From pycyn@aol.com Sat Oct 21 16:21:54 2000 Return-Path: X-Sender: Pycyn@aol.com X-Apparently-To: lojban@egroups.com Received: (EGP: mail-6_1_0); 21 Oct 2000 23:21:54 -0000 Received: (qmail 9664 invoked from network); 21 Oct 2000 23:21:54 -0000 Received: from unknown (10.1.10.26) by m2.onelist.org with QMQP; 21 Oct 2000 23:21:54 -0000 Received: from unknown (HELO imo-r12.mail.aol.com) (152.163.225.66) by mta1 with SMTP; 21 Oct 2000 23:21:53 -0000 Received: from Pycyn@aol.com by imo-r12.mx.aol.com (mail_out_v28.31.) id a.62.83ff879 (2619) for ; Sat, 21 Oct 2000 19:21:46 -0400 (EDT) Message-ID: <62.83ff879.27237f0a@aol.com> Date: Sat, 21 Oct 2000 19:21:46 EDT Subject: RE:literalism To: lojban@egroups.com MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Mailer: Windows AOL sub 41 From: pycyn@aol.com X-Yahoo-Message-Num: 4649 To pick up where I had to leave off Friday after noon. Thanks to maikl for his definitions. Of course, on them his expanation of "skyscraper" makes it not a metaphor, for a skyscrape is not *like* something that could scrape the sky if the sky were scrapable, but *is* something that could scrape the sky .... I suppose that we want "does something like what would be scraping the sky if the sky were scrapable" though, again, it really just does what would be scraping if ... . "does something to the sky which is like scraping on things which have surfaces"? Most of these lead us to have to say that calling an empty bottle {botpi} is a metaphor, since it is something that would be a bottle if it had content and so is like a bottle. But many people probably would have no problem with that anyhow. (BTW, maikl's {botpi zi'o} was one of the best bits of non-literalness in a long time. I still wish I knew whether it was calculated, or accidental (two wrongs make a right), or just a case of his instant insight agreeing --for once -- with my slow calculations.) And, of course, so long as our likeness involves hypothetical, dispositional, counterfactual conditions, we have to be careful in lojban that these do not turn out to be trivially realized. There are worlds where skies do have surfaces (and we can look up hera's skirt as she tapdances on them) and where skyscrapers do, therefore scrape or gouge or puncture the sky. "airplane" is apparently not metonymy; the wings were always airfoils, as far as I can find, so it was the whole thing (though that wasn't much beyond a wing in the early days) that is the plane. Anyhow, general remark. Ultimately, if Lojban survives, literalism has to lose. The vocabulary of Lojban has to expand beyond the 6000 concepts or so that are encoded in the gismu in their various places. And there are only three ways to go: borrowing, creation, or metaphor (in the real -- not the JCB/Lo??an -- way). Literalism can't add to the semantic field; at best it can reduce a new concept to an old one, making it not new at all (that is what I meant by saying that literal tanru and lujvo don't add to the language -- of course they add words and text -- but not concepts, except as subsumed under existing ones). So, since creating new gismu is strengst verboten (remember all those WW2 prison movies?) and borrowing is hard and risky (and vaguely unlojbanic unless absolutely necessary) we will metaphor sooner or later. And I say the sooner the better -- when a good one comes along. And when it does, don't carp at it, take it as the gift it is and rejoice.