*old response to Steven B #4

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

"belk128
Steven Belknap replies to me at length, and gets the same back in return
(most of you can hit 'n' now %^):
>Yes. Conservative is good in language design. My proposal for a lojban
>academy is more conservative (that is, favoring traditional views and
>values; tending to oppose change) than your mob rule approach.

Except that I know from observing Esperanto, as well as English that
"mob rule" can lead to changes taking on the order of decades or
centuries to promulgate.  (It also can lead to changes taking place
almost overnight, but these tend to not be substantive changes).

>>In conlangs, failure to grow is death.
>
>And unregulated growth is cancer.

There has, so far as I know, never been a case I would call "cancerous
growth" of a natural language, and most of them are totally unregulated.
Unless you want to call the diverging dialects of English around the
world "cancers" on English.  Esperanto has shown remarkable resistance
to substantive change considering that it has spawned so many attempts
to change or splinter it.  Lojban being far more completely specified
than Esperanto should be at least as resistant to cancers.

>>>...I believe *some* of these issues are best resolved by
>>>extensions to the language or changes to the language:  the inclusion of
>>>the selmaho <xoi> and the abolition of standard positions in gismu are
>>>the only two that I strongly feel require changes/extensions.
>>
>>These almost certainly will not even be considered before the 5 year
>>baseline.
>
>I have no problem with this. But if and's <xoi> selmaho proves to provide a
>valuable and universally acclaimed feature to lojban, there ought to be a
>formal means of adding it eventually. (10 years? 20 years? Fine, no
>problem.)

If it is universally acclaimed, why is formal change needed.  Once the
language is established with a stable "natural" community, the formal
definition of the language will be of interest only to researchers and
historians (and the idly curious of course).

>>>Second, and more importantly, there is the issue of how change is to be
>>>managed in the language once it is baselined.  JCB doubtless believed he
>>>had good reasons for managing change in Loglan in the manner that he
>>>did.
>>
>>JCB never accepted the principle of baselining, for one thing.
>
>Balderdash.  JCB published several versions of his dictionary and
>grammer.  I have most of the versions with ISBN codes (that is
>"published books") here in my library.  I just looked in my copy of the
>original Loglan 1. The words are not metamorphosizing.  That is what we
>call a "baseline."

No - none of them were baselines.  Without exception, change continued
to the language after each publication, and indeed accelerated each time
he publsihed a book.  That is because publishing attracted new people,
who in turn made new proposals unconstrainedly which JCB seldom
squelched - sometimes he even explicitly added them (in most cases, he
said nothing, peple thought they were added, and then half of them
disappeared when he wrote the next book).  "The words are not
metamorphosizing" - except for GMR that changed 100 gismu and every
single lujvo - and then there are the new gismu and lujvo proposed every
new issue of Lognet.  But the grammar changed even more uncontrolledly.
Indeed, the only reason they have change control now is that they do not
publish their YACC grammar (in order to hide it from us), and require
Robert McIvor to YACC all official changes.

JCB's set of cmavo HAS been more or less stable independent of the
changes to the grammar for each.  There have been a few additions but
not many.  But that is merely because like us he has very few free cmavo
to play with.

>>His
>>language was and is the embodiment of what the French Academy would like
>>to happen with French.  Nothing new until approved by the Academy, but
>>the Academy is always open for business.  All changes and innovations
>>are null until approved from the top.
>
>The Loglan Institute is not an academy.  One person is not an academy.
>Even the French Academy represents a diversity of views, albeit over a
>restricted subset of speakers.

The Loglan Academy is an officially constituted subset of TLI.  It has 3
or 4 members including JCB, each of which nominally has a veto on
any/all changes.  Of course if JCB disliked an Academician's decisions
too much he could simply remove them from the Academy %^)

One person is an academy if he says he is and has absolute power over
the language.  Just as Lysenko was a one-man Academy for Soviet biology
for a good while.

>>>This approach was reportedly somewhat autocratic, to the dismay of some.
>>
>>To say the least.  It 1) doesn't work as the French Academy can testify,
>
>Wait a second.  I would hardly characterize the activity of the
>Acad=E9mie =46ran=E7aise as "not working" It is one of many forces which
>shape the Fren ch language.  It *HAS* had significant influence on the
>development of French.

It has, but it doesn't much longer.  All the pronouncements they can
produce will not get rid of le weekend and le hotdog.

