response to major 11/30/91

[Logical Language Group <cbmvax!uunet!GREBYN.COM!pucc.PRINCETON.EDU!lojbab>]

Major asks:
>In conlang lojbab writes:
>> Lojban place structures are NOT baselined for all time.
>
>Does this mean that if I write:
>
>        la brus. darxi la lojbab
>
>You can't tell who finaly got sick of trying to expalin their position
>to the other and resorted to violence?

No.  It means that if you say it with the place structure now, then 100
years from now after place structures have evolved, you might interpret
the meanings of the places, and indeed the nature of the relationship,
as being different from what you understand today.  This is the natural
consequence of language evolution, and is unavoidable.

The negative side of this is that, with Lojban, evolution will proceed
unnaturally fast in the first few years while the language gets nailed
down, and the natural overreaction to this is to try to baseline/freeze
everything we think we can get away with so that what is written now is
understandable by the time the textbook is finished, not to worry about
100 years.  We cannot do this kind of freeze with place structures,
because even my on-hold thorough analysis is not THAT accurate because
there is a limit to the amount of dta I can track at one time.

lojbab