news from TLI (colored by the Lojban point-of-view)

[Logical Language Group <lojbab@ACCESS.DIGEX.NET>]

Well, JCB just put out a new issue of TLI's publication "Lognet".  It
has a bit of interesting stuff, information, ideas, etc.  As usual, most
of these ideas are just ideas - JCB has always had a knack for making a
skeletal idea (like Loglan was) look like a complete, ready-to-roll
accomplishment.

But he has made one idea an accomplishment at last - he "beat us" in
getting out a new dictionary.  Well, sort of.  He has issued an
electronic dictionary (i.e. data files, and some support software on the
MacIntosh version - I'm informed that the PC version does not have much
support software).  There is no indication of a soon-to-come printed
dictionary.  Indeed, it looks like TLI is planning to limit itself to
electronic form for some time to come, issuing an updated on-line
dictionary as often as 2 or 3 times a year.

Lojban will have one advantage, when I get our dictionary done, though.
Our current policy is that our dictionary files, at least in raw form,
will be available free-of-charge, and indeed will be in the public
domain.  Updates will be posted to our ftp site(s) as they are created.
JCB/TLI is selling their dictionary for $50 ($30 for TLI members) and
charging $5 for updates.  I suspect that a free dictionary will cause
Lojban to spread a bit more rapidly than a $50 dictionary, though we
will have to hope that a lot of you are willing to buy the printed
dictionary and/or support us with donations to make up for the loss in
revenue.

In purchasing the dictionary, JCB informs his readership that "you have
the right -- yes, the _right!_ -- to edit your own dictionary, and to
send your edits and additions in to us for possible inclusion in the
next 'official' edition."  How generous .ianai

Although we are nominally at peace with TLI, I am informed that an order
for the dictionary from me or from LLG would not be welcomed by JCB.  I
don't know whether this means it would be refused, ignored, whether it
would prompt renewed hostilities, or whether it merely means that JCB
sees red when he views my name, and thus might be less amenable to other
efforts at enhancing cooperation between our groups.  In any event, I am
interested in having someone who is not well-known as a leader of
Lojban, purchase a copy of TLI's dictionary (PC form, not MacIntosh) and
donate it to LLG (for my/our use), not mentioning this intent in your
order, of course.  You will receive appropriate credit for such a
donation.  We could possibly use more than one copy (for Cowan and
perhaps Nick), but I don't want to enrich TLI by buying unnecessary
copies.  If you are interested in helping, please let me know.

Other news (mostly) from TLI:

While not directly saying so, JCB indicates that his community is around
160 US people in size, with maybe another 120 inactives.  This is
deduced from the fact that he is now using a bulk mailing permit, and is
mailing about 30-40 'extra copies' to non-paying people, who are in turn
getting a copy every 3 or 4 issues.  Our paying community is somewhat
larger, but not much, but we know our people are real supporters of the
language who have in general renewed their subscriptions after some time
receiving them.  Most TLI people are still on their initial
subscriptions, and he has a history of very low renewal rates (as low as
10-20%).

It turns out that JCB and TLI did not participate in the SanFrancisco
WorldCon in August, though the editor of Lognet was apparently in charge
of registration at that convention.  Keith Lynch took several dozen
brochures to WorldCon, all of which disappeared quickly (as I expected;
we went through some 600 brochures at Noreascon, the 1989 Worldcon in
Boston), but I have had no responses indicating Worldcon as a source for
their contact.

(I did discover yesterday that Lojban List has made it into a "new"
(1993 edition) book on Internet mailing lists that is popular enough to
be in a Crown Books bookstore, though it gives the list outdated snark
address for the list.  Since it gives our snail address and Cowan's
snark address is still (or rather hopefully will soon again be) good,
this should provide some new visibility for Lojban and this list.)

JCB answers a letter, providing the interesting information that Loglan
was originally an NA order (Noun-Adjective) language, but that he
changed it to conform with Greenberg's language universals after they
were published in 1963.  Unfortunately, other than the snippets of
Loglan in the 1960 Scientific American article, the only documentation
of Loglan as it was before 1966 lies in JCB's head and files.  There was
a locally-circulated (in Gainesville FL) document on the language in
1955 but the language truly was sparse then, having less than 300 words
and only the beginning of a grammar.  I know of no one besides JCB who
has a copy of this (though I'd love to find one for the archives.)

There is a short chunk of original Loglan text in this Lognet, from Bob
McIvor.  I'm asking Bob for an on-line copy which we would post on
Lojban List with a Lojban equivalent/translation, whereupon all of you
can tear it apart as you so aptly do all posted Lojban text.  It might
be interesting.  This text, and indeed this issue, shows the development
of the first significant stylistic difference between TLI Loglan idiom
and Lojban idiom.  While Lojban supports it, few Lojbanists make use of
lerfu (letter name) words as sumti anaphora (back-referencing pronouns);
it is coming to be heavily used in TLI Loglan, since they have realized
the weakness of their other form of anaphora, which is the equivalent of
our ri/ra (but with 5 members to the set, all strictly counted).

(Nora actually has always like using lerfu, but she seldom writes in the
language, and the technique never seems to occur in our spoken Lojban
here.  The closest to significant use has been the occasional use of
lerfu as 'meaningful' delimiters on zoi quotes of non-Lojban text. lerfu
anaphora have some advantage over the ko'a series in that generally the
letter indicates the first letter of the name or brivla being
referenced, a useful memory hook, and one that does not require explicit
assignment with 'goi' unless there is ambiguity due to multiple possible
referents.  Anyone who wishes may experiment with this usage in your next
text(s)).