>They have had some success stamping out "anglicization" of French by
>introducing new words for things like "computer" as well.

But doing so did not get rid of "le compute"r, which is what they were
trying to do.

>Besides, its and's proposal.  I like the idea of <xoi>, but I did not
>suggest it.  What's your objection anyway?  Wasn't the idea of having
>experimental selmaho begining with X originally your idea?

If the proposal is merely for "xoi" to be use long term, fine.  But at
this stage most xVV usage in discussion is as a place holder for a
to-be-assigned "real" cmavo.  But xVV cmavo do not go into dictionaries
or word lists, and most rampant prescriptivists want their proposals
included officially in the language and refgrammar.

>>No.
>
>No, what?

NO meaning that I am not abdicating leadership.  I AM abdicating as
prescriptivist.  Leadership by example is the best kind, in my book.  I
don't need any authority to do so.  For example, Goran has been a most
inspiring leader by his insistance in trying to express most everything
IN Lojban.  And he has no official role in LLG at all.

>>Upon baselining, there will be a 5 year period where the ONLY
>>change permitted will be of the "language exploration" variety.  If
>>anything comes up that is so serious as to require formal change during
>>the 5 year period, the baseline experiment will be considered a failure,
>>and we will have to decide what to do then.
>
>Failure?  That seems like an odd point of view.  I doubt that this
>language will be error free and perfect at the time of its baselining.

Who cares?

>I believe that the necessity for improvements will be inevitable, and we
>ought to be thinking that way now, and plan for the eventuality.

I believe that "improvements" in a langauge trying to act like a natural
language, if needed, should be made the way they are in a natural
language - with difficulty, and not by dictum.  I hope that most changes
proposed have as much difficulty getting accepted as the multitude of
proposals for gender-neutral prounouns for English.  Changes CAN be made
to English, such as "Ms.", and we didn't need any Academy to do it.

>>Undoubtedly the community
>>will be considerably different than it is now, and we cannot decide now
>>what we will do then.
>
>Why not?  If the idea of a lojban academy appears patently absurd in
>five years, then we will abandon the notion.  If we create one now we
>will be able to take all the slang, experimental stuff, problems, etc.
>and deal with them in a formal way as part of the baselining.  This
>seems to me to be a way to make the baselined language *more* stable,
>not less stable.

The people who should vote on how the language in managed in 5 years
should be the people who are speaking it in 5 years, not the ones who
are procrastinating and ivory towering today.  What right does the
present LLG have to constrain the future LLG on this matter.

>A stitch in time saves nine.

And sewing an overcoat now for the child of 5 years from now is almost
guaranteed to be a waste of time since the child will not fit it.

>I was on an Air Canada flight into Montreal several years ago when the
>steward forgot to announce the arrival in French.  All hell broke loose.
>People were screaming, "Parlez francais!"

And I am sure that the announcement could have been in Quebecois French
rather than Academy-approved Parisian French with nary a complaint.  The
French of the masses is NOT the French of the Academy.

>>>If we could be reassurred that there will be an (eventual) opportunity
>>>to rebaseline the language, perhaps those with proposed grammer changes
>>>would feel less adamant about including those changes in the initial
>>>baselining.
>>
>>I cannot make such assurance, since I am not sure that I will have to
>>power to fulfill such a promise.
>
>It is not a promise. It is a policy. They are different. You and Nora are
>the de facto leaders of the lojban community, and have some authority to
>set policy. I am encouraging you to use your authority to back the idea of
>a lojban academy.

I cannot do that, since I am morally opposed to an Academy.  In 5 years,
i am sincerely hoping that there will be no individuals who would set
themselves to dictate language usage to others, and am sure that there
will be few speakers of the language that will want to accept someone
elses dictates.

An Academy that is not a dictator is a figurehead.  I can do perfectly
fine as a figurehead, I assure you.  If moral authority is needed to
effect or oppose change in the language in 5 years, I will have to earn
it in the eyes of the T+5years Lojbanists.  But I hope that the number
of so-qualified leaders will far exceed the numbers appropriate for
committee deliberations.  In my mind, an Academy is merely a pretentious
committee.  And I am a committed small-d democrat.

>>I am unconvinced that change needs to be (or can be) "managed" - i.e.
>>imposed from the top - once we have a large community of users.
>
>Successful management is only rarely imposed from the top.  See my
>comments about leadership style.

