Re: Off Topic: live cultures (was: Promoting Lojban)

[Christopher Palmer <reid@pconline.com>]

On Sat, 20 Feb 1999, Robin Turner wrote:

> > The lexicon is built up from primitives not by analogy with
> > (prog)linguistic extra-(prog)linguistic context, but by the direct logical
> > consequences of the primitves themselves. Metaphor is inherently tied to
> > context, and proglangs are by design context-independent.
> 
> You are assuming that there _are_ such things as primitives - I'm not so
> sure (though {ba'a} Anna Wierzbicka would agree with you, not to mention
> most philosophers of language prior to Wittgenstein's "Philosophical
> Investigations").  {pe'i} if there are things we could call "primitives"
> {ru'a} they exist at a prelinguistic level (iconic, tactile etc.).

I meant proglangs have primitives, which they undeniably do. I didn't mean
to make any kind of statement at all about natlangs and primitives, since
I wouldn't know what I was talking about if I did. :^)

> {ta'o} if nobody objects, I'll fwd this to the cogling list, to see what
> the people there make of it.

*groan*


---------(( Christopher Reid Palmer : www.pconline.com/~reid/ ))---------

              the characters i am, made into a word complete
                              -- Meshuggah