defined as "zo'e'e voi ke'a broda", no? (where zo'e'e is the specific KOhA). (I don't see any such cmavo in <http://www.lojban.org/tiki/currently+proposed+experimental+cmavo>. But I did find there the brilliant UI "bua'a'a", 'Before I kill you I will explain my master plan'.)
--And.
Jorge Llambías
>
> After some googling I found
> <http://www.lojban.org/tiki/BPFK+Section:+gadri>, and while the informal
> definition of E gadri as specific is as expected, this formal definition
> seems erroneous, for two reasons. The first is that "zo'e noi mi ke'a do
> skicu lo ka ce'u broda" does not encode specificity (aka referentiality).
> The second is that the contents of the noi phrase fall within the
> truth-conditions of the containing bridi. You could probably argue that this
> is trivial, because "mi ke'a do skicu" is true by virtue of being uttered,
> so affects the truth-conditions vacuously, but that performativity is not
> encoded, so "mi ke'a do skicu" is not in fact true by virtue of being
> uttered, so is not truth-conditionally inert.
You're right on both counts (though I personally wouldn't conflate
specificity and referentiality).
> I'd have thought the second
> problem could have been remedied by using "voi" rather than "noi", though I
> expect this must have been considered and rejected for some reason, and it
> still leaves the first problem.
If I remember correctly, the reason I decided against "voi" was that
"voi" is defined as the non-veridical counterpart of "poi", and what I
wanted was a non-veridical counterpart of "noi". Also, "voi" is a rare
word in the language, much more so than "le", so using "voi" to define
"le" seemed kind of backwards.
> I'm also wondering whether there exists an experimental specific KOhA, a
> nonanaphoric "it/them". (I think I used to use "le du" in lieu of such.) If
> there were, then E gadri could be defined as "zo'e'e voi ke'a broda", no?
> (where zo'e'e is the specific KOhA).
Maybe "zo'e'e no'oi ke'a broda", with "no'oi" as the non-restrictive
version of "voi".
But I don't really have any clear understanding of what "zo'e'e" could
be used for, other than to define "le". My current, tentative,
understanding is that specificity is mostly a matter of degree rather
than an on/off thing, so not really something that needs its own
gadri, and I'm experimenting with using "lo" as the only gadri.
And Rosta
> On Mon, Apr 12, 2010 at 3:20 PM, And Rosta <and....@gmail.com> wrote:
>> After some googling I found
>> <http://www.lojban.org/tiki/BPFK+Section:+gadri>, and while the informal
>> definition of E gadri as specific is as expected, this formal definition
>> seems erroneous, for two reasons. The first is that "zo'e noi mi ke'a do
>> skicu lo ka ce'u broda" does not encode specificity (aka referentiality).
>> The second is that the contents of the noi phrase fall within the
>> truth-conditions of the containing bridi. You could probably argue that this
>> is trivial, because "mi ke'a do skicu" is true by virtue of being uttered,
>> so affects the truth-conditions vacuously, but that performativity is not
>> encoded, so "mi ke'a do skicu" is not in fact true by virtue of being
>> uttered, so is not truth-conditionally inert.
>
> You're right on both counts (though I personally wouldn't conflate
> specificity and referentiality).
Nor would I, actually.
>> I'd have thought the second
>> problem could have been remedied by using "voi" rather than "noi", though I
>> expect this must have been considered and rejected for some reason, and it
>> still leaves the first problem.
>
> If I remember correctly, the reason I decided against "voi" was that
> "voi" is defined as the non-veridical counterpart of "poi", and what I
> wanted was a non-veridical counterpart of "noi".
That objection had occurred to me, but it seems to me that the restrictive--nonrestrictive distinction isn't applicable -- that "le du ku noi broda" and "le du ku poi broda" don't differ in meaning.
>> I'm also wondering whether there exists an experimental specific KOhA, a
>> nonanaphoric "it/them". (I think I used to use "le du" in lieu of such.) If
>> there were, then E gadri could be defined as "zo'e'e voi ke'a broda", no?
>> (where zo'e'e is the specific KOhA).
>
> Maybe "zo'e'e no'oi ke'a broda", with "no'oi" as the non-restrictive
> version of "voi".
>
> But I don't really have any clear understanding of what "zo'e'e" could
> be used for, other than to define "le".
Surely the meanings "le du", "a certain something or someone" are fairly obvious and useful. If "lo du" = "zo'e", then "le du" might equally well have a KOhA counterpart. Furthermore, the syntax of "zo'e'e no'oi ke'a broda" more closely matches the structure of the semantics.
> My current, tentative,
> understanding is that specificity is mostly a matter of degree rather
> than an on/off thing, so not really something that needs its own
> gadri, and I'm experimenting with using "lo" as the only gadri.
Have you written up your tentative understanding? Or could you explain it?
My view of specificity is that it involves existential quantification outside the scope of the sentence's illocutionary force (which IMO is what 'conventional implicatures' are -- stuff in the logical form but outside the scope of illocutionary force). E.g. "A (certain) child laughed", "le verba cu cmila" mean "Ex, x is a child: I-hereby-state-that x laughed", so what is asserted is "x laughed", in which, taken in isolation, x looks like a constant that is not identified. So to me, specificity is on/off rather than scalar.
--And.
Jorge Llambías
> Jorge Llambías, On 12/04/2010 22:57:
>> If I remember correctly, the reason I decided against "voi" was that
>> "voi" is defined as the non-veridical counterpart of "poi", and what I
>> wanted was a non-veridical counterpart of "noi".
>
> That objection had occurred to me, but it seems to me that the
> restrictive--nonrestrictive distinction isn't applicable -- that "le du ku
> noi broda" and "le du ku poi broda" don't differ in meaning.
"ko'a poi broda" means that from the set of referents of ko'a I'm only
taking some subset, those that satisfy broda.
But in "le broda" there is no superset of referents that I have in
mind, such that out of those only the ones that I'm describing as
broda are selected. The only referents ever in play are those of "le
broda", not some restriction from a superset consisting of the
referents of "le du".
>> But I don't really have any clear understanding of what "zo'e'e" could
>> be used for, other than to define "le".
>
> Surely the meanings "le du", "a certain something or someone" are fairly
> obvious and useful. If "lo du" = "zo'e", then "le du" might equally well
> have a KOhA counterpart.
Hmm... yes, I see. Assuming "le" is useful, there should be a KOhA
that is to "le" as "zo'e" is to "lo", yes.
> Furthermore, the syntax of "zo'e'e no'oi ke'a
> broda" more closely matches the structure of the semantics.
Yes, I agree with that, "noi mi ke'a do skicu" is something of a kludge.
(BTW, "lo gunma be lo" for "loi" is also something of a kludge, for a
different reason, but at this point close enough for government work.)
>> My current, tentative,
>> understanding is that specificity is mostly a matter of degree rather
>> than an on/off thing, so not really something that needs its own
>> gadri, and I'm experimenting with using "lo" as the only gadri.
>
> Have you written up your tentative understanding? Or could you explain it?
Well, maybe degree is not quite what I meant. What I'm trying to say
(still very tentatively) is that specificity is a matter of
perspective, depending on the level of abstraction one chooses to use
in the analysis.
Consider "They came by bus." If we analyse it from a perspective where
the universe of discourse contains {bus, train, car, bicycle}, then
"bus" is specific, we are saying "they came by x" where x is a
constant with a perfectly identified individual referent in the
universe of discurse. If we analyse it from a perspective where the
universe of discourse contains {the 21 bus, the 33 bus, the 60 bus,
the 69 bus}, all of which are buses, then "bus" is non-specific, we
are saying "Ex, x is a bus: they came by x". But it's hard to say that
we are dealing with two different meanings, to me they are just two
perspectives on the same meaning, unless there are contextual reasons
to prefer one universe of discourse over the other. And "the 21 bus"
is also not a rock bottom individual, since it two can be seen from
two perspectives, and this concretizing can go on indefinitely.
(pc will probably want to argue that there is an objective rock
bottom, but let's stay away from that putative rock bottom for the
moment so that we have the two perspectives easily available.)
My (tentative) contention is that this double perspective is always
available, and if that's the case then deciding whether a given term
is specific or not is arbitrary (and the decision need not be made).
"le" could be an indication to take the specific perspective, while
"lo" remains non-commital. The non-specific perspective is achieved by
forcing an explicit quantifier.
> My view of specificity is that it involves existential quantification
> outside the scope of the sentence's illocutionary force (which IMO is what
> 'conventional implicatures' are -- stuff in the logical form but outside the
> scope of illocutionary force). E.g. "A (certain) child laughed", "le verba
> cu cmila" mean "Ex, x is a child: I-hereby-state-that x laughed", so what is
> asserted is "x laughed", in which, taken in isolation, x looks like a
> constant that is not identified. So to me, specificity is on/off rather than
> scalar.
I think you're looking at yet another dimension in which specific is
different from non-specific than the one I was considering. You are
looking at where the quantifier is with respect to illocutionary
force, and I'm looking at where the quantifier is with respect to
fixing the level of abstraction. (Or maybe I'm just hallucinating, I
don't feel like I have any firm grasp on specificity yet.)
John E Clifford
bottom, but let's stay away from that putative rock bottom for the
moment so that we have the two perspectives easily available.)
Geez, Louise, do I really say stuff like that? Yes, I suppose I do (don't bother citing the references). Of course, if we shift the frame we can get down to something else -- not necessarily deeper, but different. In any case this doesn't have a lot to do with 'le', whose specificity (or whatever you want to call it) derives from its deictic character: the referent is already picked out and then it gets a label attached.
Luke Bergen
Jorge Llambías
>
> What does it mean if I say {ci lo re bakni cu citka lo pipno}?
That three of two cows eat pianos, a logical impossibility.
> And would
> the meaning change if I used {le pipno} instead of {lo pipno}
Using "le pipno" means you have some specific thing or things that you
are describing as pianos in mind.
Jonathan Jones
Like possibly a cake made to look like a piano.
mu'o mi'e xorxes
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mu'o mi'e .aionys.
.i.a'o.e'e ko klama le bende pe denpa bu
And Rosta
Jorge Llamb�as, On 13/04/2010 14:25:
> On Mon, Apr 12, 2010 at 9:23 PM, And Rosta <and....@gmail.com> wrote:
>> Jorge Llamb�as, On 12/04/2010 22:57:
>>> If I remember correctly, the reason I decided against "voi" was that
>>> "voi" is defined as the non-veridical counterpart of "poi", and what I
>>> wanted was a non-veridical counterpart of "noi".
>> That objection had occurred to me, but it seems to me that the
>> restrictive--nonrestrictive distinction isn't applicable -- that "le du ku
>> noi broda" and "le du ku poi broda" don't differ in meaning.
>
> "ko'a poi broda" means that from the set of referents of ko'a I'm only
> taking some subset, those that satisfy broda.
I can't get my head round the notion of multiple referents. To my way of thinking, the referent is the group; if one derives from that the predicate "x is a member of the group referred to", then certainly the poi/noi distinction makes sense. Hence to me, KOhA poi/noi is comparable to "li mu (ku) poi/noi" (in which perhaps more clearly the poi/noi contrast would seem to be vacuous).
