Date: Tue, 11 Nov 1997 13:28:49 -0500 (EST) Message-Id: <199711111828.NAA28912@locke.ccil.org> Reply-To: And Rosta Sender: Lojban list From: And Rosta Organization: University of Central Lancashire Subject: Re: le/lo X-To: Logical Language Group X-cc: lojban@cuvmb.cc.columbia.edu To: John Cowan X-Mozilla-Status: 0011 Content-Length: 1194 X-From-Space-Date: Tue Nov 11 13:28:56 1997 X-From-Space-Address: LOJBAN@CUVMB.CC.COLUMBIA.EDU Lojbab: > >You can say "lo xunre cu tcica lo brakarce": that would indeed > >be metonymy, and is part and parcel of ordinary everyday > >communication. By decoding the idea "some red thing cheated some > >bus", the hearer can then take this idea to be a metonym, and > >successfully infer the intended thought "the person with > >the red bag cheated the bus company". > > I would not use metonymy unmarked in Lojban if I could help it. > It is too easy to mark it, and doesn't leave you making fasle claims > (which the unmarked version really is doing). The listener shouldn't be > obliged to determine that the speaker is speaking figuratively or > metonymically. That's up to you, but should not be a choice made by the speech community in general. Figurative speech is ubiquitous in even the most mundane discourse. Furthermore, many people would argue that there is no real difference between figurative and literal: some would reject the difference altogether, seeing the difference is a matter of degree, with no boundary between them, while others (including me) would say that the distinction exists only under a certain ontology (which coexists with alternative ontologies). --And