Date: Wed, 12 Nov 1997 07:23:34 -0500 (EST) Message-Id: <199711121223.HAA00283@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: 2285 X-From-Space-Date: Wed Nov 12 07:23:35 1997 X-From-Space-Address: LOJBAN@CUVMB.CC.COLUMBIA.EDU Lojbab: > >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). > > Suffice it to say that I will consider myself to take every statement you > say literally unless it is marked in some way as figurative, with either > some sign of metonymy or the "figurative" marker. Fair enough: if I am faced with an unusually perverse interlocutor, zo`o, then the onus is on me to adapt my discourse to make sufficient accommodations to make myself understood. At least until I run out of patience. > YOu are correctthat there are some fuzzy edges on literality. If I say > "mi viska lo blanu zdani", then I am lcaiming that what I see is really > a blue house. Now, barring the inherent fuzziness of tanru, there is > still the question of what it means for something to be "blanu". Thus > if instead I say "mi viska lo blanu" there is a question as to whether > this is true if the house is a (red) brick house with all the trim > and woodwork painted blue. > > But if I call a snowflake "lo xrula" because in some ways a snowflake may > be taken to resemble a flower, such a figurative usage won't fly in Lojban > (nor will it vofli zo'o). (a) What you say is valid, but so is an ontology that denies what you say, whereby the snowflake would merely be a xrula to a lesser extent than a pansy. (b) It could be (and has been) argued (and I agree), that in actual language usage, your position does not apply. That is, irrespective of whether it is possible in principle to decide whether something is a xrula, in actual usage this is irrelevant to the choice of whether to describe something as a xrula. So I conclude that your views on figurative use are inappropriate because (a) they represent only one of more than one valid ontologies, and (b) they contradict universals of pragmatics. --And