Am I several steps behind where current lojbanological thinking has got to on this? Is it written up anywhere?
> But in "le broda" there is no superset of referents that I have in
> mind, such that out of those only the ones that I'm describing as
> broda are selected. The only referents ever in play are those of "le
> broda", not some restriction from a superset consisting of the
> referents of "le du".
OK, this I'm with you on. Hence the vacuity of the poi/noi contrast, as with the "li mu" example... Or?
>>> But I don't really have any clear understanding of what "zo'e'e" could
>>> be used for, other than to define "le".
>> Surely the meanings "le du", "a certain something or someone" are fairly
>> obvious and useful. If "lo du" = "zo'e", then "le du" might equally well
>> have a KOhA counterpart.
>
> Hmm... yes, I see. Assuming "le" is useful, there should be a KOhA
> that is to "le" as "zo'e" is to "lo", yes.
>
>> Furthermore, the syntax of "zo'e'e no'oi ke'a
>> broda" more closely matches the structure of the semantics.
>
> Yes, I agree with that, "noi mi ke'a do skicu" is something of a kludge.
>
> (BTW, "lo gunma be lo" for "loi" is also something of a kludge, for a
> different reason, but at this point close enough for government work.)
What's the kludge? I didn't spot it...
I'm 100% in agreement on this, *except* to my thinking, you're describing the contrast between generic and nongeneric readings. I agree that the generic--nongeneric distinction is a matter of perspective (on the population of the universe of discourse) (but not a matter of degree).
I don't mean this as a quibble about terminology, and I'm happy to switch to whichever terms facilitate discussion, but I understand "specificity" to mean the meaning "some particular individual/category/concept in the universe of discourse" (where an individual can be a group) where the individual isn't identified by name. So, as it were, one uses a zo'e'e and then, if one wishes, adds a voi clause (or converts to a "le" phrase) or a noi clause to assist the addressee in narrowing down the range of possible 'referents' (or even identifying the 'referent').
English "the" means, I think, "lo cmima be zo'e'e" with the added element of meaning that the addresses can identify zo'e'e. (I had a dim recollection that there was a BAhE for that "you know which" meaning, but apparently not.)
>> My view of specificity is that it involves existential quantification
>> outside the scope of the sentence's illocutionary force (which IMO is what
>> 'conventional implicatures' are -- stuff in the logical form but outside the
>> scope of illocutionary force). E.g. "A (certain) child laughed", "le verba
>> cu cmila" mean "Ex, x is a child: I-hereby-state-that x laughed", so what is
>> asserted is "x laughed", in which, taken in isolation, x looks like a
>> constant that is not identified. So to me, specificity is on/off rather than
>> scalar.
>
> I think you're looking at yet another dimension in which specific is
> different from non-specific than the one I was considering. You are
> looking at where the quantifier is with respect to illocutionary
> force, and I'm looking at where the quantifier is with respect to
> fixing the level of abstraction. (Or maybe I'm just hallucinating, I
> don't feel like I have any firm grasp on specificity yet.)
This pretty much fits with how things look to me too. But to me (i.e. to my understanding of Lojban), the level of abstraction issue doesn't have to do with the E/O gadri contrast...
--And.
Luke Bergen
--
Jorge Llambías
>> a logical impossibility.
> Because the {citka lo pipno} means that "eats the piano in its entirety"?
No, that would be a physical impossibility, not a logical one.
The logical impossibility is for three cows to do something when there
are only two cows to select from.
> What if three cows are standing around, one of them eats a piano, and then
> a second cow eats the first cow (including the piano). In this case it
> would be true that {re lo ci bakni cu citka lo pipno}. Am I right?
I don't have enough experience with piano-eating cows to answer that,
but if I eat a pig that has eaten a rotten tomato, I wouldn't say that
I have eaten a rotten tomato.
John E Clifford
From: And Rosta <and....@gmail.com>
To: loj...@googlegroups.com
> taking some subset, those that satisfy broda.
I can't get my head round the notion of multiple referents. To my way of thinking, the referent is the group; if one derives from that the predicate "x is a member of the group referred to", then certainly the poi/noi distinction makes sense. Hence to me, KOhA poi/noi is comparable to "li mu (ku) poi/noi" (in which perhaps more clearly the poi/noi contrast would seem to be vacuous).
Welcome to the club, of sorts. But do not despair; you can have your cake and xorxes his without more than verbal befuddlement. The logic of multiple reference and quantification is exactly the same as the logic of L-sets (mereology, the part-whole relationship: Lesniewski, Goodman, Leonard, Quine), so saying 'some brodas' or 'a bunch of brodas' works exactly the same way (pace Ockham).
Luke Bergen
Jorge Llambías
> oh.. My mistake. I thought that {re lo ci bakni} is talking about "2 of the
> 3 bakni".
That's right.
> You're saying it's the other way around? {ci lo re bakni} = "2
> of the 3 cows"?
No, it was you who said "ci lo re bakni cu citka lo pipno" in your
first post, and I said that was logically impossible.
Luke Bergen
--
MorphemeAddict
John E Clifford
----- Original Message ----
--
Luke Bergen
John E Clifford
From: Luke Bergen <lukea...@gmail.com>
To: loj...@googlegroups.com
Sent: Tue, April 13, 2010 4:29:09 PM
Jorge Llambías
> Jorge Llambías, On 13/04/2010 14:25:
>>
>> "ko'a poi broda" means that from the set of referents of ko'a I'm only
>> taking some subset, those that satisfy broda.
>
> I can't get my head round the notion of multiple referents. To my way of
> thinking, the referent is the group; if one derives from that the predicate
> "x is a member of the group referred to", then certainly the poi/noi
> distinction makes sense. Hence to me, KOhA poi/noi is comparable to "li mu
> (ku) poi/noi" (in which perhaps more clearly the poi/noi contrast would seem
> to be vacuous).
(No "ku" after "li mu", BTW. The terminator for LI is LOhO.)
While "li mu" normally has a single referent, to me "li mu poi ..."
immediately opens up the possibility of multiple fives, which the
speaker is about to restrict in some way or another. And "so'i li mu"
is grammatical, just like "many fives" is grammatical in English.
Whether or not it is sensible to speak of that or not is a different
matter, but I don't think the poi/noi contrast will depend on what is
sensible to talk about.
> Am I several steps behind where current lojbanological thinking has got to
> on this? Is it written up anywhere?
Our Bible on this subject is:
http://www.amazon.com/Plural-Predication-Thomas-McKay/dp/0199278148
(or was rather, when the draft version was available online).
Not that the whole book was relevant to Lojban, but one or two
chapters were very illuminating.
>> But in "le broda" there is no superset of referents that I have in
>> mind, such that out of those only the ones that I'm describing as
>> broda are selected. The only referents ever in play are those of "le
>> broda", not some restriction from a superset consisting of the
>> referents of "le du".
>
> OK, this I'm with you on. Hence the vacuity of the poi/noi contrast, as with
> the "li mu" example... Or?
As with "li mu", while "poi" does not absolutely require that the
restriction be non-trivial, there are at least strong connotations
that a non-trivial restriction is in play. At least the possibility is
there, so "le du poi ..." has a potential interpretation that "le
broda" does not have.
>> (BTW, "lo gunma be lo" for "loi" is also something of a kludge, for a
>> different reason, but at this point close enough for government work.)
>
> What's the kludge? I didn't spot it...
"PA loi broda" and "PA lo gunma be lo broda" are different. (At least
with one understanding of "PA loi".)
"PA lo gunma" is ordinary quantification over groups, while "PA loi"
is quantification over the members of the group.
>> Consider "They came by bus."
[...]
>> My (tentative) contention is that this double perspective is always
>> available, and if that's the case then deciding whether a given term
>> is specific or not is arbitrary (and the decision need not be made).
>> "le" could be an indication to take the specific perspective, while
>> "lo" remains non-commital. The non-specific perspective is achieved by
>> forcing an explicit quantifier.
>
> I'm 100% in agreement on this, *except* to my thinking, you're describing
> the contrast between generic and nongeneric readings. I agree that the
> generic--nongeneric distinction is a matter of perspective (on the
> population of the universe of discourse) (but not a matter of degree).
But, if we choose the non-generic reading, then "bus" is specific,
while if we choose the generic reading it is non-specific. So if
generic-nongeneric is just perspective, then at least in some cases
specific-nonspecific becomes just a matter of perspective as well.
> I don't mean this as a quibble about terminology, and I'm happy to switch to
> whichever terms facilitate discussion, but I understand "specificity" to
> mean the meaning "some particular individual/category/concept in the
> universe of discourse" (where an individual can be a group) where the
> individual isn't identified by name. So, as it were, one uses a zo'e'e and
> then, if one wishes, adds a voi clause (or converts to a "le" phrase) or a
> noi clause to assist the addressee in narrowing down the range of possible
> 'referents' (or even identifying the 'referent').
>
> English "the" means, I think, "lo cmima be zo'e'e" with the added element of
> meaning that the addresses can identify zo'e'e. (I had a dim recollection
> that there was a BAhE for that "you know which" meaning, but apparently
> not.)
"bi'u" or "bi'unai".
>> I think you're looking at yet another dimension in which specific is
>> different from non-specific than the one I was considering. You are
>> looking at where the quantifier is with respect to illocutionary
>> force, and I'm looking at where the quantifier is with respect to
>> fixing the level of abstraction. (Or maybe I'm just hallucinating, I
>> don't feel like I have any firm grasp on specificity yet.)
>
> This pretty much fits with how things look to me too. But to me (i.e. to my
> understanding of Lojban), the level of abstraction issue doesn't have to do
> with the E/O gadri contrast...
What I'm trying to say (I think) is that the level of abstraction,
which is to some extent arbitrary, can set the stage in such a way
that the issue of specificity will be affected. But I know I'm not
saying anything very convincing about it at this point.
And Rosta
>>> "ko'a poi broda" means that from the set of referents of ko'a I'm only
>>> taking some subset, those that satisfy broda.
>> I can't get my head round the notion of multiple referents. To my way of
>> thinking, the referent is the group; if one derives from that the predicate
>> "x is a member of the group referred to", then certainly the poi/noi
>> distinction makes sense. Hence to me, KOhA poi/noi is comparable to "li mu
>> (ku) poi/noi" (in which perhaps more clearly the poi/noi contrast would seem
>> to be vacuous).
>
> (No "ku" after "li mu", BTW. The terminator for LI is LOhO.)
>
> While "li mu" normally has a single referent, to me "li mu poi ..."
> immediately opens up the possibility of multiple fives, which the
> speaker is about to restrict in some way or another. And "so'i li mu"
> is grammatical, just like "many fives" is grammatical in English.
> Whether or not it is sensible to speak of that or not is a different
> matter, but I don't think the poi/noi contrast will depend on what is
> sensible to talk about.
I'm fine with "so'i li mu" being "many fives", coerced by the quantification.
