On Tuesday, September 30, 2014 8:47:07 PM UTC-7, Alexander Kozhevnikov wrote:
I just wanted to quickly butt in and voice disagreement with this example:
I think the answer is a clear 'yes' if you are going to effectively
communicate with speakers who are not familiar to your culture's
metaphors
[...] and in this case, that means having an ability to specify in
a concise manner that something is or isn't metaphorical.
or those who struggle with
metaphorical speech, such as many autistic individuals for example
[..a lot of stuff..]
Personally, one of the points which currently draw me to Lojban is it's
claimed ability to allow unambiguous communication efficiently.
Just use {pe'u}. I don't disagree with what you're saying but it doesn't really sound like you're disagreeing with what I said. The question is whether one of our gadri, an extremely core article in the language, should represent non-veridicality or definite descriptions. I mean, sure, we should be able to be as precise as we'd like or need in the cases where you're speaking with those outside of your culture, or the autistic or extra terrestrial. I agree Lojban should support that. But I'm simply putting forth that {le} specifically should A) only have one semantic and that B) discerning between definite and indefinite descriptions is the semantic that has the most utility as a more fundamental aspect of speech than veridicality.
Or maybe I missed the whole point of this "veridicality" discussion, in
which case apologies for me wasting the time you all had to spend to read
this.
It wasn't a waste of time, what you said about the need to be able to express non-veridical speech, explicitly; its just that {pe'u} probably does that sufficiently. And there's even {le'e} if you want to efficiently capture both semantics at once.