An "Academy" is meaningless unless it is nominally "on top".

>I'm sure saying "no" to everything will be hard.

I'm getting lots of practice %^)

After the books are done it will be a LOT easier.  Because until we make
a lot of money, saying anything OTHER than "no" will be impossible.  LLG
is barely solvent as it is.  My main worry is to keep us from doing like
TLI which is morally bankrupt primarily because it owes so much to JCB
from book publishing that he has total control of the pursestrings if
nothing else.  (Last I hear, the TLI debt to JCB was over $35K.  He
probably gets no more than 10% of that in income each year, and he is
accruing interest on the loan per the CPI rate).

>  Such an approach would
>not constitute leadership.  What will you do if someone comes up with a
>problem of the magnitude of the negation issue?

I'm not sure that the community would take such an issue as seriously
then as we did a few years ago, BECAUSE it will not be in prescription
mode.  Then we could not use the defense "it is done, so that is the way
it is".  If Lojban had been baselined and documented then, I think it
would have survived.  I'm not sure that there has been ANY change to the
language since I started the draft textbook that would have been fatal
to a language with a large speaking community.

I doubt that I would break the 5 year baseline even for a problem such
as that.  And after 5 years I will hope to use my leadership to forge
consensus rather than push my versions.

In any event, "what I would do" had better depend on 1) how large the
community is at the time; 2) how cohesive the community is; 3) how much
the community cares; 4) what my role in the community is at the time; 5)
what other leaders I can pass the buck to.  In short, I haven't the
vaguest idea and feel that I have little more right to formulate a plan
than any other member of LLG.  Similarly, Congress shouldn't go passing
laws that have no relevance now but constrain my kids when they are my
age.

> I have obviously NOT been
>>successful at getting the most vocal participants on this list to agree
>>with my policy, and language is essentially democratic.
>
>Your failure to get the most vocal participants to agree with your
>policy is pretty good evidence that your policy is flawed, or at least
>incomplete.

I am sure that there is no policy on the budget such that the Democrats
and the Republicans in Congress will unanimously agree.  That does not
mean that the all policies are flawed or incomplete (they may be thus,
but NOT because of the persistent disagreement).  You can't please all
of the people all of the time.  I'm not even trying to do so, having
given up that folly after the new-gismu wars, when people simply agreed
to disagree violently and let it go at that.

But if I can't get people to agree with me now, what right do I have to
speak for people 5 years from now?  Don't you think people will disagree
just as much then as now?

>I am suggesting a way out of your dilemma.  Lump all the proposals you
>wish to defer under the category "to be considered at a later date by
>the lojban academy."

There is no academy, and if there was one, it would be THEIR decision
what they will consider, not mine.

>Jorge's X1 - X5 proposals were rejected outright, when it appears to me
>that at least two of them had some merit.

They weren't.  But even if they were, we cannot afford to consider ideas
merely because they have merit.  And I have NO reason to believe that at
any time in the future there will be a community more interested in
considering them than the present one.  My suspicion is that the
community, come 5 years, will largely feel that they do not even want us
to CONSIDER a baseline change, much less debate what should go into it.

>Don't reject possibly meritorious proposals altogether.

I am rejecting them for the nonce and implictly for the next 5 years.
That is the limits on my power.

>You are confusing your roles of book editor and lojban community leader.

I am community leader because I am book editor.  I have been charged by
the membership to fill orders, pay bills and produce books and other
publications. 5 years from now will not (necessarily) be on my watch.

>Agreed.  And I, for one, am grateful for your efforts.  I am encouraging
>you to consider a change in leadership style after baselining.  Perhaps
>I do not adequately understand your plans for leadership after
>baselining.

Simple - after the baseline there will be NO decisions to make about the
language design for at least 5 years.  I intend to make none.  The
membership will decide whether they want to do any planning for after
that time period, and I will listen and speak to them as a fellow
member.

The main job for the next 5 years after baselining is to establish the
community as a LOJBAN community, speaking, writing, and teaching the
langauge, and maybe even doing some research.  I will have plenty of
fodder for leadership in those arenas.  The language design is DONE.

>>>In collaborative leadership, the leader is first among equals,
>>>decision-making is by consensus among the members of the team.  The
>>>collaborative leadership style seems most appropriate to manage
>>>post-baselining change.
>>
>>And who decides who is a member of the team?
>
>You do. Pick your team.

