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A long running, and apparently unresolvable dispute in the Lojban community is between those emphasising logical and grammatical rigor ("Logical Language"), and those emphasising creativity and perspective-expanding usage ("Sapir-Whorf"). A rallying point is whether or not Lojban should have an explicit semantic theory or not. "Hardliners" refers to the former.


See [[jbocre: Elephant|Elephant]].
''What is a semantic theory, and how do we get one without using a language? And if we use a language, how are we doing anything but importing the semantics of that source language into Lojban? Can you prove to me that you know the meaning of ANY word?--xod''


# Notes are messages that can be attached to any Elephant message to add information. Unlike Wiki entries, you can't post-edit an Elephant message: it would be unreasonable to allow a Position to be changed after people have posted Arguments against it. Notes can clarify, or serve as instructions to the ElephantClerk.
# You use the results of formal semantics, a research field that has been churning along nicely for many a year now.
# Lojban has already adopted a lot of formal semantics in its definition. It has fixed and defined place structures, for example, and transformations for generating prenexed forms of sentences from unprenexed forms. The issue is, how much more fixed and defined they should be.
#The completeness or not of a semantic theory is not the point; the point is, should there be further attempts at defining the semantics of Lojban words in a formal manner --- including gismu amd cmavo --- or not.
#Obviously there is a risk of importing source language semantics into Lojban through a formal approach. The risk does not go away with 'natural evolution', given the speaker-base of the language. Indeed, if semantics is left completely informal, there is a good chance the risk is actually greater. -- [[User:Nick Nicholas|nitcion]]


# Specializations: you can attach a sub-Issue to an Issue, a sub-Position to a Position, or a sub-Argument to an Argument.  This allows complexity to be broken down.  An example of sub-Positions would be alternatives within a greater Position.
''I'll come up with a counter-epithet in the fullness of time. -- mi'e [[User:Nick Nicholas|nitcion]]''


# A new Issue can arise out of any other type of message.  These are of two types: Generalized Issues and Challenge Issues. A Generalized Issue is a broader take on an existing problem that may be too narrow. A Challenge Issue challenges the underlying assumptions of the existing problem.
''Toffee-liners? -- [[jbocre: John Cowan|John Cowan]]'' For now, I'm using the less tendentious (!) 'naturalists'. This is a distant echo of the skemistoj/naturalistoj (= lujvo vs. fu'ivla) controversy of Esperanto, after all. -- [[User:Nick Nicholas|nitcion]]


# When an Issue seems settled, the ElephantClerk can change one of the Positions on the Issue to a Decision.  This closes the Issue, but retains a permanent corporate memory of ''why'' the Issue was decided as it was.  Of course, some Issues may never be decided at all.
What about ''javnykai xarnu'' and ''tavlykai xarnu'' for these positions?


The message types are Aa, Ac, Af, Ap, Ic, Ig, Im, Is, No, Po, and Ps. The first letter indicates the main type and the second letter is the subtype. The main types of documents are Issues, Positions, Arguments, and Notes. The form of argumentation in Elephant is that someone posts an Issue, which is typically an open-ended question. The children of an Issue are Positions on the issue. The children of a Position are Arguments pro and con for that Position. Notes are for material outside the system, and they can be hooked in anywhere to provide background information or whatever. Im is a top-level issue, so when you add a completely new branch to the tree, it's an Im.
*I'd prefer rarnykai to tavlykai, but that's not for a javnykai xarnu to say. -- mi'e [[User:Nick Nicholas|nitcion]]
*''I'm not sure either term gets the point across. One term should emphasize Logic, the other term should emphasize conceptual or experiential exploration. .i le lojypre le frisispre cu [http://groups.yahoo.com/group/jbosnu/message/327 relpro] .i mi'e xod''


The other two types of I? messages are for issues that arise out of the discussion of other issues.
There is also a third position, of those who think that logical and grammatical rigor are not in conflict with creativity and perspective-expansion, but rather that they complement and potentiate each other. -- mi'e [[User:xorxes|xorxes]].


If the new issue is a *generalization* of something that arose during the discussion, you post an Ig to state it.
* Yes, but you know the aphorism about "those in the middle of the road" :-) ... For issues like how a Lojban dictionary is to be written --- or whether it should even be written at all --- one still has to take a position.  In reality, of course, Lojbanists tend to be in between; these are rhetorical abstractions from the debates that recur in the language community. -- [[User:Nick Nicholas|nitcion]].


