From lojbab@lojban.org Tue Jan 21 16:32:34 2003 Return-Path: X-Sender: lojbab@lojban.org X-Apparently-To: lojban@yahoogroups.com Received: (EGP: mail-8_2_3_0); 22 Jan 2003 00:32:34 -0000 Received: (qmail 65315 invoked from network); 22 Jan 2003 00:32:33 -0000 Received: from unknown (66.218.66.218) by m6.grp.scd.yahoo.com with QMQP; 22 Jan 2003 00:32:33 -0000 Received: from unknown (HELO lakemtao02.cox.net) (68.1.17.243) by mta3.grp.scd.yahoo.com with SMTP; 22 Jan 2003 00:32:33 -0000 Received: from lojban.lojban.org ([68.100.206.153]) by lakemtao02.cox.net (InterMail vM.5.01.04.05 201-253-122-122-105-20011231) with ESMTP id <20030122003231.PDJT6744.lakemtao02.cox.net@lojban.lojban.org> for ; Tue, 21 Jan 2003 19:32:31 -0500 Message-Id: <5.2.0.9.0.20030121192356.00ab41c0@pop.east.cox.net> X-Sender: lojbab@pop.east.cox.net X-Mailer: QUALCOMM Windows Eudora Version 5.2.0.9 Date: Tue, 21 Jan 2003 19:33:00 -0500 To: lojban@yahoogroups.com Subject: Re: [lojban] By the way < tangent? In-Reply-To: <73E93256-2C9E-11D7-B599-000393629ED4@uic.edu> References: <5.2.0.9.0.20030120000457.00ab2b60@pop.east.cox.net> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"; format=flowed From: Bob LeChevalier X-Yahoo-Group-Post: member; u=1120595 X-Yahoo-Profile: lojbab X-Yahoo-Message-Num: 18315 At 11:41 AM 1/20/03 -0600, Steven Belknap wrote: >I am skeptical about this being malglico. One has to have *some* >metaphor, and any particular metaphor is likely to be closer to some >culture's existing than another's. But a metaphor should have something to do with the correct meaning. Lojban tanjo pertains to the trigonometric tangent, and does NOT have anything to do with the other sort of tangent (meaning "barely touching"). Only the fact that the English word is polysemous leads to the use we made of it. > I rather like the idea of building >lojban combining and combination words from gismu which exist in *no* >existing culture but which do suggest the meaning in a clear way. Doing >this creates "strangeness" but preserves "meaningfulness". Not always >possible though. The idea of tangentiality is an extrapolation from >geometry. That is culturally neutral enough for me, despite the alleged >malglico of the English referent. The geometric meaning is not the correct one; Lojban uses the trigonometric meaning for tanjo which is even more specialized. The geometric meaning would be "x1 is tangential to object/form x2 at point/locus x3". tanjo's place structure looks nothing like that. lojbab -- lojbab lojbab@lojban.org Bob LeChevalier, President, The Logical Language Group, Inc. 2904 Beau Lane, Fairfax VA 22031-1303 USA 703-385-0273 Artificial language Loglan/Lojban: http://www.lojban.org