baselines & usage

[And Rosta <cbmvax!uunet!UCL.AC.UK!cuvmb.cc.columbia.edu!ucleaar>]

> Lojbab writes:
>
> >Really Bruce??? Lojban crystalized too soon?  Loglan is some 35 years old.
> >How long is long enough?

What I find particularly odd is Lojban's conjunction of rigid baselines on
the one hand, and on the other hand leaving vast tracts of the language to
be determined by usage. For example, gismu place structures are baselined,
but the meaning of the gismu is merely vaguely indicated by a keyword,
and the Lojban community is left to negotiate the word meanings among
themselves.

We are told that Lojban users complain if the grammar changes, yet most of
it - the semantics - never will be baselined.

>From what Lojbab has said to me, it seems that the policy is to baseline
as much as possible, except for the semantics, because Lojbab & his
colleagues haven't the time or (he claimed) competence to create the
semantics.

This vacuum where much of the semantics would be in a natural language
undermines the merits of the prescriptiveness of the rest of the grammar.
It would make more sense to:
(a) abandon all baselines, simply offering offering the fruits of the
Lojbanists' considerable linguafactive talents to the community to do
with what they will,
OR
(b) make a commitment to the eventual baselining of all the grammar,
including the semantics (and add a couple of decades or more to the
date for the final baseline).

I offer this posting simply as an observation. I'm not really grinding
any axe, because I can't decide whether I'd vote for (a) or for (b) if
it had been put to a vote.

It strikes me that my observations could well be applied to many other
artificial languages. These develop a fraction of a grammar, baseline
it, and don't go on to tackle the rest of the grammar. Lojban, at least,
has developed a grammar that covers more than any other artificial
language I know of, and so could be said to be tending towards option
(b) rather than dithering on the fence.


---
And.