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On Sun, Jun 01, 2003 at 03:58:35PM +0100, And Rosta wrote:
> Jordan:
[...]
> > In one sense, perhaps. In another sense it doesn't, since I want
> > to have a language that is both stable and more formal than natural
> > languages. Failing on either count fails the whole thing
> >
> > Speaking of which, it's quite weird that in the lojban community
> > those of us who are interested in things like the language having
> > a formal grammar get labeled as conservative, whereas those who
> > want the language to be more like natural languages are considered
> > progressive..
>
> That's not how the labels are applied! The labels pertain to one's
> attitude to change (in the prescribed/baseline element of the
> language). It is somewhat orthogonal to the formalist vs naturalist/organicist
> dichotomy. Each of the four categories
> defined by these two dichotomies contain some members of the Lojban
> community. But the return of Nick has I think driven the community
> as a whole in conservative formalist direction, whereas is was
> formerly more naturalist.
But lojban itself is a change. Change is not the issue.
The issue you're claiming is simply about resistence to change is
actually about the extent to which one values actually having people
*speak* the language, which requires that it be somewhat stable.
My view being that having a "perfect" language is useless if no one
has a chance to speak it. But the naturalism/formalism issue is
related to that: it isn't orthogonal (since naturalism is inherently
anti-baseline, and
pro-yetanotherstupidIALstyleconlangwithnothinguniqueorinteresting, i.e.
anti-thewholepurposeofthelanguage, and formalism inherently requires
a language proscription which is non-negotiable (though a formalist
may disagree about what exactly should constitute that proscription
as compared to the current proscription)).
> > > SW-ism should embrace aspects of Lojban that deviate from natlang methods.
> >
> > That's the theory..
> >
> > Yet for some reason the SWist position finds itself on the natlang
> > side of basically every debate... (including this one)
>
> Looking at how xod's views have changed over the years, I'd say this
> isn't strictly true. And other whorfians besides xod have been interested
> in mindbending stuff like fuzzy truthvalues for their whorfian value.
But fuzzy truthvalues is probably more like natural languages.
Mandating boolean truth values with formal manipulation rules (I.e.
A .ije B would be the same as B .ije A, which it isn't now) would
be what xod's whorfianism ought to support, if it were consistent.
But in reality it's just a small cultish denomination of naturalism,
with positions that contradict its basic dogma.
> What might be true is that people tend to get interested in Lojban
> either because they're interested in whorfianism or because they're
> interested in formalism.
Yeah, but we all know whorfianism (not xod's religion; I mean the
Sapir-Whorf hypothesis) is bunk. I think Lojbanists should drop
all this "testing the sapir-whorf hypothesis" crap, or at least
footnote it with "A largely untenable, racist viewpoint, which is
more or less demonstratably false".
--
Jordan DeLong - fracture@hidden.email
lu zo'o loi censa bakni cu terzba le zaltapla poi xagrai li'u
sei la mark. tuen. cusku
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