From pycyn@aol.com Wed Oct 25 07:53:19 2000 Return-Path: X-Sender: Pycyn@aol.com X-Apparently-To: lojban@egroups.com Received: (EGP: mail-6_2_0); 25 Oct 2000 14:53:18 -0000 Received: (qmail 3932 invoked from network); 25 Oct 2000 14:52:50 -0000 Received: from unknown (10.1.10.142) by m2.onelist.org with QMQP; 25 Oct 2000 14:52:50 -0000 Received: from unknown (HELO imo-r01.mx.aol.com) (152.163.225.1) by mta3 with SMTP; 25 Oct 2000 14:52:49 -0000 Received: from Pycyn@aol.com by imo-r01.mx.aol.com (mail_out_v28.32.) id a.ea.c7a015d (4234) for ; Wed, 25 Oct 2000 10:52:32 -0400 (EDT) Message-ID: Date: Wed, 25 Oct 2000 10:52:32 EDT Subject: RE^whatever: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: 4685 lojbab: <<, if a >lujvo works, then the fact that it is not literal should not count >against it I don't think it will, IF it is "required" per your above. But given two tanru for a concept, one literal and the other non-literal, I think the literal will win every time.>> I don't think it should count against it even if it is not required. As for your empirical claim, my sense is that non-literal ones, if striking, have done rather well. It is hard to tell now, of course, because in the course of being successful they change the concepts involved and become, in consequence, literal. But "blade hammer," to overwork a good example, was non-literal when coined. <<>^robber mammal^ is not the same as ^mammal^ or ^robber^, but it >is already implicit in ^mammal^ What is?>> ^robber mammal^, as the English says. <<"robber-appearance-mammal" makes "robber-mammal" explicit. But why is the latter "new" if it applies to raccoons, but the former is not?>> "robber-appearance mammal" is excluded on the ground that it is culturally restricted -- I don't think that African or Asian (maybe even European) robbers archetypically wear dominoes. It is "robber behaving mammal" if you will (see what I mean about the confusion that comes even with literal tanru). That is admittedly anthropecentric, but I think allowable nonetheless. However, taken literally, it applies to most mammals -- humans, surely, rabbits, gophers, bears, wolves, and so on. To make apply to raccoons specifically requires that something have a special meaning in this context (I suspect it is "robber" but "mammal" and even "behaving" may be involved). <> Sorry, maikl did not say explicitly that I noticed that "wash bear" was from the German, so I took it as his suggestion in preference to "wash cat," then cowan said the resulting Lojban lujvo might work. Relative to the flat rejection of "wash cat" these seemed comfortable. We now seem to have a vote for "dog" as the base , which I don't see, myself. (Someone -- xod? --mentioned a while back how much personal; aesthetics got wrapped into these and this may be a case.) <<>Of course, I like it because it clearly >opens the way for otters and weasels (and skunks, regularly cats in >English -- ahah! is that the prolem?). No.>> Not quite sure what is being denied: that the problem is that skunks come into it somehow or that parallels to English usage come into it somehow. From other remarks it is clear that parallels to English usage do come into it, as reasons for objecting to tanru and lujvo, so I suppose you mean that skunks aren't relevant. <> The actual tendency, insofar as there is one, seems to be toward the native word in the home area -- see Cowan's comment in the present case and a mass of food words a while back. That is also recommended in The Book. <> Guilty until proven innocent, with a guarantee that the latter proof will not be allowed to come forward -- since the form has already been rejected. Not a great plan and a long way from "let usage decide": it can't decide in favor of something we are forbidden to use. <<>But, as these >threads bear witness, "perfectly literal" tanru and lujvo mislead >people all the time. No they don't. The mean exactly what the literal tanru/lujvo seem to mean. That meaning just doesn't seem to coincide with some people's primary meaning for the English term being translated. the solution of course is to realize that there WON'T be a one-to-one mapping of English to lOjban words.>> Hey, we just got boggled on an ENGLISH tanru (why are modifier- modifed tanru not disallowed, BTW, since they follow a common Englis pattern?), imagine what happens with tanru in languages we don't know so well. My experience is that I forget one possible way of combining components -- often, embarassingly, the one most like English (I expect a foreign language to be foreign) -- and that turns out to be just what the creator had in mind. xod: <> Roughly, does it pick out the right thing used literally; if not, then it is non-literal. Surprise! << le tsali lojban >> this does not seem to parse, though it is clear as English. <> Or an X type of Y that is not really Xish or one that isn't really either or.... What context? In use, I suppose that the literal context is assumed and the effectiveness of the non-literal case comes precisely from the leap -- or fall -- to understanding. How can a tanru fall apart? I suppose that the worst that can happen is that they miss their intended target and so end with the hearer thinking something false or falsely said. As noted, this is not a peculiarity of non-literal tanru. <> Metalinguistic uses are always the last to come: look at Aristotle struggling to do it for Greek or Ockham for Medieval Latin (another artifical language). pier: <> Does "pro" really mean {pu'o} here? I'm not sure what it means, but this seems odd. Is {mabrlprokiono} legal against {mabryprokiono}? I.e., is fuhivla rule different from lujvo at this point?