In English, one does get things like "my mother that bore me", "London that I have luved in for so many years", which don't coerce a "many mothers/Londons" interpretation. So restrictiveness needn't coerce plural interp.
Also, I can't think how the poi/noi distinction can apply when there is no predicate (selbri) present either explicitly, or implicity as when a quantifier is applied to a sumti.
Not that any of this matters much to the meaning of formal definitions of {le}, of course, since we agree that your no'oi, nonveridical noi, could be used.
>
>> Am I several steps behind where current lojbanological thinking has got to
>> on this? Is it written up anywhere?
>
> Our Bible on this subject is:
> http://www.amazon.com/Plural-Predication-Thomas-McKay/dp/0199278148
> (or was rather, when the draft version was available online).
> Not that the whole book was relevant to Lojban, but one or two
> chapters were very illuminating.
Can one get emailed a copy of the draft...?
>>> (BTW, "lo gunma be lo" for "loi" is also something of a kludge, for a
>>> different reason, but at this point close enough for government work.)
>> What's the kludge? I didn't spot it...
>
> "PA loi broda" and "PA lo gunma be lo broda" are different. (At least
> with one understanding of "PA loi".)
> "PA lo gunma" is ordinary quantification over groups, while "PA loi"
> is quantification over the members of the group.
Yes, I see. I can't decide if the problem goes away if "loi broda" is not "lo gunma" but rather "zo'e noi ke'a gunma", since "PA zo'e noi ke'a gunma" quantifies over members of zo'e. I guess it comes down to whether "zo'e noi ke'a broda" necessarily means zo'e is a single broda (as required for "zo'e noi ke'a gunma" to work as a solution) or whether it can mean zo'e is a bunch of broda (as required, I'm fairly sure, by xorlo). Actually, those are both meanings one needs to be able to express. Maybe "zo'e noi pa gunma ne ke'a"? (The thinking in this para is low quality, so feel free to ignore it...)
>>> Consider "They came by bus."
> [...]
>>> My (tentative) contention is that this double perspective is always
>>> available, and if that's the case then deciding whether a given term
>>> is specific or not is arbitrary (and the decision need not be made).
>>> "le" could be an indication to take the specific perspective, while
>>> "lo" remains non-commital. The non-specific perspective is achieved by
>>> forcing an explicit quantifier.
>> I'm 100% in agreement on this, *except* to my thinking, you're describing
>> the contrast between generic and nongeneric readings. I agree that the
>> generic--nongeneric distinction is a matter of perspective (on the
>> population of the universe of discourse) (but not a matter of degree).
>
> But, if we choose the non-generic reading, then "bus" is specific,
> while if we choose the generic reading it is non-specific. So if
> generic-nongeneric is just perspective, then at least in some cases
> specific-nonspecific becomes just a matter of perspective as well.
The actual English example "came by bus" seems to me to demand a generic reading (because that seems to be the effect of using _bus_ without an article), but if we can use, say, "I will drink wine" as an example, then the nongeneric reading can be specific or nonspecific, "Ex, x is wine: I will drink x" being the nonspecific.
>> I don't mean this as a quibble about terminology, and I'm happy to switch to
>> whichever terms facilitate discussion, but I understand "specificity" to
>> mean the meaning "some particular individual/category/concept in the
>> universe of discourse" (where an individual can be a group) where the
>> individual isn't identified by name. So, as it were, one uses a zo'e'e and
>> then, if one wishes, adds a voi clause (or converts to a "le" phrase) or a
>> noi clause to assist the addressee in narrowing down the range of possible
>> 'referents' (or even identifying the 'referent').
>>
>> English "the" means, I think, "lo cmima be zo'e'e" with the added element of
>> meaning that the addresses can identify zo'e'e. (I had a dim recollection
>> that there was a BAhE for that "you know which" meaning, but apparently
>> not.)
>
> "bi'u" or "bi'unai".
I'm half pleased I sort-of remembered it and half dismayed I'd sort-of forgotten it...
So, "lo cmima be zo'e'e bi'u" (if UI binds to the prev word).
>
>>> I think you're looking at yet another dimension in which specific is
>>> different from non-specific than the one I was considering. You are
>>> looking at where the quantifier is with respect to illocutionary
>>> force, and I'm looking at where the quantifier is with respect to
>>> fixing the level of abstraction. (Or maybe I'm just hallucinating, I
>>> don't feel like I have any firm grasp on specificity yet.)
>> This pretty much fits with how things look to me too. But to me (i.e. to my
>> understanding of Lojban), the level of abstraction issue doesn't have to do
>> with the E/O gadri contrast...
>
> What I'm trying to say (I think) is that the level of abstraction,
> which is to some extent arbitrary, can set the stage in such a way
> that the issue of specificity will be affected. But I know I'm not
> saying anything very convincing about it at this point.
OK, I understand your point, I think. Translated into my terms, it is that specific readings are nongeneric; so if something is viewed generically, then perforce it's not specific.
"zo'e noi ke'a broda" effectively gives you the generic reading, since there's no quantification. "PA zo'e noi ke'a broda" quantifies over tokens/members of the category. "zo'e'e", with optional noi or no'oi, gives specific, and "PA zo'e'e" quantifies over tokens/members of "zo'e'e". That seems pretty straightforward... (Admittedly, not straightforward if the goal is to paraphrase gadri using fairly common nonexperimental cmavo.)
--And.
Pierre Abbat
> Ummm! I think that the quantifiers behave differently for 'lo' and 'loi'
> 're lo ci gerku' is two of the three dogs acting individually but 're loi
> ci gerku' is a bunch of two, i.e., acting still together. There's
> something about fractional quantifiers as well, but I am even less sure how
> that works: 'pire lo'i gerku' is maybe halves of dogs for 'lo' but, I
> think, still a bunch of dogs half the original size for 'loi'.
"re loi ci gerku" means six dogs, in two masses of three, each mass acting
together. "pire lo'i gerku" is 1/5 of a set of dogs. li pire du li
fi'umu .ije li pimu du li fi'ure.
On Tuesday 13 April 2010 14:28:35 Luke Bergen wrote:
> Because the {citka lo pipno} means that "eats the piano in its entirety"?
> What if three cows are standing around, one of them eats a piano, and then
> a second cow eats the first cow (including the piano). In this case it
> would be true that {re lo ci bakni cu citka lo pipno}. Am I right?
"re lo ci bakni cu citka lo pipno" does not imply that both cows eat the same
piano. Neither does "re lo ci bakni cu citka pa pipno" or (if I understand
xorlo right) "lo pipno cu se citka re lo ci bakni". "pa pipno cu se citka re
lo ci bakni", though, does imply that the same piano was eaten by both cows.
I have never heard of cows eating cows which eat pianos before. It does
happen, though, that one insect eats another insect while it's eating
something else.
mu'omi'e .pier.
--
li fi'u vu'u fi'u fi'u du li pa
Craig Daniel
>
> "re lo ci bakni cu citka lo pipno" does not imply that both cows eat the same
> piano. Neither does "re lo ci bakni cu citka pa pipno" or (if I understand
> xorlo right) "lo pipno cu se citka re lo ci bakni". "pa pipno cu se citka re
> lo ci bakni", though, does imply that the same piano was eaten by both cows.
Wait, I thought the definition of SE conversions was such that "re lo
ci bakni ku pa pipno cu citka," "re lo ci bakni cu citka pa pipno,"
"pa pipno cu se citka re lo ci bakni," "te citka pa pipno ku re lo ci
bakni", and so forth were all equivalent. But my Lojban's a bit rusty
these days and my xorlo's never been entirely right; am I
misremembering?
- mi'e .kreig.daniyl.
Jorge Llambías
>
> I'm fine with "so'i li mu" being "many fives", coerced by the
> quantification.
> In English, one does get things like "my mother that bore me", "London that
> I have luved in for so many years", which don't coerce a "many
> mothers/Londons" interpretation. So restrictiveness needn't coerce plural
> interp.
I Googled "my mother that bore me", and the first (of only six) hits was:
"My mother and I–and by "my mother" I mean always one of my two
mothers, for my mother that bore me was dead–"
and that seems like the most natural use for "my mother that bore me"
to me, but some of the other hits are not so clear that the
restriction is doing actual restrictive work.
The London example sounds odd to my non-native sense without a "the"
in front, and I would want to change "that" to "where" (unless it's a
vocative?), but I don't really want to dispute that there may be
restrictive clauses that don't do any actual restriction.
> Also, I can't think how the poi/noi distinction can apply when there is no
> predicate (selbri) present either explicitly, or implicity as when a
> quantifier is applied to a sumti.
With quantification the distinction is very stark:
ro da poi xunre cu kukte
Everything that is red is delicious.
ro da noi xunre cu kukte
Everything, which is red, is delicious.
> Not that any of this matters much to the meaning of formal definitions of
> {le}, of course, since we agree that your no'oi, nonveridical noi, could be
> used.
Right, but it's an interesting side issue nonetheless.
>> http://www.amazon.com/Plural-Predication-Thomas-McKay/dp/0199278148
>> (or was rather, when the draft version was available online).
>> Not that the whole book was relevant to Lojban, but one or two
>> chapters were very illuminating.
>
> Can one get emailed a copy of the draft...?
I don't have one, I've changed computers too many times since. I don't
know if anyone else might have it.
>> "PA lo gunma" is ordinary quantification over groups, while "PA loi"
>> is quantification over the members of the group.
>
> Yes, I see. I can't decide if the problem goes away if "loi broda" is not
> "lo gunma" but rather "zo'e noi ke'a gunma",
I'd say that "lo gunma" is just the same as "zo'e noi ke'a gunma".
> since "PA zo'e noi ke'a gunma"
> quantifies over members of zo'e.
which must be things that satisfy the x1 of gunma.
> I guess it comes down to whether "zo'e noi
> ke'a broda" necessarily means zo'e is a single broda (as required for "zo'e
> noi ke'a gunma" to work as a solution)
No, that's not required. Many things can work as a solution working
together without that making them one thing. (That's essentially
McKay's argument.) But the kind of thing that satisfy the x1 of gunma
is the kind of thing that has members, as opposed to the kind of thing
that satisfy the x2 of gunma, which are typically many things working
together.
>or whether it can mean zo'e is a
> bunch of broda (as required, I'm fairly sure, by xorlo).
zo'e can be many broda without necessarily being one anything (whether
bunch or whatever).
> Actually, those are
> both meanings one needs to be able to express. Maybe "zo'e noi pa gunma ne
> ke'a"? (The thinking in this para is low quality, so feel free to ignore
> it...)
The two meanings are easily expressible without any recourse to "loi":
"lo broda" vs. "lo gunma be lo broda".
> The actual English example "came by bus" seems to me to demand a generic
> reading (because that seems to be the effect of using _bus_ without an
> article), but if we can use, say, "I will drink wine" as an example, then
> the nongeneric reading can be specific or nonspecific, "Ex, x is wine: I
> will drink x" being the nonspecific.