Finally, and perhaps most interesting, JCB wrote and presented a paper
on the lessons he has learned in inventing and teaching Loglan for 35
years.  He intends to publish this paper in a TLI publication, which I
look forward to seeing.  But he reports that in writing this paper, he
came to believe that Loglan is now ready for the development of a
speaking community.  He then proposes a way to bring it about, one which
could actually work, though I suspect not right away in the case of the
TLI version of the language.  Still, JCB and TLI might have the means to
bring it about and if they get the people to participate, they COULD (I
won't say "will") quickly catch up and surpass our accomplsihments with
Lojban as a spoken language.

Specifically, JCB proposes setting aside his Florida home as a
Loglan-using center.  People would visit this place for anywhere from 1
to 4 weeks for the purpose of learning and using the language.  In order
to have it work, he says that he needs to have enough people sign up so
as to maintain a continuous community of people there year-round.  He
suggests 8 people at one time.

He argues that the TLI Loglan community is ready for this because there
are a dozen or so people who know his language well enough to solve most
any usage question "within a very few days -- well, weeks at the most",
or weeks at most".

I doubt if JCB realizes how far TLI is from where they are (about where
Lojban usage was in early to mid 1989) to where we are now, much less
from where he would like to be.

Now I suggest that such an attempt would probably not work for Lojban
yet, much less for TLI, though we could come close to pulling it off.
Unlike TLI, we HAVE sustained real conversation for hours at a time.  We
have a dozen people who could probably in a face to face communication
setting solve any usage question communicatively within a few minutes,
at most.  So if we actually could get a group of our people in one place
for a couple of weeks, they probably could try, and succeed, by the end
of that period in not merely sustain conversation in Lojban, but living
at a "vacation level" in Lojban, performing normal days' activities in
the language.  It would probably be one step more difficult to live a
full life in a language, including work, etc., as Rob Brady's jargony
texts showed a couple of months ago, even if one could get enough people
together who could work fully in the language for any signififcant
period of time.

I think we would be very lucky if we could get enough people to keep
this going for a month, because to make it work, you need enough people
from your first group to overlap the next group long enough to teach
them enough everyday usages that the wheel doesn't need to be reinvented
every week.  Having 8 people in your group, with say, 4 person turnover
per week, requires that you have 20 people for one month alone.  For 2
weeks per person twice a year (rather more than most people can really
manage), you would need 120 people, and more rationally about 4 times
that number, to sustain such a group continuously, as JCB thinks he can
do.  While merely trying to do so, would get a lot more people
interested in learning the language, that is a lot more people than >I<
expect to get involved at this level of intensity for another year or
two.

This does not allow for the fact that, as far as I know, no one in the
TLI community other than JCB is committed to his language >as a family<
(and I'm not sure about the level of interest in speaking the language
JCB's wife has).  Most of us with husbands/wives and kids haven't gotten
the rest of our family interested at the same level we are.  My family
is, as far as I know, is the furthest along in this way, since Nora and
I are among the best speakers of the language, but our kids are just
beginners, and we cannot use the same techniques in teaching them that
we have used on adults.  For us to go cold turkey to pure Lojban would
be virtually impossible.  I dare say, most others with a
non-Lojban-speaking family member would have even greater problems.  And
families would have a greater difficulty committing a great deal of time
to such an experiment - I can't see my kids interacting only with each
other and adults for 2 days, much less 2 weeks, without someone going
crazy %^).  And enforcing Lojban-only on kids is really impossible.
Thus you need a sizable portion of your 'community' as single people.
That means mostly college students, which in turn constrains the ability
to sustain a continuous group to summer months.

(And this does not allow for the conviction that I and others in the
Lojban community share, that JCB overestimates the skill of himself and
his people in the language.)

I think the Lojban community might be able to pull something off like
this for several weeks or a couple of months, provided that there is
some way to get a stable core, and with the added proviso that there
would be (at least at first) some non-Lojban periods.  We've talked, for
example, of having an area at LogFest deemed Lojban-only (with another
area deemed English-permitted).

If enough people said they wanted to try it, we could perhaps start next
year at LogFest here (which would be mixed Lojban and English in
whatever manner people choose - I don't want people to stay away from
LogFest because they aren't ready for such an ambitious undertaking in
the language), and extend through the following week or so trying to
increase the percentage of Lojban used (possibly by shrinking the
English-permitted environment).

If such an experiment were even moderately successful, I suspect
>Lojban< might be ready for a more ambitious experiment of several weeks
or more by the following year.

I can't see TLI's language being ready for such a challenge within the
next year or so, much less their people.  But they have the advantage of
a place that can be dedicated to Loglan use which people might be
willing to go to for a vacation (albeit in winter - JCB's Gainesville's
place is a muggy swamp by the end of May), and JCB's fairly deep purse
(stoked by new Careers royalties).

But the idea is good, and WE can think about it.  Would anyone be up to
trying to do this next summer?

lojbab

lojbab
----
lojbab                           Note new address:    lojbab@access.digex.net
Bob LeChevalier, President, The Logical Language Group, Inc.
2904 Beau Lane, Fairfax VA 22031-1303 USA                        703-385-0273

For information about the artificial language Loglan/Lojban, please
provide a paper-mail address to me.  We also have information available
electronically via ftp ( casper.cs.yale.edu, in the directory
pub/lojban) and/or email.  The LLG is funded solely by contributions,
and are needed in order to support electronic and paper distribution.