Not my right or my responsibility.  But you are simply arguing for me to
do after the baseline what I am doing now.  But just above you said I
needed to do something different.

Since the nature of a baseline requires that the "team" be biased
against change I guarantee that any team I would pick post baseline
would include the most die-hard anti-change people I could find - but I
wouldn't have to look hard at all - among the Board of Directors of LLG,
Cowan is by far the most open to changes.  Then I have the LLG track
record that no committee appointed by the President has yet managed to
hold a meeting, informal or otherwise, except at the LogFest where they
were appointed.  So I am pretty convinced that I could find a committee
that would manage post-baseline change by never considering it.  %^)

>>the majority of the community that is not on Lojban List?
>
>I am unaware of any North Koreans, Cubans, or New Zealand Maoris who are
>interested in lojban.  All these people are living in places where
>computers are easily available.  Encourage these folks to get an america
>online or compuserve account or make some other slipshod arrangement.

Some people have better things to do with their time than to tomes of
dense pontificating on logic and linguistics.  But even amomng those
that do, I cite the most skilled Lojbanist, Nick Nicholas, who does not
have time for Lojban List because he is busy with dense pontificating on
logic and linguistics for his thesis.

>If they are genuinely interested in lojban, perhaps they will get
>online.  Maybe they do not understand how easy it is to participate in
>online discussion groups.

We have over 80 people on Lojban List (down from 100 through the
excessive volume).  Only 25% of them have ever posted at all.  Just
because YOU find it easy to participate does not mean that others do.
Besides - someone who is opposed to change has no reason to want to
listen to discussions of proposed changes.  And 90% of this list traffic
is such discussions.  AS I said, the advocates of change are a SMALL (if
vocal) minority of the community.  They are even a small minority of
Lojban List.

>I understand the problem with conlang change all too well.  Do you
>understand the problem with not-change?

Yes.  Esperanto has anywhere from 50K to 10 million speakers, depending
on who is counting.  We should have such problems!!!

>>It is true that JCB chose an inappropriate leadership model (though then
>>again, it might have been the appropriate one for the first 20 years -
>>it just became inappropriate once he opened the language to the
>>community.
>
>Hmmm. Anyone see a parallel here?

Do you?  You want the language opened to the community, yet you just
suggested a leadership style identical to what I have been doing -
consensus among a selected team.  JCB opened the langauge to the
community, but refused to let control of the language pass to the
community.  AND THAT COMMUNITY DID NOT WANT CHANGE!

>>The other genius is that they made the process difficult enough that
>>such change seldom occurs.  They also had the good luck to have the
>>document become sacred enough that changing it lightly is considered
>>sacrilege.
>
>I did not choose my example of the U.S. Constitution unwittingly!

Good - let the Lojban canon be sacred!!!  Let us pray.

>So you are
>>arguing for continuing the status quo.
>
>No, it is not the way things are now.  There is no formal mechanism now.
>I am proposing a formal mechanism.  This is the crux of the matter.

And I say we don't need one, since I don't think any change will be
considered for a long time to come, and when people are ready to
consider changes THEY should decide how they want to do it.  Especially
since that is what they will do anyway, since we have no binding force
on the future community since the language is in the public domain.
That is one difference between Lojban and the Constitution.  No one HAS
to listen to me or anyone else.

>>It isn't working.  Too many changes get proposed; there is too much
>>indecisive deliberation, and too many changes are slipping by as "well,
>>I can't see anything wrong with it, and it is only an extension to the
>>language, and person X who has contributed mightily to the effort is
>>fighting hard for it".
>
>Understood. That is what the lojban academy is for. For language-killing
>problems the academy will jump into the breach and fix the problem. For
>lesser problems, prudent delay, due consideration, and a more leisurely
>approach will be taken.

After the language is released, language-killing problems will - kill
the language.  For lesser problems, we will leisurely delay forever
while change percolates from beneath - not from above.

>defer all the nonessential improvements to a later release

I do not exoect or intend there to BE a "later release".  Once released,
it is out of our control.  It will take concerted effort by some group
in the community to try to assert any prescriptive control over the
language after it is fully public, and that is as it should be with a
language.  The larger and more successful the language and community,
the less likely that they will stand for it.

>Stop engaging in pointless discussions with Jorge and others about what
>ought to be included in the baseline and what ought not.