Right, but I think we don't need to commit to one of the two readings,
or perspectives, to get the meaning. In the case of the bus we may be
forced to by English:
They came by bus, so they arrived earlier than those of us that came
by bike, even though (?it / their bus) had to stop for gas.
It seems to me that "it" can't be used there, because grammatically
"bus" doesn't have a nongeneric perspective available, but:
They drank wine, and I only had water, so I will drive. Not that I
wouldn't have wanted to drink (it / the wine) too, but they had
finished it before I arrived.
In this case, it seems to me, "it" seems more acceptable (what are the
native intuitions?).
But in Lojban both perspectives remain always available, giving
something that would seem weird in English like:
They came by bus, so they arrived earlier than those of us that came
by bike, even though bus had to stop for gas.
So "bus" can be generic and still stop for gas in a particular occasion.
>> What I'm trying to say (I think) is that the level of abstraction,
>> which is to some extent arbitrary, can set the stage in such a way
>> that the issue of specificity will be affected. But I know I'm not
>> saying anything very convincing about it at this point.
>
> OK, I understand your point, I think. Translated into my terms, it is that
> specific readings are nongeneric; so if something is viewed generically,
> then perforce it's not specific.
Mmm... I think I'm saying the opposite, that generic readings are
always specific, but because of the arbitrary perspective of
genericity, they can often be taken as nongeneric nonspecific as well.
But I have to keep insisting that I'm not certain if that's exactly
what I'm saying. :)
> "zo'e noi ke'a broda" effectively gives you the generic reading, since
> there's no quantification.
Yes, though I would want to say "it allows" the generic reading,
rather than "gives".
> "PA zo'e noi ke'a broda" quantifies over
> tokens/members of the category.
Thereby forcing a nongeneric (or less generic) reading (and
quantification is always nonspecific).
>"zo'e'e", with optional noi or no'oi, gives
> specific, and "PA zo'e'e" quantifies over tokens/members of "zo'e'e". That
> seems pretty straightforward... (Admittedly, not straightforward if the goal
> is to paraphrase gadri using fairly common nonexperimental cmavo.)
Yes, I think if we have "zo'e'e" then we have "le" figured out, and
vice versa. But putting one in terms of the other doesn't really get
to the bottom of it (at least for me).
Jorge Llambías
>
> Wait, I thought the definition of SE conversions was such that "re lo
> ci bakni ku pa pipno cu citka," "re lo ci bakni cu citka pa pipno,"
Those two are equivalent.
> "pa pipno cu se citka re lo ci bakni," "te citka pa pipno ku re lo ci
> bakni",
Those two are equivalent, but not equivalent to the first two.
>and so forth were all equivalent. But my Lojban's a bit rusty
> these days and my xorlo's never been entirely right; am I
> misremembering?
Nothing to do with xorlo. The order of quantifiers has always been
relevant. You can play around with SE and reorder the arguments all
you want *after* you have moved the quantifiers to the prenex, but you
can't change the order of quantifiers without affecting the meaning.
Saying that the number of cows that eat exactly one piano is exactly
two is very different from saying that the number of pianos that are
eaten by exactly two cows is exactly one.
Lindar
logical language and how everything is absolutely wrong, you failed
to:
a. Explain in what way it has failed.
b. Suggest what to do next.
2. zo'e != lo. I have no idea where you folks got the idea, but AFAIK
"zo'e" is not "lo broda" or anything like that, it is simply an
unspecified sumti, and therefore we don't need a new sumti "zo'e'e" or
any such thing. It's not a particular unspecified thing, it isn't a
specific unspecified thing, and it's not a thing which really is or
isn't or is called an unspecified thing, it's just an unspecified
sumti.
3. Bob, the absolute stupidest way I can put it, and the way I've
hated explaining it, is that lo = a, le = the. That's pretty much how
they universally end up getting translated. lo patfu = a father,
determined by context, probably mine or just any given father (really
depending on context) Any such thing that could fit the x1. le patfu =
'the' father, could still be my father, could be my father-in-law,
could be my friend's father, could be somebody that we both know that
acts very fatherly towards people, it could be a knot in a tree trunk
that looks like your father, but the idea is that it's a particular
thing you're talking about, and you're calling it "patfu".
((Sub-note: If this is wrong, then this is how a non-techy, non-
linguist, non-intelligent audio engineer has perceived how these two
gadri work, and it's clsn/Timo/ARJ that are to blame for teaching me
incorrectly.))
4. Why can't we use a common-sense rule? I see things like plibu
(generic word for external genitalia) and vlagi (word for vulva
[female external genitalia])... so we have an obvious redundancy and
consistency flaw (being that we have a consistency set up from remna
to pinji to ganti regarding gender specification. Get rid of vlagi.
It's -extremely- obvious stuff like that which we need to just remove.
Another, yet different, example is of "mabla" wherein nobody (of whom
I know) uses the standard definition (something like "x1 is a
derogative use of x2" or something stupid like that), and pretty much
everybody else uses it as a swear (x1 is stupid/bad/detestable/shitty/
etc.), so why don't we just skip formalities and change the
definition? I'm sorry that I don't have too much insight on the issue
of cmavo, but the one that apparently has held the byfy back several
years or whatever I fail to see as a problem. "Without intent" is my
strongly believed and fully uninformed definition of ".ai nai".
Honestly, I mabla-ing hate most UI in the first place (mostly because
they're overused and made endlessly complex by newbies using
ru'ecaisaise'iwhatever so I know precisely how happy/annoyed you are
on a scale of one to a thousand including decimal places into the
millionths, but I have no idea what they're actually trying to say
because they forgot to use a damn gadri and accidentally a whole
tanru), so I don't see why any focus is put on them. They have
absolutely no practical use other than being a stupid toy for people
that don't want to learn the language and just want to spam ".u'i"
instead of "lol" every five seconds. It -REALLY- does not matter what
".ai nai" means, so just pick something and stick with it, and if
everybody bitches about it endlessly, then change it. Personally, I'd
put more focus on fixing whatever little stupid words the linguists
are worried about that I'll probably never use in a million years, and
more importantly, I'd work on simplifying some of the language for
stupid people like myself as I still have absolutely -no- idea what
"ce'u" does, what "pseudo-quantifier binding a variable within an
abstraction that represents an open place." or 'lambda' is supposed to
mean, and I'm scared to death of anything I haven't learned that is
apparently "non-veridical" because I read in the dictionary that it
means something like "a lie", which clearly means I have no
understanding of what the hell it means or how to use it (like "voi").
5. Frankly, I could give less than two shits what some Uni professor's
opinion of Lojban is or what some obnoxious person that I've never
seen on IRC or the mailing list (which leads me to assume they speak
little to no Lojban/haven't studied Lojban and read one article
somebody else wrote and immediately formed an opinion) before thinks
regarding the logical-ness of Lojban, and I think that as soon as we
please the bureaucrats regarding the broken bits of Lojban, we should
stop griping about every little damn thing and instead focus on
community efforts like encouraging people to get on Mumble and leave
it on, starting -some- kind of video-based "lo do ckiku ma zvati" on
YT, and getting a LOT more people to actively participate in the art
and music community, including developing modern pop art and music
using Lojban and coming up with music that is unique to the culture
surrounding the speakers of Lojban (which brings up a small sub-point
that as much as one of those HUGE key points everybody clings to like
the word "Unambiguous™" that Lojban is not culturally neutral, and the
main Lojban group that regularly communicates on IRC has formed its
own living concept of Lojbanic culture, including humour, games, and
music, which I believe we should expand and embrace so that we have
flash animations, shows, music, art, poetry, and a true art culture in
Lojban). Now I shall promptly head back into IRC to have "voi"
explained to me another 20 times and "ce'u" another 200.
This is my wholly uninformed and (relevantly) uneducated opinion on
the matter, and I apologise for none of it.
- Lindar
Jorge Llambías
>
> 2. zo'e != lo. I have no idea where you folks got the idea,
Nobody says zo'e=lo.
We can say, roughly, "lo ..." = "zo'e noi ke'a ..." (that won't work
as a general substitution in more complex syntactic environments, so
if you quote me on that please do emphasize the "roughly"). In other
words, "lo" converts a selbri into a sumti. "zo'e" provides the sumti
skeleton, and "noi ke'a" provides the hook where the content given by
"broda" can be hung. "lo" does all that in compact form, it has a
built-in hook that must be used, you can't just use "lo" without
hanging a "broda" on it. "zo'e" has no built-in hook, but you can add
one to it with "noi ke'a".
> but AFAIK
> "zo'e" is not "lo broda" or anything like that, it is simply an
> unspecified sumti,
Of course. "lo broda" contains the semantic content of "broda", and
"zo'e" by itself does not. Who ever said that "zo'e" is "lo broda"?
> and therefore we don't need a new sumti "zo'e'e" or
> any such thing. It's not a particular unspecified thing, it isn't a
> specific unspecified thing, and it's not a thing which really is or
> isn't or is called an unspecified thing, it's just an unspecified
> sumti.
"lo" is "zo'e" with a hook.
"le", like "zo'e", has a hook, but it is not just "zo'e" with a hook,
it adds something else. The idea of "zo'e'e" is that "le" is "zo'e'e"
with a hook. But that doesn't really tell us much if we can't say what
the additional content that "le" adds to "lo" is. (Or, equivalently,
that "zo'e'e" adds to "zo'e".)
You don't need to worry about any of this in order to use the
language, but surely there is no harm in people discussing these
things?
And Rosta
> 1. And, despite all your complaining about how Lojban fails as a
> logical language and how everything is absolutely wrong, you failed
> to:
> a. Explain in what way it has failed.
> b. Suggest what to do next.
I wasn't complaining; I was helpfully pointing out certain useful truths. Furthermore, I have explained my points -- briefly in the 2010 discussions, because they're not that germane to the main topic (of Robin's programme for the BPFK), and ad nauseam for ten to fifteen years of earlier Lojban history.
A short recap:
The specification ('declaration', 'prescription') of Lojban rules is very incomplete, with regard to rules mapping forms to meaning, i.e. to rules that specify what stuff means, because the designers of the language made a start in CLL, then baselined it and intended to leave it to usage to build that part of the language. The result is the quondam torrents of "what does X mean" discussions (NB where X is ambiguous, not merely vague), where there simply was no official answer. What can be done about this is to follow Robin's initiative, and let the BPFK declare new official answers where there formerly were none. That should see Lojban complete and meeting its users' requirements. If new holes are found in the future, the BPFK can plug them when they're found.
The other point has to do with logical-languagehood (which is maybe where you got the idea that "everything is absolutely wrong"). The key requirement of what I think we would generally expect a logical language to be is that it should encode predicate--argument structure in a way that is (a) unambiguous, (b) compatible with human cognitive capabilities, (c) not significantly less concise than natural languages. (a) is easy to achieve (and Lojban achieves it). (c) is very difficult to achieve, and Lojban fails it (as you can see by writing out in predicate-logic form what you want to say, and optionally then translating it into Lojban). As for (b), it's a fascinating question, and we don't yet know what's compatible with human cognitive capabilities, but I do think Lojban's "da xi PA" method fairly clearly fails by placing excessive demands on short-term memory. As for what to do next about all this, I've already said that I think it would require starting from scratch to cr
eate Logban3. While such a project would be within the overall scope of the 'Logban' (Loglan/Lojban) project, I think it's important not to confuse Lojban and Logban3, and not to mix up discussion of one with discussion of the other. I'm sure the main Lojban list is not the best place to discuss Logban3. What *is* relevant to discussion on Lojban list is the simple recognition that because Lojban fails goals (b) and (c) of logical-languagehood, it is unreasonable to insist on logical-languagehood being a continuing Lojban design goal in the specification of the the mission of the BPFK.