But if the new issue is a *challenge to the assumptions* of the discussion, you post an Ic to state it.
''It's not a "middle of the road" (at least not in the sense of a compromise between the two); it's the position that both rigor and creativity are important, equally so, and non-negotiable, and that neither need be, nor should be, compromised. -- Adam''


Each of these can be attached to any other type of message. An Is is placed under another I to indicate a subissue or specialization of the issue.
Another recurring demand of hardliners is that an Academy be set up to supervise the evolution of Lojban. Gerald Koenig and Steven Belkamp were particuarly in favour of this, in discussion Nov. 95 - Feb 96. [[User:Bob LeChevalier|Bob LeChevalier]] is particularly adamant against it. Representative threads:
*http://balance.wiw.org/~jkominek/lojban/9601/msg00037.html
*http://balance.wiw.org/~jkominek/lojban/9601/msg00232.html
*http://balance.wiw.org/~jkominek/lojban/9602/msg00041.html
The caricature simplification of the two positions on the language is that hardliners support prescriptivism, rigorous definition of the language, and the logical content of the language. Naturalists support descriptivism, and avoidance of fully defining the language, creativity, and the natural evolution of the language.
#Most Lojbanists really are somewhere in between.
#Neither attitude is going away any time soon. (The calls for a semantic theory or an Academy that are being made now have been made in the past, for example; e.g. Jeff Prothero in 1991, exclaiming "Better a bicycle without wheels than a loglan without formal semantics!": http://balance.wiw.org/~jkominek/lojban/9102/msg00006.html).
#Although there are clear attempts at compromise, the two attitudes are incommensurable, and this may have undesirable consequences (dialectisation).
#Inasmuch as there is a party line espoused by the [[jbocre: LLG|LLG]], that line is clearly naturalistic.
----
Nonslang is called by the people who use slang, ''tatpi valsi'' ('tired words'), but by the people who don't, ''satci valsi'' ('accurate words').


So there are two trees in the system:
''Woah! Pretty much identical terminology is used in Klingon!'' (''mu'mey Doy''' and ''mu'mey qar''.)


the all-messages tree, which contains every message (every message has a single parent)
They undoubtedly borrowed our usage.


The second tree is the issues tree,
''net Sov, net Sov...'' ('''ti'e''', or '''zo'e djuno la'edi'u''')


since each issue except an Im has a nearest ancestor issue.
----


(The root of the tree would be a general description of the field from which the issues arise; this is not shown above.)
Inasmuch as I appear to be getting characterized as a Naturalist, if not the prototypical Naturalist:


A root could be strictly needed, or Ims could just be the tops of their own trees.
My background is from Physics, Math, and Logical Positivism. I don't see Lojban to be significantly more accurate or precise than English, or hand gestures. This, on a different Wiki, would be considered a hardline view. The result is that I don't care too much for hyperspecification of Lojban because it, like anything else that isn't a deductive system, is just another bowl of oatmeal. --xod


A main Position, one directly under an Issue, is a Po.
Noted. For my part, when I made the switch from computer science to linguistics, I made sure I joined up with the fluffiest, un-positivist-est linguistics I could: functionalism, historical linguistics, natural semantic metalanguage. I am allergic to syntax, and consider formal semantics beyond me. In my case, at least, I am a hardliner in Lojban because I am ''not'' a hardliner in real life. -- [[User:Nick Nicholas|nitcion]]


Perhaps a Topic to group main issues or something as a root.
----


a Ps is a sub-position, which can appear under a Po or a Ps (sub-sub-positions, etc.) when it needs to be specialized.
As [[User:xorxes|xorxes]] has helpfully pointed out (http://groups.yahoo.com/group/lojban/message/9801), there are two hardlinerisms: hardliner towards the [[jbocre: baseline|baseline]] (''bangu kamstodi xarnu''), and hardliner towards [[jbocre: formal semantics|formal semantics]] (''logji bauske xarnu''). Discussion of hardlinerism to date seems to reflect the latter. The Academian thread of hardlinerism, however, reflects the former.


(A Topic could have Topics under it, too.)
''I (mi'e [[User:Nick Nicholas|nitcion]]) think it might be useful to call the former something else, and propose [[jbocre: fundamentalism|fundamentalism]].''