In case you haven't noticed, I have NOT been discussing what ought to be
included or not.  People are debating and proposing, and I have no
control over that.  To the extent I respond to people, it is NOT to
decide whether something should "be included in the baseline or not" but
to try to educate the community and especially the debaters/would-be
community-leaders as to what I think the language is.  My standard
position unless otherwise stated is "no" to all proposals - that is my
job, and pretty much the dictates of the voting membership:  stop
fiddling.

>Obviously absurd suggested changes can be rejected now.

*Everything* gets rejected - that is the default.  Not "put off" -
rejected.  The grammar and cmavo list etc, are ALREADY baselined.  The
"final baseline" will be a rebaselining.

>Brilliant suggestions which correct some newly discovered fatal flaw
>will be adopted forthwith.  Those with some lesser merit can be
>discussed at leisure, final determination deferred until the lojban
>academy has a clear sense of how to proceed.

It is not for any academy to decide after the final baseline.  It is for
the community to decide what to do with the language.  And if the
community WANTS an academy to debate changes, let them elect one (they
won't).

>What you call a "threat" is my statement that I will loose interest in
>lojban if there is not a formal mechanism to deal with evolution of the
>language.  That is because I consider the lack of such a formal
>mechanism to be a fatal management error which will doom the lojban
>enterprise.

Then we are doomed - like English, Chinese, and Esperanto.  Since no one
has the authority to "manage" the language after it is in the public
domain (nor even the legal right), there is no other course.

>>How about if the academy refused to even consider your
>>proposals and allow you to "try to persuade" because there are 20 or 200
>>other proposals on the table, and discussion of the changes alone would
>>take another 5 years if done at the cvolume and intensity we have seen
>>on this list.
>
>That would be a lesser non-fatal degree of poor management.

I guarantee you that if change is being considered at all, that the
volume we have seen in the last few weeks will simply escalate in
proportion with the number of people involved.  And sooner or later ther
will be enough disaffected talkers that they will start a splinter
movement.  On the other hand, if changes are not being discussed
seriously, then like Esperanto since Ido (which is an example of a
splinter effort that resulted from a "formal change mechanism"), change
proposers will be isolated people who propose, get ignored and either
shut up, leave, or work to change from within - the latter a process
that is not amenable to formalizing.

There is NO history of a formal language change body that FAILED to make
changes.  There is plenty of history of languages that changed slowly or
not at all without a formal change mechanism.

>If you wish to defer these, fine.  But if you reject them outright, I
>suspect you are tailoring your decisions to fit your preordained
>conception of how lojban ought best be managed.

Or not "managed".  I will "lead" the community.  I will not "manage" the
community or the language.  As LLG President, I am also stuck with
"managing" the business and organization.

>>>where the academy of right-thinking lojbi will eventually give the
>>>stamp of approval to the new version.
>>
>>whereupon the language promptly collapses and dies in schism because
>>most of those who did not participate in the debate see no reason for
>>changing, and feel put upon by calls for them to relearn what they have
>>put months and years of work into.
>
>Oh, please.  Do you think adding <xoi> to the language, (if that is what
>the lojban academy decides) would schism the language?.  Many people I
>know *never* use the subjunctive tense.  I understand them just fine.
>Those who don't like the new constructs won't use them.  Changing
>something like the meaning of ti, ta, and tu is a different kettle of
>fish.  I doubt that the academy would approve such a change.

Creating an academy alone might schism the community into people who
give up right now before the academy gets started, and those who are
willing to tolerate someone else telling them what to do with their
language.  I myself am ideologically prone to the former camp.

To put it simply, I cannot sell the language unless I am convinced that
the prescriptive phase is done, since I wouldn't "buy it" myself.
Indeed, I myself got active in Loglan in 1986 (after 6 years of
essential inactivity) only because I thought all the changers were gone
and that JCB wanted only to be able to document the as-is language and
then retire and go sailing.  I have been promising Lojban books "in a
few months" for 9 years now, at least partially because if I had ever
allowed myself to think that it would take 9 years to finish the books I
would never have gotten started, and if I had thought the language would
still be changing after 9 years, I would not have tried to learn it
myself.

When I first met Colin Fine back in 1988, he told me that his effort to
establish a British Loglan community had largely failed because people
seemed more interested in playig with and changing the language than in
using it.  I sais that I thought that he was wrong - that most of the
community wanted nothing other than for change to stop, and that when it
did, people would start to learn the language.  I still think this is
true (and I think I convinced Colin, to the considerable benefit of the
community).