> 2. zo'e != lo. I have no idea where you folks got the idea, but AFAIK
> "zo'e" is not "lo broda" or anything like that, it is simply an
> unspecified sumti, and therefore we don't need a new sumti "zo'e'e" or
> any such thing. It's not a particular unspecified thing, it isn't a
> specific unspecified thing, and it's not a thing which really is or
> isn't or is called an unspecified thing, it's just an unspecified
> sumti.
"zo'e'e" would be a KOhA pointing to a specific thing. There is currently no such KOhA. Communicatively you can manage without it by using "le du" instead. The rationale for "zo'e'e" was in the context of the suggested formal periphrastic definitions of gadri in terms of KOhA NOI constructions.
--And.
Robert LeChevalier
> You don't need to worry about any of this in order to use the
> language, but surely there is no harm in people discussing these
> things?
If they are talking is Lojban, probably not. If they are talking in
English, especially with you involved, some will see the discussion as
"xorlo mod 2" and then people will be asking Robin on IRC "Are you using
xorlo mod 2 or xorlo mod 1?".
That was why, ages back, I had no trouble with And Rosta setting up
jboske as a list for such discussions as people talking about how Lojban
could be more logical than it is, and about improvements appropriate for
LoCCan3.
Experimental cmavo are kinda the border ground between the two. It
doesn't necessarily harm the existing language to propose a new cmavo,
put THAT is where the "let usage decide" is supposed to come in. If
people are unwilling to start using an experimental cmavo without it
being prescribed, it probably isn't necessary, or at least not
appreciated. And it likely won't be appreciated with people seeing it
in use and contrasted with the language without. Even then, the people
who need to see it as an "improvement" will be those who actually use
the language, which is why discussing it in Lojban is a strong plus.
lojbab
Robert LeChevalier
> What *is* relevant to discussion on Lojban
> list is the simple recognition that because Lojban fails goals (b) and
> (c) of logical-languagehood, it is unreasonable to insist on
> logical-languagehood being a continuing Lojban design goal in the
> specification of the the mission of the BPFK.
Which is one reason that has not been part of the mission of the BPFK.
Their mission is to define the language that is.
It should be up to Lojbanists of the future if there is to be a LoCCan3
> "zo'e'e" would be a KOhA pointing to a specific thing.
Actually, I think ko'a itself and its relatives do, but they presume
that someone has specified with ko'a means with goi.
(I think) no one has ever decided what using "ko'a voi broda" means,
where ko'a is unassigned, but it would seem to me to be equivalent to
(the old, if not necessarily the xorlo) "le broda", barring the need to
express quantification explicitly (i.e. le ci broda")
> Communicatively you can manage without it by
> using "le du" instead. The rationale for "zo'e'e" was in the context of
> the suggested formal periphrastic definitions of gadri in terms of KOhA
> NOI constructions.
If you can manage it with something else, why propose a different
definition? Someone is looking to add elegance to what apparently
already works, when elegance wasn't necessarily something we were trying
for (as opposed to packing as many critical distinctions as possible
into as few words as possible, where there is disagreement now as to
what distinctions are critical, but there wasn't in 1988).
lojbab
Jorge Llambías
> Jorge Llambías wrote:
>>
>> You don't need to worry about any of this in order to use the
>> language, but surely there is no harm in people discussing these
>> things?
>
> If they are talking is Lojban, probably not. If they are talking in
> English, especially with you involved, some will see the discussion as
> "xorlo mod 2" and then people will be asking Robin on IRC "Are you using
> xorlo mod 2 or xorlo mod 1?".
I don't share your fears, probably because of our different
experiences with the language.
You started learning Loglan when it was apparently drastically
changing every month (from what you report). You also went through a
relatively significant change in Lojban, the rafsi reallocation. I
didn't exeprience any of those things. I started learning Lojban more
than 15 years ago, and it has not changed in any significant way in
all the time I've been using it. The texts from 15 years ago are
practically indistinguishable from those of today (i.e. lots of texts
are full of errors, because they were written by beginners, but there
are also good texts and those that were good back then are still
good).
The kind of changes you fear simply do not exist. Maybe this is thanks
to your obstinate conservatism, maybe only in part thanks to that, but
the "pull the rug under your feet" kind of changes simply don't exist.
The kind of improvements and clarifications that our discussions
usually involve are about such minute details that all your constant
talk about "relearning" sounds like complete nonsense to me.
In fact, all this nonsense about "Are you using xorlo mod 2 or xorlo
mod 1?", if it exists at all, is instigated by comments like yours,
that suggest that something of ponderous magnitude is going on that
one must learn about. I have tried to tell you in as many ways as I
can that nothing of any importance is going on, and that you can
simply tune out of the whole discussion, but you insist on claiming
that something terribly threatening is going on even though you
constantly remind us that you "don't understad xorlo", as if there was
something impossibly difficult to understand.
> That was why, ages back, I had no trouble with And Rosta setting up jboske
> as a list for such discussions as people talking about how Lojban could be
> more logical than it is, and about improvements appropriate for LoCCan3.
The issues that concern LoCCan3 should be moved someplace else, I
agree. But this discussion was about our very own "le" (identical to
Loglan's "le", and never changed) not about LoCCan3.
> Experimental cmavo are kinda the border ground between the two. It doesn't
> necessarily harm the existing language to propose a new cmavo, put THAT is
> where the "let usage decide" is supposed to come in. If people are
> unwilling to start using an experimental cmavo without it being prescribed,
> it probably isn't necessary, or at least not appreciated. And it likely
> won't be appreciated with people seeing it in use and contrasted with the
> language without. Even then, the people who need to see it as an
> "improvement" will be those who actually use the language, which is why
> discussing it in Lojban is a strong plus.
When I respond to something written in Lojban, I use Lojban. When I
respond to something written in English, I use English. That's just
common courtesy. I don't see why discussions about Lojban in English
should be forbidden. People interested in using the language can do
so, people interested in discussing Lojban in Lojban can do so, people
interested in discussing Lojban in English can do so. (And I suppose
people interested in warning us that the end of Lojban as we know it
is near can do so as well, so I'm not really trying to censor you,
it's just another vain attempt to assuage your fears, I suppose.)
John E Clifford
(and linguists too)
The good news is that logicians are totally uninterested in the vast majority (and it is vast -and growing; Hell, the minority is vast) of cmavo. They have nothing to do with logic or do so only at the level of speech acts, a remote interest. Of the ones they are interested in, most are dismissed as the results of bad design (unspecified, mainly "Surely, there is a better way to do this"): the plethora or right-hand-end markers and connectives that mean the same thing, for outstanding examples. Or the various attempts at pronouns to replace variable.
But they are concerned about the gadri. descriptors. So, let me try again to sort out the logics involved here (short of &'s comment about the placement of quantifiers, which is, as it happens, quite correct but confusing outside semantics). I'm not sure why this is so hard, since nothing seems to have changed much, aside from plural reference theory (thank you, xorxes!). (I still have this haunting feeling that that there is a trap here somewhere, but none of my sticks have sprung it.) e and o differ in that e merely points to some thing, hoping that others will get the right things by using the attached predicate (it helps,of course, if the things pointed to actually satisfy that predicate and are , furthermore, the most salient such in the situation, but it is useful for cases of disguise and ridicule: the end of an early Mickey Spillane -- or The Crying Game -- when the woman is a man) while o picks out by the predicate the appropriate things in
the situation. The bare (no -i) forms refer to the things themselves acting collectively. The -i forms refer the L-set with the same things as its members and the set then acts like the members collectively (I take it that 'gunma' and "mass" are crude terms for the more precise L-sets). The logics of things acting collectively and collections of things acting are identical, but the language is different. In particular, external quantifiers the former are partitive and isolating 're lo broda' is two of the brodas acting individually, while on the latter, the result is multiplicative: 're loi broda' is two sets of brodas, still acting as units. Fractional quantification brings them a little closer: 'pire lo broda' would be a fifth of the original brodas, still acting together (I think, but I would welcome correction here) and 'pire loi broda' would be a subgroup a fifth the original size but still acting as a unit. Of course, when the referent is a
single thing, the difference disappears (a singleton L-set is identical to its member). (And so, yes, they work pretty much like at least some of the uses of "a" and "the" in English -- the ones that Russians quickly learn to get right).
As for the 'zo'e' script, this seems to be a wormrunner explanation (ignotum per ignotius), since, no matter how little I understand 'lo, loi, le, lei', I understand 'zo'e' (and, God help us, 'zo'e'e' ) much less. I gather they are some sort of metalinguistic devices projected (always dangerous) into the object language. They are names (i.e., direct referring expressions without intermediate calculations) but what they name are picked out on each occasions. All of which sounds like "le broda' to me, except for the semantically irrelevant 'broda' part.
--
Robert LeChevalier
> I don't share your fears, probably because of our different
> experiences with the language.
>
> You started learning Loglan when it was apparently drastically
> changing every month (from what you report).
No. It wasn't changing all that fast. But it was inevitably changing
yet-again, and that was a deterrent to learning for many.
> You also went through a
> relatively significant change in Lojban, the rafsi reallocation.
It wasn't that significant, because only a small percentage of the rafsi
were changed, and very few people were at that stage using rafsi
constructively (it was in a sense premature to do the analysis with so
little usage, but if we had waited any longer, changes wouldn't have
been salable). Indeed, those rafsi that had seen significant usage were
decided to be off-limits in the reallocation, so that IIRC roughly half
the proposals were voted down for that reason alone.
gadri, by contrast, affect nearly every Lojban sentence, which is why
your proposal to change them met such resistance until us oldie's were
promised that it wouldn't significantly change existing text/usage
(which made it palatable but harder to understand)
> The kind of changes you fear simply do not exist.
People rarely see those who drop out because something changed. It
shows up when we talk to people who have been active and are no more. I
made much more effort to talk to such people in the early years.
> Maybe this is thanks to your obstinate conservatism,
In part ^%), but obviously it hasn't been me the last 8 years.
> maybe only in part thanks to that, but
> the "pull the rug under your feet" kind of changes simply don't exist.
For Nora, xorlo has been just such a change. She doesn't feel like she
understands the language anymore, in some fundamental way. I won't
claim it has been for me - you have occasionally, if not often enough,
seen me post or respond to something in Lojban.
> In fact, all this nonsense about "Are you using xorlo mod 2 or xorlo
> mod 1?", if it exists at all, is instigated by comments like yours,
> that suggest that something of ponderous magnitude is going on that
> one must learn about.
