Re: version declaration for le lojbau

[lock60!snark!cowan@GVLS1.VFL.PARAMAX.COM]

la .and. cusku di'e

> Sometimes when a grammar change is being discussed, people
> worry not that the change will involve a lot of relearning
> but rather that the change will invalidate existing text.
> Has it been considered that after each baseline stage the
> language be named with a version name or number, and that
> there be some way of declaring the version used in a text.
> Then changes could be made to the grammar with a guarantee
> that formal correspondences have been established between
> successive versions.

This could certainly be done.  The reason we haven't done it is that the
baselined "releases" are not meant to reflect different versions of the
language, but rather different (hopefully closer) approximations to
>the< language, a Platonic object.

> ps I think _lo/le lojbau_ more appropriate than _la lojban_.
> Certainly in English, at least, words whose sense is a
> language behave like mass nouns rather than names.

Very true.  However, in Lojban a name may freely refer to a mass object;
that's one advantage of formalizing masses with "lei" and "loi".
Thus "la kau,n." is a reasonable name for the patrilineal clan to which
I belong, which is a mass.

> (E.g. _The
> Lojban you speak is better than the Lojban I speak.)

I think that in this usage "lei lojbau" would be best.

> Consequently
> I advocate the offical adoption of lots of lujvo like _lojbau,
> glibau, rusybau_ and lehavla for the rest (I forget the rules
> for lehavla - are _banava'o_ and _bantagalog_ OK?).

No.  "banava'o" is three cmavo, "ba na va'o", and "bantagalog" ends in
a consonant and is a name (but would be all right if a vowel were added
to the end, since no gismu or lujvo can end in -CVCV).

What is "ava'o"?

--
John Cowan      cowan@snark.thyrsus.com         ...!uunet!lock60!snark!cowan
                        e'osai ko sarji la lojban.