Re: le/lo

[And Rosta <a.rosta@UCLAN.AC.UK>]

Lojbab to Kris:
> >You and your lojban-speaking friend are sitting on a bus when two women
> >get on, one with an oversized bright green purse, and one with an
> >oversized bright red purse. They're the only other people on the bus, and
> >the purses really stand out as absurdities.  You happen to be sitting
> >close enough to see that the one with the red purse put a slug in the
> >till, and you want to point this out to your friend.
> >
> >You can't say "lo xunre cu tcica lo brakarce", because 1) it wasn't the
> >purse that cheated, and 2) it wasn't the bus so much as the bus company
> >that was cheated.  So you have a choice of ...
>
> This is an example of metonymy, like Nick Nicholas often discussed.  We have
> two common ways of dealing with metonymy in Lojban: tu'a and la'e/lu'e

You can say "lo xunre cu tcica lo brakarce": that would indeed
be metonymy, and is part and parcel of ordinary everyday
communication. By decoding the idea "some red thing cheated some
bus", the hearer can then take this idea to be a metonym, and
successfully infer the intended thought "the person with
the red bag cheated the bus company".

--And