Next, Arguments.
[[jbocre: Jay Kominek|Jay Kominek]] has on his wiki page an admirable statement of ''bangu kamstodi xarnu''.


Ap and Ac are the children of Positions, and they are pro and con arguments respectively.
----


Af and Aa (for and against) are sub-arguments of pro and con arguments respectively.
Is there a name for people who want to emphasize '''both''' "logical and grammatical rigor" '''and''' "creativity and perspective-expanding usage"? ''mi'e [[jbocre: jezrax|jezrax]]''


An argument against isn't an opposition, it's a
'Synthesist'? - mi'e JEsikas.


specialization. In other words, it does not *oppose* the argument above it, it
''Can you show that they are compatible, or that one induces the other?''


supports it.
I would like to expand my perspective '''via''' logical and grammatical rigor. As I understand it, that was [[User:James Cooke Brown|JCB]]'s original motivation for inventing Loglan! ''mi'e [[jbocre: jezrax|jezrax]]''


The thing we want to avoid is long thin trees that go "Is!"
''Then you need to build the '''''[[jbocre: ckinytadji|ckinytadji]]''''' dialect, because the level of logic in current standard Lojban is well below that used by pedantic undergrads debating religion late at night. Only when you make the metaphorical use of mathematical & logical descriptions much easier than they already are in English will you have any chance of the alteration of perceptions. If that's your goal and method, I'm with you! --xod''


"Is not!" "Is too!"
* I didn't know a whole lot of people in my undergrad days (hah, i can act like it was a long time ago, now!) who went about debating religion with any sort of pedantry. More like "you must have faith!" "you're on crack!" "you're going to hell!" "better than wherever you're going." but then again, i was in engineering school... --[[jbocre: Jay Kominek|Jay]]


Instead we get bushy trees under a position that shows the
----


arguments for and against in a reasonable fashion.
Can anyone shed light for me (a lojban n00b) on how the precepts of [http://general-semantics.org/ eneral semantics] might impact the questions being raised here? Thanks. --rabrt
 
"If you can argue against something while supporting it, why "against" and "for"?
 
You can argue *against* a position by *supporting* another
 
argument.
 
So it's Po -> Ac -> Aa -> Aa -> Aa etc.
 
It's why we need all four.
 
The relationship between Ac and its Aa children is that the
 
children are sub-arguments of the parent.  But all are
 
arguments against the original position.
 
Ditto(Ap, Af, for).
 
A concurrant against.
 
This does not mean we would also have arguments for arguments against arguments
 
against arguments for an argument.
 
Beneath a position we have pro arguments and their
 
sub-arguments, and con-arguments and their sub-arguments.
 
ie, if you want to disagree with an argument, you post an
 
opposing argument, rather than arguing with the arguer.
 
But internally the sub-argument of a pro argument is different
 
from the sub-argument of a con argument.
 
(It would be nice if there were hyperlink cross-referencing like "this sub-argument
 
kills pro-argument #42".)
 
Can Aa/Af be children of other Aa/Af?
 
00:20 <@bancus> An Aa could only attach to an Aa?
 
00:20 < jcowan> Right.
 
Here's "what can attach to what"
 
Anything can get an Ig or Ic or No child.
 
Im can get Is or Po.
 
Same for Is, Ig, and Ic.
 
Po can get Ps or Ap or Ac.
 
Ditto for Ps.
 
An Ap can have an Af.
 
Ditto for Af.
 
An Ac can have an Aa
 
Ditto for Aa
 
A No can't have anything special, only Ig, Ic, or No.
 
By convention, the background color of the
 
page shows whether it's an I (yellow), P (blue), Ap/Af (green),
 
Ac/Aa (red), or No (white)
 
We want to make clear than an Af is still an argument pro, and
 
an Aa is still an argument against.
 
There could be simple vote-tallying.
 
The "+1" convention will probably work okay for
 
supporting-without-arguing, at least to start with.
 
It can be hard to tabulate though.
 
Most of these systems break down because people are unhappy
 
with the rigidity of them, so I want to keep the rules as
 
un-rigid as possible.
 
Rather than simply being able to look at the title of the
 
message and see "for: x against: y"
 
Well, you could count the number of people who have contributed
 
either Ap/Af or Ac/Aa messages.
 