So you and I have contradictory philosophical assumptions as to what a
"language community" is, and probably about the limits of power that a
person should have in a free association.  I also have 9 years
experience now in running a totally volunteer organization, after seeing
how fast volunteers went away from the earlier one whenever they were
told what to do and how to do it.  The US and the net are both
communities with a strong streak of anarchy.  People - customers - do
not pay to be told what to do (well maybe they pay doctors, which would
account for our differences in approach %^).

>>Remember that Esperanto survived largely because after 7 years or so,
>>they had just such a revision proposed and deliberated and voted upon.
>>The vote of the community rejected the new version (I personally believe
>>Zamenhof set up the proposal to be self-defeating by including enough
>>change that most people found something to object to).
>
>False analogy.  The changes proposed to Esperanto were massive.

Well, Esperantists would have to opine on that.  But to me, the
differences between Esperanto and Ido are less than the ones between
1975 Loglan and 1996 TLI Loglan, and the changes proposed in the 1890s
were probably less drastic than those.

>Also, lojban claims to be a "Loglan".  If serious flaws are found, it is
>imperative that they be fixed, otherwise, lojban will be demonstrably
>*not* a lojban.

I think you are very wrong.  We have fulfilled the minimal requirements
for being a Loglan - which was to meet JCB's conditions set down in his
book - something I think we do far better than TLI Loglan.  As far as
being "speakable logic", I don't think Loglan/Lojban ever seriously had
a chance at that, especially since pc is so good at informing us that on
so many matters of critical importance to Lojban design that logicians
are of 5 or more mutually contradictory stances.

>Esperanto and lojban are different.

They are both conlangs, and both need a community to survive.  If Lojban
were a more perfect language, but had no community, it would be a waste
of time.

My commitment is to the community - to give them a language, and to JCB,
to make his dream manifest (I'm sure he'd rather I gave up that
commitment %^).  I have no commitment to the ideals of Logic or the
Perfect Language.

>>What if there isn't and cannot be, because of the nature of the changes?
>>(For example, a simple realignment of "lo" based on the discussions of
>>the last year or so would alone make this impossible - there IS no
>>algorithmic way to decide which gadri is to be used if the semantics
>>change.
>
>I doubt the academy would approve such a change.  There would have to be
>an awfully good reason.  Preservation of semantics and grammer would be
>a high priority.  This illustrates the cleverness of Jorge's suggestion.
>If all deliberations were carried out in lojban, only those with a great
>deal invested in the language would be making change suggestions.

I think you totally misunderstand the nature of what changes are likely
to come about if there are any changes at all.  Yes, some changes might
only be extensions, in which case "translation" is not a problem.  But
for almost every problem discussed on Lojban List in the last year,
including those regarding semantics issues that aren't even going to be
covered by the baselining - EACH of these will result in some percentage
of the language not being backwards compatible.

>The authority of the academy over speakers is nil.  If
>speakers refuse to adopt the proposed changes, then eventually a
>rational academy will have to acknowledge failure of their attempts at
>revision and withdraw them.  I suspect most such changes will be at the
>edges of the language and will not affect most speakers, so they wont
>mind much.

Hey, we agree on 3 things in one paragraph %^) But the missing element
is that if we have an academy proposing changes (and especially if they
are discussing the proposals in public), there are people who won't
become part of the community.  Lojban List has a decidedly poor
reputation in the conlang/linguistic community for incredibly arcane
discussions of language change.  And Rosta likes it because it is a list
where he can actually learn some linguistics, but that isn't our main
purpose.  We are ALREADY losing people, scaring them off by our arcana.
That has GOT to stop, and be replaced by people USING the language.  It
is my intent and sincere hope that the debates will die away once the
books are done and nothing anyone says is really going to affect usage.
But that latter clause has to be true or it won't die away.

>>>4. Emphasize that there will be considerable tolerance to experimental
>>>additions/changes to lojban among the lojban community.  But these will
>>>be uncertified "slang" usages until & unless a broad and deep consensus
>>>builds as to incorporation of the "slang" into the latest release of
>>>lojban.  Such changes will then be considered at the next meeting of the
>>>lojban academy
>>
>>Status quo, except that we have no formal "Academy".  We do have a
>>voting membership that could establish one if it wanted to (which I am
>>sure it doesn't).
>
>We don't know if this is the status quo since there is relatively little
>discussion in lojban;

Jorge has said that he used his proposed changes for the last year and
no one objected.  This MAY have been because no one read his stuff ...

