From @YaleVM.YCC.YALE.EDU:LOJBAN@CUVMB.BITNET Wed May 26 13:15:44 1993 Received: from YALEVM.YCC.YALE.EDU by MINERVA.CIS.YALE.EDU via SMTP; Wed, 26 May 1993 18:05:59 -0400 Received: from CUVMB.CC.COLUMBIA.EDU by YaleVM.YCC.Yale.Edu (IBM VM SMTP V2R2) with BSMTP id 1653; Wed, 26 May 93 18:05:10 EDT Received: from CUVMB.COLUMBIA.EDU by CUVMB.CC.COLUMBIA.EDU (Mailer R2.07) with BSMTP id 1829; Wed, 26 May 93 18:06:24 EDT Date: Wed, 26 May 1993 17:15:44 -0400 Reply-To: John Cowan Sender: Lojban list From: John Cowan Subject: TECH: Figurative speech: a minor change proposal X-To: Lojban List To: Erik Rauch Status: O X-Status: Message-ID: Frank Schultz has been talking here and on conlang about different kinds of compounds: semantic restriction ("blue house"), semantic extension ("wolf man"), poetic figurative forms ("broken heart"). Most tanru/lujvo are of the first kind, but the second kind is also possible; we have special marking particles for "figurative speech". This posting discusses how the current markers work and some of the motivation behind them, and proposes a slight change to make them both simpler and more flexible. Currently, we have two cmavo for figurative speech: "pe'a" (selma'o PEhA) and "po'a" (selma'o POhA). Both are grammarless particles -- they can occur anywhere. When both are used, they are the left and right markers of figurative speech: 1) do jimpe le mi pe'a spofu risna po'a you understand the of-me [figurative] broken heart [end fig] You understand my broken heart. The use of the markers in 1) signals a culturally dependent metaphor -- people from non-English-speaking cultures are not expected to understand it, but are at least cautioned not to take it literally. When "pe'a" is used without "po'a", the figurative intention persists indefinitely: this could be used in skaldic poetry or the like, where all tanru are probably figurative. However, it is also valid to use "po'a" without "pe'a". In this case, "po'a" is treated as if it belonged to selma'o UI: it applies to the previous word; if the previous word begins or ends a grammatical construct, it applies to the whole construct. The regular mechanism for extending the scope of attitudinals ("fu'e" and "fu'o") does not apply to "po'a". The proposal is to abandon this grammatical separation, and make both "pe'a" and "po'a" regular members of UI. The intention is to then separate them semantically. "pe'a" would be assigned to poetic metaphor, whereas "po'a" would be used for semantic extension. (Memory hook: pe'a/pemci.) This change (techfix 33) would simplify the grammar a bit, as three selma'o (PEhA, POhA, UI) would be merged; this would allow removing some hard-coded C support as well, although not enough to be a substantial consideration. For occasions when figurative speech must be prolonged, the regular UI mechanism with "fu'e" and "fu'o" would be used. All UI cmavo can be negated with "-nai", giving a polar negation. "pe'anai" would mean "literal no matter how absurd", and "po'anai" would mean "a semantic restriction even though it looks like an extension". In addition, both "pe'a" and "po'a" would be given rafsi, -pev- and -pov- respectively, to allow the creation of figurative lujvo. A lujvo beginning with pev- might have a totally erratic place structure. Comments? -- John Cowan cowan@snark.thyrsus.com ...!uunet!lock60!snark!cowan e'osai ko sarji la lojban.