If someone later decides they no longer support a position
 
they once did,
 
you could add voting as a bag on the side of P messages, then;
 
you can vote for a P, which revokes your votes for any other P.
 
The biggest problem in the beginning of using such systems is
 
people write too much in one message.
 
On mailing lists, it's not uncommon for people to write a
 
message that proposes a new issue (Im), takes a position on it
 
(Po), and argues for that position (Ap).
 
It takes some mental work to break it up into three separate
 
postings.
 
The forms for entering the data should remind the user of the separation.
 
The ElephantClerk therefore has to have Godlike powers to
 
change content and create new messages under other people's
 
identities.
 
And therefore has to be a very trusted person.
 
John Cowan thinks it's important to keep this as simple as possible to
 
get to 1.0 as fast as possible so people can try it out and
 
find what refinements are actually needed.
 
The interface should be English at least at first, and Lojban if desired.
 
Elephant should be released to the larger world under a
 
permissive license, with clean source.
 
There are lots of groups that could really use it.
 
---
 
I hope it is recognized that in the early phases of a discussion one continually changes one's mind, so it is quite likely that a single person might issue a series of Positions on the same topic, each of which supersedes the previous one. ([[User:And Rosta|And Rosta]])
 
Obviously; but it'd be polite to keep the old Position there: you may have changed your mind, but others may now think you were right in the first place. Of course, you should feel free to flood your former proposal with CONs: "I must have been insane to have ever considered proposing this, because..." -- [[User:Nick Nicholas|nitcion]].
 
* Just so.  --[[jbocre: John Cowan|John Cowan]]
 
One should be able to indicate that one position obsoletes another position.
 
* I think the righteous term would be something like "supersedes".  I will figure out how to incorporate this feature; my implementation strategy allows '''lots''' of flexibility about what kinds of documents exist, and what kinds of relationships exist between them.
 
(So if you change your mind, you can see explicitly which position obsoletes which other position.) T'would be able to form a nice little chain. also, it might be amusing, if not useful, for people to be able to register their confidence/agreement with each position, so that one can sort of get a quick glance and see what position is "winning". and while i'm dreaming: each issue can have a timeline, on which will be indicate the time each post on the issue was made, and the running total confidence in each position. --[[jbocre: Jay Kominek|Jay]]

Revision as of 16:52, 4 November 2013

A long running, and apparently unresolvable dispute in the Lojban community is between those emphasising logical and grammatical rigor ("Logical Language"), and those emphasising creativity and perspective-expanding usage ("Sapir-Whorf"). A rallying point is whether or not Lojban should have an explicit semantic theory or not. "Hardliners" refers to the former.

What is a semantic theory, and how do we get one without using a language? And if we use a language, how are we doing anything but importing the semantics of that source language into Lojban? Can you prove to me that you know the meaning of ANY word?--xod

  1. You use the results of formal semantics, a research field that has been churning along nicely for many a year now.
  2. Lojban has already adopted a lot of formal semantics in its definition. It has fixed and defined place structures, for example, and transformations for generating prenexed forms of sentences from unprenexed forms. The issue is, how much more fixed and defined they should be.
  3. The completeness or not of a semantic theory is not the point; the point is, should there be further attempts at defining the semantics of Lojban words in a formal manner --- including gismu amd cmavo --- or not.
  4. Obviously there is a risk of importing source language semantics into Lojban through a formal approach. The risk does not go away with 'natural evolution', given the speaker-base of the language. Indeed, if semantics is left completely informal, there is a good chance the risk is actually greater. -- nitcion

I'll come up with a counter-epithet in the fullness of time. -- mi'e nitcion

Toffee-liners? -- John Cowan For now, I'm using the less tendentious (!) 'naturalists'. This is a distant echo of the skemistoj/naturalistoj (= lujvo vs. fu'ivla) controversy of Esperanto, after all. -- nitcion

What about javnykai xarnu and tavlykai xarnu for these positions?

  • I'd prefer rarnykai to tavlykai, but that's not for a javnykai xarnu to say. -- mi'e nitcion
  • I'm not sure either term gets the point across. One term should emphasize Logic, the other term should emphasize conceptual or experiential exploration. .i le lojypre le frisispre cu relpro .i mi'e xod

There is also a third position, of those who think that logical and grammatical rigor are not in conflict with creativity and perspective-expansion, but rather that they complement and potentiate each other. -- mi'e xorxes.