Actually, I read that suggestion into Lindar's comment that you
responded to, which is why I made the comment. (I had been about to say
something entirely different than you said, in response to him.) I
repeat the relevant comments:
> 2. zo'e != lo. I have no idea where you folks got the idea, but AFAIK
> "zo'e" is not "lo broda" or anything like that, it is simply an
> unspecified sumti, and therefore we don't need a new sumti "zo'e'e" or
> any such thing. It's not a particular unspecified thing, it isn't a
> specific unspecified thing, and it's not a thing which really is or
> isn't or is called an unspecified thing, it's just an unspecified
> sumti.
...
> ((Sub-note: If this is wrong, then this is how a non-techy, non-
> linguist, non-intelligent audio engineer has perceived how these two
> gadri work, and it's clsn/Timo/ARJ that are to blame for teaching me
> incorrectly.))
...
> 5. Frankly, I could give less than two shits what some Uni professor's
> opinion of Lojban is or what some obnoxious person that I've never
> seen on IRC or the mailing list (which leads me to assume they speak
> little to no Lojban/haven't studied Lojban and read one article
> somebody else wrote and immediately formed an opinion) before thinks
> regarding the logical-ness of Lojban, and I think that as soon as we
> please the bureaucrats regarding the broken bits of Lojban, we should
> stop griping about every little damn thing and
...
> Now I shall promptly head back into IRC to have "voi"
> explained to me another 20 times and "ce'u" another 200.
I read that as someone who is trying to use the language, and is rather
fed up with running across academic discussion suggesting that the
language should be different than it is. I responded to it, being
rather sensitized to the matter after years of leading the community,
and attempting to convince such people that the discussion was not a
sign of impending change. And xorlo DID "pull the rug from under my
feet" with regard to making such reassurances, because it DID result
from just such academic discussions about a part of the language that
most of us had felt was "good enough".
But I've accepted that xorlo is now the status quo, and here we have a
discussion that seemed to indicate that xorlo isn't good enough, and you
need a new cmavo to make the definition "proper".
> I have tried to tell you in as many ways as I
> can that nothing of any importance is going on,
The volume of discussion the topic generates, is what gives the
impression of importance. And it is volume coming from people like you
who are respected as experts in the language, which is why the
perception can grow that things are more unsettled than they are.
That perception about the 1994-1997 discussions that went into CLL's
gadri sections were about changes to the language, would have been
correct, because xorlo is approved as an override to CLL. Is it an
important change? Some say no, but then Robin said it was sufficiently
important that people were asking on IRC whether xorlo was being used.
> and that you can simply tune out of the whole discussion,
I've done that for 12 years. But the discussion goes on, and someone
new just complained. I can't tune out people like him who are
apparently using the language on IRC.
lojbab
Luke Bergen
Robert LeChevalier
> 4. Why can't we use a common-sense rule? I see things like plibu
> (generic word for external genitalia) and vlagi (word for vulva
> [female external genitalia])... so we have an obvious redundancy and
> consistency flaw (being that we have a consistency set up from remna
> to pinji to ganti regarding gender specification. Get rid of vlagi.
There was an explicit decision made NOT to eliminate redundancy in the
gismu list. There were lots of reasons, including that such consistency
wasn't a design consideration. anti-sexism got involved in this
particular case; the opinions of the few women involved in the project
got especial respect when it came to making sure we had the words needed
to talk about such things. (Laaden had an influence on the language
design at one point, and the UIs you dislike are another fallout of that
influence.)
> It's -extremely- obvious stuff like that which we need to just remove.
No. It is stuff that you don't think you need, that you don't use.
Removing things is not something we want to consider.
> Another, yet different, example is of "mabla" wherein nobody (of whom
> I know) uses the standard definition (something like "x1 is a
> derogative use of x2" or something stupid like that), and pretty much
> everybody else uses it as a swear (x1 is stupid/bad/detestable/shitty/
> etc.), so why don't we just skip formalities and change the
> definition?
You are making an argument from usage %^)
That may happen some day. Now is not the time.
> I'm sorry that I don't have too much insight on the issue
> of cmavo, but the one that apparently has held the byfy back several
> years or whatever I fail to see as a problem. "Without intent" is my
> strongly believed and fully uninformed definition of ".ai nai".
There can be an informed definition, but I think this one is arising
from someone else who (like you with vlagi) sees an inconsistency and
wants to fix it. It isn't necessary.
> Honestly, I mabla-ing hate most UI in the first place (mostly because
> they're overused and made endlessly complex by newbies using
> ru'ecaisaise'iwhatever so I know precisely how happy/annoyed you are
> on a scale of one to a thousand including decimal places into the
> millionths,
They are exploring an aspect of the language that fascinates them, and
which is very different from most natlangs. It may not be something
that interests you, but everyone has their own interests.
> but I have no idea what they're actually trying to say
> because they forgot to use a damn gadri and accidentally a whole
> tanru),
Maybe they weren't trying to express a predicate relationship or
identify a "thing", but merely to express their emotions in a way that
they cannot in other languages.
One would think that someone like you who apparently want to see more
art and music usage of Lojban would find the attitudinals important.
Not only to they suit the emotive expressiveness of the arts, but their
usages tends to be more malleable to fit into a rhythm or other poetic
structure than the strictly-penultimate-stressed brivla.
> They have absolutely no practical use other than being a stupid toy
ci'o do mabla leka kelci
Others don't consider art to have any "practical use", and would view
your urge to have people participate in the art and music and video
community, the way you view their choice to use UI
> I'd work on simplifying some of the language for
> stupid people like myself as I still have absolutely -no- idea what
> "ce'u" does, what "pseudo-quantifier binding a variable within an
> abstraction that represents an open place." or 'lambda' is supposed to
> mean,
I can't help you there. When I teach that stuff, I do it by example,
not by trying to explain it. It isn't all that hard, if you don't try
to understand the formalities.
In the case of ce'u, it is about filling in the places of words that
have "leka" in their place structure, and sometimes other abstractors.
The leka abstraction has at least one place therein which has the value
of another sumti in the bridi relationship, and ce'u identifies which
one. Defining it allows people to be precise, while speaking in a
natural fashion (because in many cases you can leave the ce'u out).
The logicians who use the technical terminology are trying to decide the
hard cases before someone asks about them, and there are some hard
cases. In the case of ce'u there is an entire subbranch of math called
lambda calculus that deals with such hard cases, and it shows up in
programming language design as well.
> and I'm scared to death of anything I haven't learned that is
> apparently "non-veridical" because I read in the dictionary that it
> means something like "a lie", which clearly means I have no
> understanding of what the hell it means or how to use it (like "voi").
In real life language use, people use words to mean things other than
their strict denotation. Lojban allows someone to make that distinction
explicit
When "The White House announced yesterday that ...", it is not the case
that any blabi zdani expressed anything. It was rather a person or
bureaucracy issuing the announcement, and "The White House" is being
used as a non-veridical descriptor of that announcement issuer.
If you look at usage in natlangs a lot, you'll find this sort of thing
crops up all over the place. The classic Loglan/Lojban example might
refer to a transvestite saying:
le ninmu cu nanmu.
The transvestite isn't really a woman, but is being described as one.
It isn't "lying", just "conveniently describing".
One cannot see a mathematical point or measure a 0-dimensional moment,
so almost all English usages of "point" or "moment" are non-veridical.
If you tell someone to wait a moment, the moment is up before they have
processed the language. "mokca" will usually be used for a somewhat
longer but relatively short period of time.
And how does one make "true" statements about unicorns, elves, fairies?
One doesn't, but describes them as such and relies on the listener's
cultural knowledge and imagination to make it clear.
lojbab
Robert LeChevalier
> Completely off topic, but I've been looking for a place to ask and no
> opportunity has presented itself yet.
>
> lojbab, I keep seeing you use "^%)". What does it mean?
My rusty fingers making a typo, and not looking at the result.
It should by %^), which respectively are a pair of glasses, a nose, and
a smiley. I should have a - or a > on the end for a beard to be fully
self-descriptive, but I'm lazy.
In Lojban, it is zo'o
lojbab
Lindar
not scared of further change, but more so I'm annoyed by my inability
to follow discussions due to the technical language surrounding it and
by the fact that we've wasted so much damn time arguing about really
small semantics instead of just making a damn decision and trying it
out. Also, I get what you mean about UI, but it seems like it's the
only thing anybody bothers to learn and I'm tired of having to filter
out 15-some characters that mean nothing to me, but clearly had a lot
of thought behind them.
Lindar
> to follow discussions due to the technical language surrounding it and
> by the fact that we've wasted so much damn time arguing about really
> small semantics instead of just making a damn decision and trying it
> out.
so much time and effort is spent in coming up with really big words
and specific English-isms to describe how a Lojban word works, but I
think that we're failing to cater to a major market here, namely
idiots like myself that don't really follow what "lambda" and
"veridical" are or really understand all of the scientific words that
the senior jbo-ists throw around like softballs. Rather than gripe
about all the little technical details, why don't we come up with a
single, stupid, easy, definite answer (for things like "ni" for
example)? Rather than gripe about how something was -intended- to be
used, just decide on what the best way is to use a word and stick with
it.
So, long story short, I'm not scared of change, I'm annoyed by delays,
indecisiveness, and overcomplicating every little damn thing. For all
I care we could change "lo" back to "the only one in the universe" or
whatever the hell it meant and we could change the word "djica" to
mean "x1 is a pancake that demands x2 hears it roar (utterance) x3
with syrup x4 and flying pig x5" or whatever the hell as long as it
makes more sense.
Yoav Nir
- gi'e cmavo [GIhA]$gi'e$ logical connective: bridi-tail afterthought and.
tebau cmavo cluster [BAI*]$tebau$ bangu modal, 3rd place (expression) language expressing ...
As a non-linguist, these mean nothing to me.
As a follow-up, I realise that I'm more so irritated by the fact that
so much time and effort is spent in coming up with really big words
and specific English-isms to describe how a Lojban word works, but I
think that we're failing to cater to a major market here, namely
idiots like myself that don't really follow what "lambda" and
"veridical" are or really understand all of the scientific words that
the senior jbo-ists throw around like softballs. Rather than gripe
about all the little technical details, why don't we come up with a
single, stupid, easy, definite answer (for things like "ni" for
example)? Rather than gripe about how something was -intended- to be
used, just decide on what the best way is to use a word and stick with
it.
Bob LeChevalier, President and Founder - LLG
> Bob, you've done a bit of placing words in my mouth, as it were.
for that sort of thing from losing so many people over the years.
I'm
> not scared of further change, but more so I'm annoyed by my inability
> to follow discussions due to the technical language surrounding it and
> by the fact that we've wasted so much damn time arguing about really
> small semantics instead of just making a damn decision and trying it
> out.
if it is logically imperfect is what they don't want. (And I'm
sometimes not sure all of them really care about making decisions at all).
> Also, I get what you mean about UI, but it seems like it's the
> only thing anybody bothers to learn and I'm tired of having to filter
> out 15-some characters that mean nothing to me, but clearly had a lot
> of thought behind them.
wouldn't have much thought at all, but just come out.
