Subject: Re: [lojban] RE:literalism

From: "michael helsem" <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 20 Oct 2000 18:41:58 GMT

>From: [email-masked]
li'o
>By the way, if by "metaphor" you mean
>something inaccurate,

hardly (see below)

>in what way is "skyscraper" one and
>"airplane" not? Or "tall tall building" for that matter?

perhaps it would not be pedantic as i feared, to insist now that
a metaphor IS A SIMILE (X is like Y in resemblance Z: which SIMSA
does handle) WITH THE COMPARISON LEFT IMPLICIT (X is [like] Z... or even 
just [X is like] Z...). A metaphor can comprise any combination
of words i can think of, but the thing itself is far from being
anything that i say it is. (--Even poets don't have that license.)
Unfortunately that point has been lost in english poetry, to the
point where any vague expression, whether or not it has some thought
behind it, passes muster as "metaphorical" [rant omitted]; still,
for our purposes, the older &/or obsolete meaning of the word
is applicable.

to really answer your question, a skyscraper is like something so
tall that it could scrape at the sky if the sky were something solid
& surfacelike (so actually it's a DOUBLE kenning, "the scraper of the
ceiling of the sky"--) & neither a scraper nor a scraper of that
surface...but we DO want to convey that it's a building with a
building's uses, don't we??

"Airplane" is less metaphorical. I presume it's metonymic in taking
a part of the plane (its wings) for the whole, but at least it
does go through the air.

li'o
Kennings: okay, then, there is one term which stands for--no, that's
a metaphor too--HAS AS ITS REFERENT the referent of another word we
have decided not to use, for poetic reasons. The choice of the sub-
stitute word depends (that means: 'hangs from' but REALLY--) upon either 
phonic or associational considerations or both. It comes from,
in Old Norse usage, one well-defined semantic field such that the
choice of the second term creates a sense of paradox by coming from
a very different, or opposite, semantic field; & then there is the
(somewhat optional) additional requirement that these two terms are
unlike in a different way (usually, abstract/paticular) which creates
a second paradoxicalness. And there is an implied simile in the choice
of the first term but not the second, purely arbitrary one. (But it is
often more conventional a simile or even practically nonexistent in
resemblance to the untraditional mind.)--Anyway, those semantic & con-
ceptual oppositions are not requirements in the expanded sense of
"kenning" i was using in order to include all the similar devices
across cultures. But most good ones have them to some degree. "Rug
Rats" for example combines something that a house is glad to have,
with something it isn't. "Skyscraper" is a good one (in english!)
for combining a solid with an ethereal, & alliterating.

_________________________________________________________________________
Get Your Private, Free E-mail from MSN Hotmail at http://www.hotmail.com.

Share information about yourself, create your own public profile at 
http://profiles.msn.com.