Return-Path: Return-Path: Date: Mon Apr 29 19:15:57 1991 From: Guy Steele Message-Id: <9104291853.AA11199@ukko.think.com> To: cbmvax!snark.thyrsus.com!cowan Cc: lojban-list@snark.thyrsus.com In-Reply-To: John Cowan's message of Mon, 29 Apr 91 12:11:00 EDT Subject: Chemical elements proposal (longish) Status: RO X-From-Space-Date: Mon Apr 29 19:15:57 1991 X-From-Space-Address: cbmvax!uunet!Think.COM!gls From: cbmvax!snark.thyrsus.com!cowan@uunet.UU.NET (John Cowan) Date: Mon, 29 Apr 91 12:11:00 EDT iVAN. derjanskis. writes: > Who cares for > metaphorical uses of words? I really hope you don't intend {nikle} to be > used for the US 5c coin, which most of the world has never seen! > > To avoid being accused in malglicoism or malmerkoism, will you > please give, for each of the other five source languages, an example of > an element that has entered the list because of a metaphorical usage in > that language. There is undoubtedly a great deal of glico bias (and even merko bias) in the gismu list. It's the product of raw empiricism, nothing more. However, "metaphor" is the very basis of including a word as a gismu rather than allowing it to remain a le'avla. Borrowings do not enter into lujvo, but otherwise they are full-fledged Lojban brivla. In general, a word should be a gismu if good and useful tanru can be made from it. WHORF ALERT! WHORF ALERT! Are we in danger of self-fulfilling prophecies here? That is, will failure to include a word as a gismu effectively discourage creation of certain tanru? Will this bias affect the evolution of the language in undesirable ways? (Consider the English word "bromide". Now rewrite history only a little bit, and further suppose the name of "bromine" had been "ChemSoupysalesium".) In other words, I am postulating the converse: good and useful tanru will be made from a word if it is a gismu. An email mailing-list moderator should be known as the "cadmium editor" because his job is to keep mailing-list chain reactions from going out of control (he does this by absorbing a hefty fraction of the flaming messages). But I'm less likely to coin such a term if you make me stick "xukr" onto the front of everything. So there. :-) --Guy