Subject: Re: [lojban] RE:literalism

From: "Bob LeChevalier (lojbab)" <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 20 Oct 2000 13:18:29 -0400

At 12:42 PM 10/20/2000 -0400, pycyn wrote:
>Actually, "chicken of the sea" is pretty good (aside from its current
>commercial use) and surely better for a wide array of purposes than {finpe}
>followed by some version of the scientific name of tuna. What about it is
>painting a picture -- as opposed to pointing to features, say -- is not clear
>(which is context, which is within the context, for example?). Now would be
>a good time to be a literalist, perhaps.

Painting a picture invokes artistic connotations rather than 
denotations. In Lojban terms, it is pulling place structure places out of 
thin air. Sea-chicken might almost work for "tuna" because the 
picture-painting stayed within the animal kingdom and the normal place 
structures of the animal brivla - it merely invokes a classification system 
for animals that isn't quite scientific %^)

A sky-scraper on the other hand does not in fact guska anything, and people 
seem to feel that in particular the final term of the tanru used in lujvo 
making out to apply literally. A metaphor at least as good would be 
"penis-building" - at least we know it's a building of some kind.

lojbab
--
lojbab [email-masked]
Bob LeChevalier, President, The Logical Language Group, Inc.
2904 Beau Lane, Fairfax VA 22031-1303 USA 703-385-0273
Artificial language Loglan/Lojban: http://www.lojban.org