  • Yes, but you know the aphorism about "those in the middle of the road" :-) ... For issues like how a Lojban dictionary is to be written --- or whether it should even be written at all --- one still has to take a position. In reality, of course, Lojbanists tend to be in between; these are rhetorical abstractions from the debates that recur in the language community. -- nitcion.

It's not a "middle of the road" (at least not in the sense of a compromise between the two); it's the position that both rigor and creativity are important, equally so, and non-negotiable, and that neither need be, nor should be, compromised. -- Adam

Another recurring demand of hardliners is that an Academy be set up to supervise the evolution of Lojban. Gerald Koenig and Steven Belkamp were particuarly in favour of this, in discussion Nov. 95 - Feb 96. Bob LeChevalier is particularly adamant against it. Representative threads:

The caricature simplification of the two positions on the language is that hardliners support prescriptivism, rigorous definition of the language, and the logical content of the language. Naturalists support descriptivism, and avoidance of fully defining the language, creativity, and the natural evolution of the language.

  1. Most Lojbanists really are somewhere in between.
  2. Neither attitude is going away any time soon. (The calls for a semantic theory or an Academy that are being made now have been made in the past, for example; e.g. Jeff Prothero in 1991, exclaiming "Better a bicycle without wheels than a loglan without formal semantics!": http://balance.wiw.org/~jkominek/lojban/9102/msg00006.html).
  3. Although there are clear attempts at compromise, the two attitudes are incommensurable, and this may have undesirable consequences (dialectisation).
  4. Inasmuch as there is a party line espoused by the LLG, that line is clearly naturalistic.

Nonslang is called by the people who use slang, tatpi valsi ('tired words'), but by the people who don't, satci valsi ('accurate words').

Woah! Pretty much identical terminology is used in Klingon! (mu'mey Doy' and mu'mey qar.)

They undoubtedly borrowed our usage.

net Sov, net Sov... (ti'e, or zo'e djuno la'edi'u)


Inasmuch as I appear to be getting characterized as a Naturalist, if not the prototypical Naturalist:

My background is from Physics, Math, and Logical Positivism. I don't see Lojban to be significantly more accurate or precise than English, or hand gestures. This, on a different Wiki, would be considered a hardline view. The result is that I don't care too much for hyperspecification of Lojban because it, like anything else that isn't a deductive system, is just another bowl of oatmeal. --xod

Noted. For my part, when I made the switch from computer science to linguistics, I made sure I joined up with the fluffiest, un-positivist-est linguistics I could: functionalism, historical linguistics, natural semantic metalanguage. I am allergic to syntax, and consider formal semantics beyond me. In my case, at least, I am a hardliner in Lojban because I am not a hardliner in real life. -- nitcion


As xorxes has helpfully pointed out (http://groups.yahoo.com/group/lojban/message/9801), there are two hardlinerisms: hardliner towards the baseline (bangu kamstodi xarnu), and hardliner towards formal semantics (logji bauske xarnu). Discussion of hardlinerism to date seems to reflect the latter. The Academian thread of hardlinerism, however, reflects the former.

I (mi'e nitcion) think it might be useful to call the former something else, and propose fundamentalism.

Jay Kominek has on his wiki page an admirable statement of bangu kamstodi xarnu.


Is there a name for people who want to emphasize both "logical and grammatical rigor" and "creativity and perspective-expanding usage"? mi'e jezrax

'Synthesist'? - mi'e JEsikas.

Can you show that they are compatible, or that one induces the other?

I would like to expand my perspective via logical and grammatical rigor. As I understand it, that was JCB's original motivation for inventing Loglan! mi'e jezrax

Then you need to build the ckinytadji dialect, because the level of logic in current standard Lojban is well below that used by pedantic undergrads debating religion late at night. Only when you make the metaphorical use of mathematical & logical descriptions much easier than they already are in English will you have any chance of the alteration of perceptions. If that's your goal and method, I'm with you! --xod

  • I didn't know a whole lot of people in my undergrad days (hah, i can act like it was a long time ago, now!) who went about debating religion with any sort of pedantry. More like "you must have faith!" "you're on crack!" "you're going to hell!" "better than wherever you're going." but then again, i was in engineering school... --Jay

Can anyone shed light for me (a lojban n00b) on how the precepts of eneral semantics might impact the questions being raised here? Thanks. --rabrt