From pycyn@aol.com Wed Oct 18 18:58:54 2000 Return-Path: X-Sender: Pycyn@aol.com X-Apparently-To: lojban@egroups.com Received: (EGP: mail-6_1_0); 19 Oct 2000 01:58:54 -0000 Received: (qmail 22923 invoked from network); 19 Oct 2000 01:58:54 -0000 Received: from unknown (10.1.10.26) by m2.onelist.org with QMQP; 19 Oct 2000 01:58:54 -0000 Received: from unknown (HELO imo-d05.mx.aol.com) (205.188.157.37) by mta1 with SMTP; 19 Oct 2000 01:58:53 -0000 Received: from Pycyn@aol.com by imo-d05.mx.aol.com (mail_out_v28.31.) id a.20.cdab91e (658) for ; Wed, 18 Oct 2000 21:58:47 -0400 (EDT) Message-ID: <20.cdab91e.271faf57@aol.com> Date: Wed, 18 Oct 2000 21:58:47 EDT Subject: Re: [lojban] Re: looking at arjlujv.txt 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: 4585 Oh, goody! a philosophic dispute again. Of course, gismu are literal, as are indeed lujvo and tanru. The question is just what that literal meaning is, especially for tanru and lujvo -- that is, how is the literal meaning of the compound related to the literal meaning of the components. Literalism tends to think in terms of a very small number of possibilities and then to object if a case does not fit any of those possibilities or even if another word fits those possibilities better. The latter is really obnoxious, if the given word works at all, the former restricts the possibilities to the most restrictive sense of "logical" (somewhat less than even Aristotle would have allowed). The Loglan tradition has never stood for either of these and has almost always been (in program, if not in execution) for creative constructions. For one thing, definitions are almost always too long to be useful and anything short of a definition is, by definition, merely a metaphor anyhow -- so we might as well have beautiful ones as ugly. And most ugly ones come about -- not strange to say -- in the belief that they are being "accurate / literal / definitional." there is, of course, the possibility of misunderstanding in all of this, but that is inherent in the tanru and lujvo processes (else why have the handy cmavo for explaining, in ever increasing detail -- we can never be perfectly sure to eliminate all possible misunderstandings -- what we meant?). Since the lujvo space is full of examples that are not very clear (see the discussion of one attempt -- largely guesswork -- to figure some out), I can't give good examples from recent times. Probably one of the prides of the old days, however, was "blade hammer" for "hatchet, ax". It can't be gotten to by any of the mechanical rules for tanru/lujvo construction (or, at least, couldn't then -- we may have incorporated it since), but, once got, it is unforgettable and wonderfully right. I have seen quite a few good ones since, though I can't pull them up now (I can't even remember which of the half dozen Loglans they were in), but they all had similar qualities, "ahah!" Not every lujvo or tanru needs to be that good, but don't ding them for trying and don't try to fit them into preconceived molds, especially if they do a good job outside them.