From jcowan@reutershealth.com Wed Dec 04 11:40:02 2002 Return-Path: X-Sender: jcowan@reutershealth.com X-Apparently-To: lojban@yahoogroups.com Received: (EGP: mail-8_2_3_0); 4 Dec 2002 19:40:01 -0000 Received: (qmail 86621 invoked from network); 4 Dec 2002 19:40:01 -0000 Received: from unknown (66.218.66.218) by m7.grp.scd.yahoo.com with QMQP; 4 Dec 2002 19:40:01 -0000 Received: from unknown (HELO mail2.reutershealth.com) (65.246.141.151) by mta3.grp.scd.yahoo.com with SMTP; 4 Dec 2002 19:40:01 -0000 Received: from skunk.reutershealth.com (IDENT:cowan@[10.65.117.21]) by mail2.reutershealth.com (Pro-8.9.3/Pro-8.9.3) with SMTP id OAA24256; Wed, 4 Dec 2002 14:52:11 -0500 (EST) Message-Id: <200212041952.OAA24256@mail2.reutershealth.com> Received: by skunk.reutershealth.com (sSMTP sendmail emulation); Wed, 4 Dec 2002 14:37:02 -0500 Subject: Re: [lojban] response to And To: arosta@uclan.ac.uk (And Rosta) Date: Wed, 4 Dec 2002 14:37:02 -0500 (EST) Cc: opoudjis@optushome.com.au (opoudjis), lojban@yahoogroups.com (lojban) In-Reply-To: from "And Rosta" at Dec 04, 2002 06:23:13 PM X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.5 PL6] MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit From: John Cowan X-Yahoo-Group-Post: member; u=8122456 X-Yahoo-Profile: john_w_cowan And Rosta scripsit: > Is the sentence "This teddy is a cribe" 100% true? Not if cribe > means 'bear'. Well, in fact I find the sentence "This teddy is a bear" perfectly reasonable and am quite ready to believe it. To me, bears are categorized as the brown/grizzly, the American black, the polar, the panda, and the stuffed. And perhaps other categories, and indeed Irene's Larry is +stuffed +polar. So for me "la laris. pe la .airin. cribe" is true. Now I grant that Larry is not a prototypical bear, and I may even say "Larry is not a real bear", where "real" means something like -fictional -stuffed. > I have often had the experience of one person asking "what does cmavo > X mean", and other people racking their heads as to what, given the > minimal info in CLL and the mahoste, it could possibly mean. Often > the process takes the form "Well, we have no idea what it could mean, > so let's invent a meaning that seems useful and is compatible with > Woldy and the mahoste". These are the cases I'd prefer to leave to > Usage's Decision. You suffer from this because your notion of "meaning" is disconnected from real meaning, i.e. pragmatic meaning. (That is to say, you suffer for your bad philosophy.) > I notice myself and many others engaging in syllable counting as a > heavily weighted criterion for stylistically evaluating a sentence. Ack pfft! -- We call nothing profound jcowan@reutershealth.com that is not wittily expressed. John Cowan --Northrop Frye (improved) http://www.reutershealth.com