But UI words may be easier to learn than gismu and lujvo, and there are
a more limited number - and most of all there is almost no grammar to
get wrong. Others may be intimidated by the grammar as much as you are
intimidated? by strings of UI cmavo.
Of course the best solution is to learn them rather than filter them
out, and accept being approximate in meaning because they weren't meant
to be semantically precise. I suspect that there is a relatively small
subset of the cmavo that comprise most of the ones used.
lojbab
--
Bob LeChevalier loj...@lojban.org www.lojban.org
President and Founder, The Logical Language Group, Inc.
Bob LeChevalier, President and Founder - LLG
> I'm with you on that. Here's two examples from jbovlaste:
>
> afterthought and.
> *
>
> *tebau **cmavo cluster **[BAI*]*$tebau$ bangu modal, 3rd place
>
>
> As a non-linguist, these mean nothing to me.
They were more or less coded abbreviations for function rather than
"definitions" from early on in the language, and were intended to be
replaced (compounded by other abbreviations that appear to be internal
to jbovlaste). But no one has ever done so.
It is the coming up with real definitions for these kinds of words that
the BPFK/byfy is tasked with. And the experts have spent years not
getting the job done (not always because decisions can't be made, but
because dictionary-writing is hard and boring for many), which is why
Robin is asking everyone including you to get involved.
If you think you know what gi'e or tebau means, go into the wiki and
make a stab at it, provide material from CLL if you can, or usage
examples from IRC or elsewhere, as support, and make definitions that
people like you CAN understand. If everyone in the community does a
few, the job will be done fairly quickly.
lojbab
--
Bob LeChevalier loj...@lojban.org www.lojban.org
President and Founder, The Logical Language Group, Inc.
John E Clifford
some opinions and some reasons for them; speak out.
Meanwhile, may I suggest (on another line already) that kitchen measure be defined in the context of recipes, the environment where they are used (not "teaspoon" but "n teaspoons of y")
----- Original Message ----
From: Lindar <lindar...@yahoo.com>
To: lojban <loj...@googlegroups.com>
Sent: Fri, April 16, 2010 12:16:25 AM
Subject: [lojban] Re: {le} in xorlo
And Rosta
>> What *is* relevant to discussion on Lojban list is the simple
>> recognition that because Lojban fails goals (b) and (c) of
>> logical-languagehood, it is unreasonable to insist on
>> logical-languagehood being a continuing Lojban design goal in the
>> specification of the the mission of the BPFK.
>
> Which is one reason that has not been part of the mission of the BPFK.
> Their mission is to define the language that is.
>> Communicatively you can manage without it by using "le du" instead.
>> The rationale for "zo'e'e" was in the context of the suggested formal
>> periphrastic definitions of gadri in terms of KOhA NOI constructions.
>
> If you can manage it with something else, why propose a different
> definition? Someone is looking to add elegance to what apparently
> already works, when elegance wasn't necessarily something we were trying
> for (as opposed to packing as many critical distinctions as possible
> into as few words as possible, where there is disagreement now as to
> what distinctions are critical, but there wasn't in 1988).
--And.
And Rosta
>> I'm fine with "so'i li mu" being "many fives", coerced by the
>> quantification.
>> In English, one does get things like "my mother that bore me", "London that
>> I have luved in for so many years", which don't coerce a "many
>> mothers/Londons" interpretation. So restrictiveness needn't coerce plural
>> interp.
>
> I Googled "my mother that bore me", and the first (of only six) hits was:
>
> "My mother and I–and by "my mother" I mean always one of my two
> mothers, for my mother that bore me was dead–"
>
> and that seems like the most natural use for "my mother that bore me"
> to me, but some of the other hits are not so clear that the
> restriction is doing actual restrictive work.
>
> The London example sounds odd to my non-native sense without a "the"
> in front, and I would want to change "that" to "where" (unless it's a
> vocative?), but I don't really want to dispute that there may be
> restrictive clauses that don't do any actual restriction.
>> Also, I can't think how the poi/noi distinction can apply when there is no
>> predicate (selbri) present either explicitly, or implicity as when a
>> quantifier is applied to a sumti.
>
> With quantification the distinction is very stark:
>
> ro da poi xunre cu kukte
> Everything that is red is delicious.
>
> ro da noi xunre cu kukte
> Everything, which is red, is delicious.
>>> "PA lo gunma" is ordinary quantification over groups, while "PA loi"
>>> is quantification over the members of the group.
>> Yes, I see. I can't decide if the problem goes away if "loi broda" is not
>> "lo gunma" but rather "zo'e noi ke'a gunma",
>
> I'd say that "lo gunma" is just the same as "zo'e noi ke'a gunma".
>
>> since "PA zo'e noi ke'a gunma"
>> quantifies over members of zo'e.
>
> which must be things that satisfy the x1 of gunma.
>
>> I guess it comes down to whether "zo'e noi
>> ke'a broda" necessarily means zo'e is a single broda (as required for "zo'e
>> noi ke'a gunma" to work as a solution)
>
> No, that's not required. Many things can work as a solution working
> together without that making them one thing. (That's essentially
> McKay's argument.) But the kind of thing that satisfy the x1 of gunma
> is the kind of thing that has members, as opposed to the kind of thing
> that satisfy the x2 of gunma, which are typically many things working
> together.
>
>> or whether it can mean zo'e is a
>> bunch of broda (as required, I'm fairly sure, by xorlo).
>
> zo'e can be many broda without necessarily being one anything (whether
> bunch or whatever).
>> Actually, those are
>> both meanings one needs to be able to express. Maybe "zo'e noi pa gunma ne
>> ke'a"? (The thinking in this para is low quality, so feel free to ignore
>> it...)
>
> The two meanings are easily expressible without any recourse to "loi":
> "lo broda" vs. "lo gunma be lo broda".
>> The actual English example "came by bus" seems to me to demand a generic
>> reading (because that seems to be the effect of using _bus_ without an
>> article), but if we can use, say, "I will drink wine" as an example, then
>> the nongeneric reading can be specific or nonspecific, "Ex, x is wine: I
>> will drink x" being the nonspecific.
>
> Right, but I think we don't need to commit to one of the two readings,
> or perspectives, to get the meaning. In the case of the bus we may be
> forced to by English:
>
> They came by bus, so they arrived earlier than those of us that came
> by bike, even though (?it / their bus) had to stop for gas.
>
> It seems to me that "it" can't be used there, because grammatically
> "bus" doesn't have a nongeneric perspective available, but:
>
> They drank wine, and I only had water, so I will drive. Not that I
> wouldn't have wanted to drink (it / the wine) too, but they had
> finished it before I arrived.
>
> In this case, it seems to me, "it" seems more acceptable (what are the
> native intuitions?).
I can see how a linguistic construction can be semantically ambiguous between these interpretations, but not how the interpretations can be conflated into one.
> But in Lojban both perspectives remain always available, giving
> something that would seem weird in English like:
>
> They came by bus, so they arrived earlier than those of us that came
> by bike, even though bus had to stop for gas.
>
> So "bus" can be generic and still stop for gas in a particular occasion.
>>> What I'm trying to say (I think) is that the level of abstraction,
>>> which is to some extent arbitrary, can set the stage in such a way
>>> that the issue of specificity will be affected. But I know I'm not
>>> saying anything very convincing about it at this point.
>> OK, I understand your point, I think. Translated into my terms, it is that
>> specific readings are nongeneric; so if something is viewed generically,
>> then perforce it's not specific.
>
> Mmm... I think I'm saying the opposite, that generic readings are
> always specific, but because of the arbitrary perspective of
> genericity, they can often be taken as nongeneric nonspecific as well.
> But I have to keep insisting that I'm not certain if that's exactly
> what I'm saying. :)
But if you think "lo broda" means "some particular broda, which may be the generic broda", then I see why you think you can do without e-gadri. (How to explicitly do generics, though?) Actually, I guess the sole difference between o-gadri and e-gadri might then be veridicality, which, mirabile dictu, might actually suddenly make pre-xorlo gadri usage mean approximately what the writers thought they were saying.
>> "zo'e noi ke'a broda" effectively gives you the generic reading, since
>> there's no quantification.
>
> Yes, though I would want to say "it allows" the generic reading,
> rather than "gives".
>> "PA zo'e noi ke'a broda" quantifies over
>> tokens/members of the category.
>
> Thereby forcing a nongeneric (or less generic) reading (and
> quantification is always nonspecific).
>
>> "zo'e'e", with optional noi or no'oi, gives
>> specific, and "PA zo'e'e" quantifies over tokens/members of "zo'e'e". That
>> seems pretty straightforward... (Admittedly, not straightforward if the goal
>> is to paraphrase gadri using fairly common nonexperimental cmavo.)
>
> Yes, I think if we have "zo'e'e" then we have "le" figured out, and
> vice versa. But putting one in terms of the other doesn't really get
> to the bottom of it (at least for me).
On the one hand one can see a distinction between a reading of "I ate X" where X is some specific thing amd a reading where X is just whatever it was I ate -- the generic thing-eaten-by-me, but on the other hand one can see how the second reading can be treated as merely an instance of the first.
Jorge Llambías
>
> Also the distinction should pertain to "lo broda poi/noi" too.
> "lo broda poi brode cu brodi" = "lo ge broda gi brode cu brodi"; "lo broda
> noi brode cu brodi" = (roughly) "lo broda cu ge brode gi brodi".
grammatical but it's a tanru, which opens a different can of worms.
We can do "zo'e noi ke'a ge broda gi brode cu brodi", but then the
distinction between "poi" and "noi" just disappears, as "lo broda poi
brode cu brodi" and "lo broda noi brode cu brodi" end up with the same
expansion, through different routes (thanks to the associativity of
"ge").
"ro da poi broda" and "su'o da poi broda" have different expansions:
ro da poi broda cu brode -> ro da zo'u ganai da broda gi da brode
su'o da poi broda cu brode -> su'o da zo'u ge da broda gi da brode
and it is not easy for me to decide whether "zo'e poi broda" should
pattern with one or the other (or neither). If you are thinking of
"zo'e" as a pre-illocutionary "su'o da", then I suppose you end up
with:
zo'e poi broda cu brode -> su'o da zo'u ge da broda gi
[illocutionary:] da brode
But then so is:
zo'e noi broda cu brode -> su'o da zo'u ge da broda gi
[illocutionary:] da brode
Something seems amiss there.
> In your wine example, the
> version with "it" is consistent with all three interpretations (generic,
> specific, existential).
>
> I can see how a linguistic construction can be semantically ambiguous
> between these interpretations, but not how the interpretations can be
> conflated into one.
by invoking Mr Wine (which drives pc crazy): When Mr Wine does
something in a particular occasion, like being drank by me, then I
can shift the specificity from being focused on the wine to just apply
to the occasion and blur the two views. (Maybe we could call this the
referential interpretation.)
