Re: lojban dialectology

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

Any intentional change in a language is a "reform".  If y
ou had just used it without mentioning it (at the risk of having this argument w
hne the parser
objected, then it would not have been a "reform".  I am sure many of the
proposed changes to Esperanto in many of the clones were thought of by the
proposers not as "reforms" but as "natural corrections" or "natural extensions
".
And's refusal to use the apostrophje alone qusalifies him as a reformer.
But being unconventional as opposed to catering t
o the listener/reader is
at minimum non-Lojbanic - since we presume that the point of the language is
to communicate.  The use of unconventional behavior to metaphysically make
(I mean metalinguistically) make points about the langauge design is more
characteristic of a language reformer than a language user.  There are
no doubt Esperantists who intentionally make the language look bad by being
unconventional too.  I get the impression that these people are though
t of
as reformers by the rest as well.

>Most of the discussion in the list is like that. That will not change
>just because a book is printed, but that doesn't mean that the
>language is changing, it just means that we haven't yet discovered
>all of it. Publishing the refgrammar cannot mean that there is nothing
>more to discover in the language. I see myself as an explorer, not a
>reformer of the language.


I would prefer to see people "explore" the language by using it.  If you need
to try something unconventional to express a point, then you are merely
doing what Shakespeare and Chaucer did for English.  If someone fails
to
understand and asks you what you meant, then an explanation of your intent
should be sufficient.  When the discussion turns to the pros and cons of various

usages exempt from any context, for the purpose of focussing on the issue, th

then you are talking about issues and not about using the langauge.

lojbab