[YG Conlang Archives] > [jboske group] > messages [Date Index] [Thread Index] >
Jordan: > 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. Attitudes to baseline change are the rationale for the *labels* conservative/progressive. In general the relative prioritizing of design quality and expediting the speech community (basically a judgement about at what point the design is good enough for it to warrant being used) are the rationales for subscribing to one or the other point of view. On the whole I think the controversy on this issue has abated, because wherever one thinks the "good enough" point lies, it is clear that there is a proportionately large number of people who think that what we have now is good enough (or will be, once the BF has finished), and Lojban will be the language for these people. > But the naturalism/formalism issue is > related to that: it isn't orthogonal (since naturalism is inherently > anti-baseline, I don't know about that. Lojbab as a conservative naturalist seemed to see the baseline as a common jumping-off point for naturalistic evolution. > 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)) Formalists agree on the importance of the baseline, but not on the importance of it being frozen. > > > > 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 'Whorfians' like to study exotic languages in order to discover new ways of conceptualizing things. Such novel conceptualizations can be found here and there in Lojban, too, generally arising because of Lojban's formalism and its having been created by nonlinguist nerds. > > 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" I have of course said similar things (albeit a little less vehemently). But the founding intent of Lojban was to complete the Loglan project, and the original purpose of the Loglan project was ostensibly to test SW. So you're saying that Lojban should alter its avowed goals -- that is, change what it says its goals are. Anyway, this aside, there seems to me to be a marked discrepancy between the numbers of people who have an interest in Lojban -- even quite an active interest -- and the much smaller number of people who delve into its formal aspects. I don't really comprehend why the many members of the larger group who don't belong to the smaller are so interested in Lojban, though their interest is very real and not at all superficial. --And.