From sbelknap@UIC.EDU Mon Jan 20 09:41:53 2003 Return-Path: X-Sender: sbelknap@uic.edu X-Apparently-To: lojban@yahoogroups.com Received: (EGP: mail-8_2_3_0); 20 Jan 2003 17:41:53 -0000 Received: (qmail 98993 invoked from network); 20 Jan 2003 17:41:52 -0000 Received: from unknown (66.218.66.218) by m11.grp.scd.yahoo.com with QMQP; 20 Jan 2003 17:41:52 -0000 Received: from unknown (HELO larch.cc.uic.edu) (128.248.155.164) by mta3.grp.scd.yahoo.com with SMTP; 20 Jan 2003 17:41:52 -0000 Received: (qmail 17674 invoked from network); 20 Jan 2003 17:41:47 -0000 Received: from dial0-215.dialin.uic.edu (HELO uic.edu) (128.248.170.248) by larch.cc.uic.edu with SMTP; 20 Jan 2003 17:41:47 -0000 Date: Mon, 20 Jan 2003 11:41:49 -0600 Subject: Re: [lojban] By the way < tangent? Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII; format=flowed Mime-Version: 1.0 (Apple Message framework v551) Cc: lojban@yahoogroups.com To: Robert LeChevalier In-Reply-To: <5.2.0.9.0.20030120000457.00ab2b60@pop.east.cox.net> Message-Id: <73E93256-2C9E-11D7-B599-000393629ED4@uic.edu> Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Mailer: Apple Mail (2.551) From: Steven Belknap X-Yahoo-Group-Post: member; u=810567 I am skeptical about this being malglico. One has to have *some* metaphor, and any particular metaphor is likely to be closer to some culture's existing than another's. I rather like the idea of building lojban combining and combination words from gismu which exist in *no* existing culture but which do suggest the meaning in a clear way. Doing this creates "strangeness" but preserves "meaningfulness". Not always possible though. The idea of tangentiality is an extrapolation from geometry. That is culturally neutral enough for me, despite the alleged malglico of the English referent. On Sunday, January 19, 2003, at 11:09 PM, Robert LeChevalier wrote: > At 10:22 PM 1/19/03 -0600, Steven Belknap wrote: >> consider the English word "tangentially" >> >> On Sunday, January 19, 2003, at 10:03 PM, Pierre Abbat wrote: >> >>> Chapter 13 lists the cmavo {ta'o} "by the way" as coming from >>> {tanjo}, >>> which >>> is the word for a trigonometric function (li pa tanjo lo julra'o be >>> li >>> vomu). >>> What's the connection? Also, is {zu'u} derived from {zunle}? > > The cmavo do sometimes come from malglico sound-alikes. It was at the > time > a memory hook for the all-English speakers learning the language, with > the > malglicoism (the one Steven suggests was indeed what we had in mind) so > obvious that I wasn't afraid that people would think that ta'o had to > do > with trig functions. The alternative was pretty much random selection > from > a large set of available cmavo, and we tried to avoid randomness. If > a tie > to zunle is not noted in the list, then there probably was no tie, and > it > was chosen either randomly or for contrast with some other word we had > in mind. > > lojbab > > -- > lojbab lojbab@lojban.org > Bob LeChevalier, President, The Logical Language Group, Inc. > 2904 Beau Lane, Fairfax VA 22031-1303 USA > 703-385-0273 > Artificial language Loglan/Lojban: > http://www.lojban.org > > > > To unsubscribe, send mail to lojban-unsubscribe@onelist.com > > Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to > http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/ >