Date: Sat, 8 Nov 1997 10:38:43 -0500 (EST) Message-Id: <199711081538.KAA26176@locke.ccil.org> Reply-To: Robin Turner Sender: Lojban list From: Robin Turner Subject: Re: le/lo X-To: lojban@cuvmb.cc.columbia.edu To: John Cowan Status: OR X-Mozilla-Status: 0011 Content-Length: 1340 X-From-Space-Date: Sat Nov 8 10:38:44 1997 X-From-Space-Address: LOJBAN@CUVMB.CC.COLUMBIA.EDU As a beginner I am not sure about the subtleties of the le/lo debate, but I feel obliged to comment on the metonymy issue. I don't think it is OK to use "lo xunre" to mean "the woman with the red handbag", though "le xunre" would be fine. I appreciate the point that we can use metonymy to infer the intended meaning, but I think the whole point of "lo" is that it precludes metaphor or metonymy as far as is humanly possible. "lo xunre" means "that which really is red", while "le xunre" means "that which I call 'red'", possibly because I am using metonymy. Because we use metonymy and metaphor so much (usuallly without being aware of it, as Lakoff and Johnson so admirably point out), "le" is best seen as the unmarked form; we would be better off using "lo" only when we specifically want to say that as far as we know, the referent of the sumti _really_ is what we say it is, and not something metaphorically or metonymically associated with it. Another way of putting it might be "For the purposes of this conversation, I wish to adopt an objectivist paradigm in which there are definite entities which correspond to specific words, and I assert that the entity in question really does correspond to this word." Phew! Robin Turner Bilkent Universitesi, IDMYO, Ankara, Turkey.