>my point here is to encourage rather than discourage slang,

Whereas I want to sttrongly discourage it, at least until we have a
large, stable community speaking a standard language.  I have budgeted 5
years for that.

>while at the same time distinguishing slang from proper lojban.

That is easy:  if it YACC-parses, it is proper Lojban.  If it doesn't,
it is slang. xVVs will not parse, and hence are slang.  That very
inability will of course make them hard to gain acceptance unless a LOT
of people start using them spontaneously.  I think little changes in the
corners of the language actually have the LEAST likelihood of such
acceptance, since those who try to use them will develop a rich idiom
using them that no one outside the group will have any idea about.  In
short, it will become a jargon.

>>>5. Maintain a list of recognized problems in lojban.  As solutions
>>>appear, propose them for inclusion in the next version of lojban.
>>>Maintain a specification of "proposed, but still under consideration"
>>>changes/additions/extensions as part of the formal definition of the
>>>language.
>>
>>You would be surprised at how large that list is.  Last January, I made
>>a list based primarily on the le/lo/any discussions of a couple of dozen
>>"issues" and "problems" nestled in that discussion.  AFAIK, all are
>>unresolved.  Indeed.  EVERY discussion of the last year that has posed a
>>"problem" is unresolved, since my "due consideration of proposals" is
>>stagnated back at 2 September 1994 which is where my old mail backlog
>>rests.  And I have a couple dozen issues unresolved even from before
>>that time, though Cowan considers all to be resolved and/or unimportant.
>
>Aren't you providing support for establishment of a lojban academy with
>these points?

Not in the least.  I am saying that per the status quo, issues are
coming up and not being resolved, or even looked at by the most
experienced Lojbanists, the ones who are making the design decisions.  I
have no reason to believe that the generation of "how to say it" issues
will slow down after the language is done.  I do not think that a Lojban
academy could do justice to the proposals that exist without spending
maybe 1/2 time labor on it.  And I don't think people could spend that
long talking about changes to the language and still maintain speaking
the language in any standard way at all.

>>Indeed, I suspect that the campaign for the next 5
>>year baseline change set will start the day the previous one concludes.
>
>Undoubtedly. Why is this a problem? Slang usage will still be possible.

Don't you really think people ought to learn the language as it is
before they go debating changes to it.  I don't think that there is a
single person, except possibly Nick, who is fluent enough in the
language to claim they have a fraction of an understanding of the way
the language works in actual communication (and he doesn't because he
gets no experience at listening to anyone half as good as he is).  It
will take the bulk of those 5 years to get a large number of people
fluent enough that I would trust their instincts, as opposed to their
pronouncements, upon the language.  Since I have a Russian model for
foreign language fluency these last 3 years, I understand much better
how far we have to go.  If I cannot trust MYSELF as to instincts of what
the language should be, why should I trust someone else?

>And I'm not too happy about the existence of a "present" tense.  I
>probably won't use it, using "near future", "near past" and "interval
>extending from near past to near future" instead.

???  Almost no one uses such a "present" tense.  This is a tense
optional language, and most sentences in good usage will have no
expressed tense.

>I'll be using <xoi> for example.

And will understand you.  I won't try.  Not till I can fluently read and
write the standard language will I bother with slang writings.

>English does have dictionaries, textbooks, grammers, manuals of style
>etc.  I believe that e.b. white's little book has considerable influence
>over written english.  There are formal mechanisms for regulation of
>english, sans academy.

What you are calling formal has no similarity to what anyone else
understands the term as.  But fine.  Someone can come along in some
arbitrary number of years and write the e. b. white memorial Lojban
Style Guide, and we'll let that serve as the formal mechanism.  And that
book has influence over a VERY small portion of written English in ONE
country, while the academic linguists are carrying on a major battle
against the notion of prescriptive linguistics (the teacher may tell you
that the dictionary is the standard for spelling, pronunciation, etc.,
but every major dictionary preface denies that it is intended to be
anything other than descriptive).

What percentage of net postings meet e.b. white's standards?  What
percentage of all writings that are not formally edited and published
for sale.  Formal written English is such a minority of usage that IT is
the slang, not the mainstream.

lojbab