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[lojban-beginners] Re: Quick Reference Guide for language words

Joel Shellman wrote:

On 10/29/07, Robert LeChevalier <lojbab@lojban.org> wrote:


Given the restriction of no unrelated meanings, the metaphoric
intellectual giant I would expect is impossible in lojban--or perhaps
what I mean is that it would not be metaphoric. Would you say
"intellectual man-of-great-physical-size"? You might, but it would not
mean what we generally mean in English by intellectual giant. Perhaps
I'm missing something?


Is a "giant" necessarily of "great physical size".  In English it is
not, as evidenced by ... "intellectual giant".


My understanding is English allows multiple unrelated definitions,
lojban does not.
For words on their own, yes. For modifiers in tanru, virtually anything is allowed, and there remains considerable debate about modificands, if you can stretch the place structure to fit. "tumla nazbi" (land-nose) probably wouldn't work for "peninsula" because one might have trouble filling in the nostrils place, but "tumla degji" (land-finger) can work, and in fact the metaphorical use of degji for a peninsula is mentioned in the gismu list. 

> I would suggest that the "metaphoric" nature of

intellectual giant is only because in English, giant can mean several
different things.


1: a legendary humanlike being of great stature and strength
2 a: a living being of great size b: a person of extraordinary powers
3: something unusually large or powerful
Definition 3 subsumes definitions 1 and 2. If I were trying to translate the English word "giant" into Lojban, I would try to mimic definition 3 in a lujvo, and then coin lujvo giant-human or giant-animal or giant-powerful for the three subdivisions under definitions 1 and 2.
Under such conditions, if we equate intellectual to mental (menli), then the tanru "menli giant" exactly matches the English "intellectual giant" in denotation, and "menli giant-powerful" matches the connotation of the phrase. 


> I would expect the definitions for "a being with

human form but superhuman size, strength, etc." and "greater or more
eminent than others" are sufficiently unrelated as to not be allowed
to be attributed to the same word in lojban.
They might or might not, because the place structures can make simple words quite powerful. The Lojban word "banli" (great-grand) can cover an enormous amount of meaning.
I should note, BTW, that JCB took his "metaphor" label more seriously than we do. He constantly used "make" (his equivalent to our "zbasu") in the same way that English uses that word, which better equates to Lojban "rinka")
And then there is the obnoxious Loglan example "man-do" for what a sailor does on a ship, as translation of the English word "man a ship". We rejected that metaphor primarily because it was sexist, and rather later took note of the picturesque connotations of the metaphor (i.e. involving gletu and the boat), but not, per se, because it WAS a metaphor. 

>Ah... but that second

definition is an adjective, not a noun. Given the usage here, it might
be required to be considered metaphorical because of the usage in
English. Moving over to lojban, though... I'm still not sure about
this because these are two somewhat unrelated meanings and so would
seem that it might be not allowed.
somewhat *unrelated* isn't the issue. The question is whether they are somewhat *related* and if the relationship is consistent with the place structure.
If you meet someone who is "going for a walk", you would not translate that with klama for "go" because you may have no clear evidence of a particular origin or a destination (and while the walker may know his origin, they might have no specific destination). You would instead probably use litru, which merely requires a route. 

lojbab