This is somewhat similar to saying that John was a once baby and now
has a beard. We have no problem in shifting from the John-as-a-whole
to the John-at-the-moment perspective. Granted we don't tend to think
that way about Mr Wine, and temporal occasions are not completely like
spatiotemporal occasions, and so on, but in principle I don't see a
problem from the logical side.
The existential interpretation I see as a different issue, as it is
tied to quantifiers. Maybe there's a way to conflate it too through
something like you do with the relative scope of the illocutionary
force, I'm not sure.
> Some particular broda could be the generic
> broda, you're saying. Our difference was mainly terminological.
>
> But if you think "lo broda" means "some particular broda, which may be the
> generic broda", then I see why you think you can do without e-gadri. (How to
> explicitly do generics, though?)
think of is by explicitly using some predicate that suggests the
as-a-whole (or the generic) view, "John the whole person", "wine the
alcoholic beverage", "bus the means of transportation". But not
through a gadri, because there isn't just one level of genericity,
there are usually many different possible levels.
> Actually, I guess the sole difference
> between o-gadri and e-gadri might then be veridicality, which, mirabile
> dictu, might actually suddenly make pre-xorlo gadri usage mean approximately
> what the writers thought they were saying.
no mind to the prescriptive implicit quantifiers, so all that xorlo
does is bring prescription in line with pre-existing usage, so that
gadri are referential and not quantificational.
> Maybe zo'e already is zo'e'e?
> On the one hand one can see a distinction between a reading of "I ate X"
> where X is some specific thing amd a reading where X is just whatever it was
> I ate -- the generic thing-eaten-by-me, but on the other hand one can see
> how the second reading can be treated as merely an instance of the first.
mu'o mi'e xorxes
John E Clifford
Item: the proliferation of connectives,all of which mean the same thing but have to be infinitely subdivided by the narrow context in which they occur (the largest single item in the "There must be a better way" folder for LoCCan3)
Item: expanding 'ro da poi broda cu brode' to 'ro da zo'u ganai da broda gi da brode' which, unless we have a new, better, way to express restricted quantification (I can think of several but haven't seen any mentioned lately), is just flat wrong , failing in the case where there are no brodas (original false, expansion true).
Item: misapplying the notion of quantification out of context, by wrongly writing the two cases involved (assuming, for only the moment, that 'zo'e' etc. have anything to do with 'lo' and 'le').(illocution goes before the quantifier in the first case).
Item: Good ol' Mr. Broda, a notion even yet more obscure than 'zo'e' (or even 'zo'e'e'), Not only is it never explained but it changes to fit whatever argument xorxes is presenting at the moment. In this case it seems to be a generic thing for now, as if there were generic things rather than general ways of talking about ordinary things (that is, as if the problem were with gadri rather than with sentence modifiers of some sort). But it will turn up again in some other disguise if another argument comes along.
I get the general impression that what is presently being claimed is that all xorlo did was drop the implicit quantifiers on descriptions, since everything else seems to be unchanged. Suspect this is technically true -- totally for the external quantifiers and structurally for the internal ones, although 'le broda cu brode' and 'lo broda cu brode' do both entail that something brodes and the latter that at least of those things is a broda.
Jorge Llambías
> Ah, how this takes me back to see that, despite protestations to the contrary, SOS still floats around.
> Item: the proliferation of connectives,all of which mean the same thing but have to be infinitely subdivided by the narrow context in which they occur (the largest single item in the "There must be a better way" folder for LoCCan3)
mean "and", and the ones that don't are more or less useless? I would
have to agree, but I'm not sure how it relates to the present
discussion.
> Item: expanding 'ro da poi broda cu brode' to 'ro da zo'u ganai da broda gi da brode' which, unless we have a new, better, way to express restricted quantification (I can think of several but haven't seen any mentioned lately), is just flat wrong , failing in the case where there are no brodas (original false, expansion true).
new, better ways you can think of.
> Item: misapplying the notion of quantification out of context, by wrongly writing the two cases involved (assuming, for only the moment, that 'zo'e' etc. have anything to do with 'lo' and 'le').(illocution goes before the quantifier in the first case).
requires a quantifier, whether explicit or implicit, that is under the
scope of the illocutionary force. I'm not totally adverse to the idea,
as I'm not totally happy with a quantifier-less "poi". (But I also
have my reservations, because we don't have plural quantifiers.)
> Item: Good ol' Mr. Broda, a notion even yet more obscure than 'zo'e' (or even 'zo'e'e'), Not only is it never explained but it changes to fit whatever argument xorxes is presenting at the moment. In this case it seems to be a generic thing for now, as if there were generic things rather than general ways of talking about ordinary things (that is, as if the problem were with gadri rather than with sentence modifiers of some sort). But it will turn up again in some other disguise if another argument comes along.
> I get the general impression that what is presently being claimed is that all xorlo did was drop the implicit quantifiers on descriptions, since everything else seems to be unchanged.
> Suspect this is technically true -- totally for the external quantifiers and structurally for the internal ones, although 'le broda cu brode' and 'lo broda cu brode' do both entail that something brodes
culno lo klaji", "people fill the streets", does entail that
"something" fills the streets, namely people, but not that any one
person fills the streets.
> and the latter that at least of those things is a broda.
necessarily "a broda".
John E Clifford
21 (iirc) versions of 'e' all amounting to logical "and". Arose because the use of one such ('ga... gi') was incorrect and another ('gu'a ... gu'i') was required to do the same work. The others are a nice point as well, of course, though with a different motivation.
The best one this week is to incorporate the the whole into a single line 'ro da broda' (roughly, since this is a sentence), much like the standard system (AxFx). It has been discussed to death, but your move assumes that there are no restricted quantifiers in Lojban, which is at least historically false.
Goodness, I thought we did have plural quantifiers and that was at least part of what xorlo was ultimately about. The point here however, is that 'poi' goes with an internal quantifier in the construction of 'lo' qhilw 'noi' is an external quantifier in the construction of 'le'.
Only if you promise never to use it again.
As you say, a change in the official rules but not in practice -- except for a bunch of folk arguing endlessly about whether 'lo pavyseljirna cu blabi' is true or false id there are no unicorns.
Well, in one sense, "something" ('su'o') was always plural, but I suppose you mean directly. Again, I thought that was that xorlo was finally about. To be sure, I prefer (from habit) "bunch" talk, but, since they are the same thing, plural reference is fine too. Sorry about the "a".
Overall, then, I guess I was taking an optimistic reading on the situation with plural reference / L-sets. I thought it was stare decisis and, in fact, it is either not settled or still actively resisted. I wonder why? (not enough people have had enough logic to have my engrained habits, and I took to it fairly directly -- barring some weird thing McKay said about restrcted quantifiers and about the whole thing being bright shiny new)
----- Original Message ----
From: Jorge Llambías <jjlla...@gmail.com>
To: loj...@googlegroups.com
Sent: Sat, April 17, 2010 4:48:51 PM
Subject: Re: [lojban] {le} in xorlo
Jorge Llambías
> Familiar Feces
ua je'e
> 21 (iirc) versions of 'e' all amounting to logical "and". Arose because the use of one such ('ga... gi') was incorrect and another ('gu'a ... gu'i') was required to do the same work. The others are a nice point as well, of course, though with a different motivation.
The situation is not as bad as 21 though, there's just the two
forethought ge/gu'e and three afterthought .e/je/gi'e, so five in all.
"gu'e" should just be deprecated, and for all intents and purposes de
facto it is, since practically nobody ever uses it.
"je" should be extended to cover the function of ".e", thus making
".e" redundant. JOI already does both functions, so there's no
syntactic impediment there.
"gi'e" can be replaced with "gije".
That would leave just "ge" for forethought, and "je" for afterthought.
> The best one this week is to incorporate the the whole into a single line 'ro da broda' (roughly, since this is a sentence), much like the standard system (AxFx). It has been discussed to death, but your move assumes that there are no restricted quantifiers in Lojban, which is at least historically false.
has to be a full bridi, not just a single selbri like "broda", so I
can hardly see a more economical solution than the insertion of a
simple "poi". The standard system can get away with (AxFx) only
because it doesn't allow terms in front of the selbri.
> Goodness, I thought we did have plural quantifiers and that was at least part of what xorlo was ultimately about. The point here however, is that 'poi' goes with an internal quantifier in the construction of 'lo' qhilw 'noi' is an external quantifier in the construction of 'le'.
lo broda cu brode = (illocutionary:) su'o da poi broda zo'u da brode
le broda cu broda = su'o da noi broda zo'u (illocutionary:) da brode
Thus you are adopting andle, but not xorlo, because you still want an
illocutionary su'o to come for free with lo.
(Or I may be misunderstanding what you are saying.)
> Only if you promise never to use it again.
> As you say, a change in the official rules but not in practice -- except for a bunch of folk arguing endlessly about whether 'lo pavyseljirna cu blabi' is true or false id there are no unicorns.
> Well, in one sense, "something" ('su'o') was always plural, but I suppose you mean directly. Again, I thought that was that xorlo was finally about. To be sure, I prefer (from habit) "bunch" talk, but, since they are the same thing, plural reference is fine too. Sorry about the "a".
>
> Overall, then, I guess I was taking an optimistic reading on the situation with plural reference / L-sets. I thought it was stare decisis and, in fact, it is either not settled or still actively resisted. I wonder why? (not enough people have had enough logic to have my engrained habits, and I took to it fairly directly -- barring some weird thing McKay said about restrcted quantifiers and about the whole thing being bright shiny new)
(which is something additional to plural reference) is not so much
resisted as ignored. There just aren't enough people interested or
informed on the issue to make any decision about it. And if we were to
adopt it we would need two different universal quantifiers instead of
just "ro".
John E Clifford
I'm glad to hear it can be reduced to five (though that still seems a lot); I had memories of an array of jeks, guheks, and (seemingly) countless other ---eks. The thought of getting down to just two looks about right, though. I do see that this is somewhat illusory, however, in that these two cannot just be used as they stand but must be supplemented in various ways (with gi- and i- and gu- and whatever else). So still not optimal.
Actually, when logical notation allows a term before a predicate, it works better: (AxF), exactly matching the ideal -- but impermissible -- Lojban form. I agree that 'poi' is the best Lojban solution, but you seem to have preempted it.
You have it right except that the noi/poi distinction is not now needed (and, indeed, the semantically irrelevant -- though pragmatically important -- broda can be dropped altogether for 'lo'). I am not sure what is wrong with the internal 'su'o' for 'lo' -- pragmatic considerations or are you saying that there is no 'su'o' in the background of 'lo'?
That's OK, if you promise, I'd just forget it anyhow.
Yeah, there's bee so much discussion lately about how to display Lojban that little has been said about what it all means.
I'm not clear about why we need two quantifiers with plural reference (I think plural quantification just follows -- or reference follows from quantification). Plural whatever replaces singulary seamlessly -- singulary just being a (not so) special case and one that need not ever be explicitly called upon.
----- Original Message ----
From: Jorge Llambías <jjlla...@gmail.com>
To: loj...@googlegroups.com
Sent: Sat, April 17, 2010 8:20:08 PM
Subject: Re: [lojban] {le} in xorlo