Nora's reaction to John's proposals

[Logical Language Group <lojbab@GREBYN.COM>]

I'll first note that I don't think this change is quite as major as Nick
seems to think it is.  It is not really a change in the established language,
but 1) a recognition that somewhere along the line we eliminated a distinction
that we once thought important, and deciding that in some instances it really
IS important, and 2) providing for that distinction when it is wanted in such
a way that the overall expressive power of the language is improved.

Thus the change is essentially a (re)expansion of the language, and such have
been easier to convice people of than 'real' changes.  It cannot totally be
argued that established usage has been changed, since the reason the problem
was discovered is that our mainstay for teaching the language, the textbook,
said that what we had was DISTINCT from a non-restrictive attachment.  The
people who are studying the language from the textbook (as opposed to the
people who read and participate on Lojban List to learn the language) will
not understand what has disappeared.  Indeed, John, in conversing with me
about this proposal (Lojbab, by the way; Nora later), mentioned that Nick
was one persosn who asked about the "mo'u" loose end in the textbook, whereupon
John sluffed off your question (as he recalled).

Now, Higley also questioned the distinction, in the case of "mau", which is
of course the example we can't solve properly with "ne" (which is why Nick
that I think a need for examples of other usages from John is less important -
there are a lot of things in the language fro which we don't have immediate
usages for, but which are provided as expansions in parallel with a known usagge
form).  Higley is an example of someone learning the language solely from the
textbook, with no net access, by the way.  So at least 3 people have detected
some kind of error/inconsistency is the status quo, which is two more than
usual for a screwup before we decide that it is a problem.

Dealing with Nick's broader comment:  I don't see that we are putting the
whole language back on the drawing board.  Indeed, out of John and me have
come only proposals that relate to things that appear in the specific
document that we are working on at the moment.  Most of these documents have
already appeared in draft form, especially those likely to generate significant
change in the language.  Thus John made the statement quoted in JL17 that he
thought that very few additional chnages would surface prior to the books
being completed.  (You will note thatthis example came out of Lesson >6< of
the draft textbook, and that John has raised no issues from any of the draft
textbook earlier than that lesson.)

On the other hand, we have to firmly nail down cmavo meanings, since the
cmavo list is to be baselined with the dictionary, and, to put it mildly, the
definitions given in the LogFlash version, are often as clear as mud if you
don't already know how the word is used.

Now, Nora's reaction:  she was entirely in favor of the change, except that she
believes that a "zo'e" for utterances, which is how she sees "dai" is useful,
and indeed one of the more useful of the "zo'e" set of anaphora.  It may
not warrant a monosyllable, and hence she (and Lojbab, incidentally) would
accept diplacing it to "do'i" or even elsewhere if necessary in favor of a
more frequent usage, which the empathy and *mo'u proposals both seem to be.

Back to Lojbab: the argument for the monosyllable, by the way, is based on
Zipf.  The change since Lesson 6 was intended to give *mo'u and its then
restrictive equivalent a monosyllable, "pe" and "ne" respectively.  In this
case we are similarly proposing a monsyllable.

I do not favor the interpretation of the empathy attitudinal as similar to
or warranting a word related to "do" (or "mi" for its counterpart) since I
see most usages of the existing "seinai" on attitudinals that we are displacing
as being attributiuons to a third party of attitude.  This certainly is the
case for expressions of attitude for a character in a story where the
narrator is a defined role in the story, as in Ivan's translation of Tale of
the Stairs included in JL17.  (I should amend that "defined role" isn't athe
right word; maybe "point of view obviously distinct from the major characters").

As for the other cmavo proposals that Nick referred to; I had no impression
that they had gathered a consensus for change (and in particular I am
reasonably sure that neither Cowan, Nora or I had been convinced of support
enough to turn them into a formal proposal, much less that it was a good idea).
Colin's proposal, as I recall it, to be properly implemented, requires one
or more grammar changes - since you need to be able to attach an accuracy
anywhere that there exists a quantifier, if accuracies are really needed.
I also recall no actual usage in text (as opposed to examples) of an xVV
based on the proposal, but could easily have missed same, since i tend to
ignore most xVV words as uninterpretable when scanning text  (the people who
propose these tend to forget that they aren't in a cmavo dictionary, and thus,
at least for now, should be defined by footnote or whatever whenever they
appear in text so that we know which experiment is being experimented with,
I find in particular that I cannot keep Nick's proposals straight, at least in
part because I have never understood at least one of them in the first place).
I know of none of the existing xVV words that has been proposed by one person
and seen usage by another person, perhaps indicating that others see these
proposals as tentatively as I do.  I certainly have heard no indication of c
enough consensus behind any of them to warrant assigning them a cmavo, and the
fact that they are relegated to xVV space means that someone was unconvinced
at the time they were proposed that they weren't so obviously a good idea
that they warranted an immediate assignment of one of the existing cmavo.

lojbab