Subject: RE:literalism

From: [email-masked]
Date: Fri, 20 Oct 2000 13:44:55 EDT

Thanks lojbab for reminding me (were I under that illusion) that the
"good old days" weren't all that great when it comes to lujvo (or
what amounted to those). One of the reasons that "ax" sticks
around is that it was a good'un, unlike so many other of JCB's --
especially (I can't resist to add) the one that followed his rules (but
even then went against literalness, to my dismay in those days --
malglico and malfraso before we had the words). 
But the point about "ax" then was that it did the job in a most
satisfactory way (I still remember it after nearly 30 years) while at
the same time it violated the patterns (as of then, not yet rules). So
it is the satisfactory job, not the rule conformation that counts (note
that we changed the words so that it would fit a rule). If it does the
job, keep it, in short. Never mind that someone can come up with
another concept it might fit equally well (or even better -- I was just
looking at an armorer's hammer found in the harbor at Dor and
dating from the Crusades) or that another word would do as well,
even with its aptness value ("cut hammer" doesn't grab me the same
way, but that is habit) or even (especially) that there is a rule-
governed word to do the job: "small blade on end of relatively long
handle .... ." And, of course, never mind that it doesn't really cover
axes all that well -- its a better hatchet; but then it isn't either, since
it is not English (as Lojbab also points out). 
Thanks also for reminding us all again that tanru and lujvo are not
separate things so that we can shift the problem off of one onto the
other, but are rather different ways of presenting the same linguistic
features. The, "oh, lujvo are so...., but we can avoid that by
sticking with tanru" won't work. If we're stuck with it in lujvo, we
are in tanru,too, but if we can avoid it in tanru, we can in lujvo, too.
And it is nice to be reminded of that thoroughly annoying feature of
literalists, putting in all the damned cmavo, to the point where 3/4
of the word is devoid of content but makes the pattern work out to
12 decimal places. By the time we figure out what it says, we no
longer get it -- like an explained joke. And we have to work it out
again the next time, because it was monstrously unmemorable. 
I had forgotten that kennings went back to Athelstan (though the
word should have warned me); I only have threads about them from
'97.
I do disagree with lojbab's translations of maikl on accuracy,
however, since, so far as I can see, if you have a word for
"hatchet", that is the word for "hatchet," the English word being
translated. The connection seems to involve some way of
automatically reading off the lojban word that it is the lojban word
for exactly English "hatchet." Now, it is axiomatic that there is no
such way of reading things nor could be short of using always
quotations flagged by source language (and we all remember doing
that in learning some version of this critter). Even the literalist
allows that there are maybe a dozen (or maybe fewer, but more
than one) rules and NO flag for which rule is used. Yet somehow
some rules are canonized and others are suspect, on no stated nor
defended basis: this is better (though ugly and hard to deal with)
that that (though immediately clear and memorable) because it uses
my favorite rule. Phooey!
Finally, it does not have to be the edge that moves in a scraping, since I 
can scrape my knee on a stone, etc. So, the sky moves (as it does, visibly) 
over the building. But I like "skyhead building" anyhow.