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Re: baselines & usage

la and. rost. cusku di'e
(And Rosta writes:)

> 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.

Gismu place structures are not baselined, and perhaps never will be baselined.
The baseline implied by publishing gismu lists extends only to the words
themselves and the matching English keywords -- and only for the sake of
stability among those who commit to learning the words using LogFlash, the
Lojban CAI program.  The rafsi (affixes) are not yet baselined, because their
assignments are based on assumptions about what lujvo (compounds) will be
built -- but no systematic lujvo-creation process has yet begun.  The place
structures belong to semantics, and thus are even more subject to change.

> 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.

Semantics is the heart of language.  The Lojban prescription effort is to
prescribe all structural properties as thoroughly as possible.  Semantics are
prescribed to the minimum necessary extent.  (Thus, the distinction between
the digits is semantical -- to the grammar all digits are interchangeable --
but obviously no language can be vague about the difference between 2 and 3.)

--
cowan@snark.thyrsus.com         ...!uunet!cbmvax!snark!cowan
                e'osai ko sarji la lojban