From jjllambias@hotmail.com Fri Oct 20 15:58:16 2000 Return-Path: X-Sender: jjllambias@hotmail.com X-Apparently-To: lojban@onelist.com Received: (EGP: mail-6_1_0); 20 Oct 2000 22:58:16 -0000 Received: (qmail 12498 invoked from network); 20 Oct 2000 22:58:16 -0000 Received: from unknown (10.1.10.142) by m4.onelist.org with QMQP; 20 Oct 2000 22:58:16 -0000 Received: from unknown (HELO hotmail.com) (216.33.241.162) by mta3 with SMTP; 20 Oct 2000 22:58:16 -0000 Received: from mail pickup service by hotmail.com with Microsoft SMTPSVC; Fri, 20 Oct 2000 15:58:15 -0700 Received: from 200.42.118.177 by lw8fd.law8.hotmail.msn.com with HTTP; Fri, 20 Oct 2000 22:58:15 GMT X-Originating-IP: [200.42.118.177] To: lojban@egroups.com Subject: Re: [lojban] RE:literalism Date: Fri, 20 Oct 2000 22:58:15 GMT Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; format=flowed Message-ID: X-OriginalArrivalTime: 20 Oct 2000 22:58:15.0909 (UTC) FILETIME=[3B105150:01C03AE9] From: "Jorge Llambias" la pycyn cusku di'e >the whole "mal-" line is borrowed from Esperanto >(somewhat inaccurately -- Esperanto "mal-" is closer to Lojban >"tol," but the most common form "malbona" seems to ahve set the >pattern). I think that the choice of the rafsi "mal" was indeed influenced by Esperanto, and probably the gismu {mabla} was formed so that it could have that rafsi. The usual line against Esperanto "mal-" is that it supposedly makes people think of "bad", which is not what it means (it corresponds to Lojban "tol" as you say). The idea was that Lojban trumps Esperanto in this regard by having "mal" actually have that bad connotation. That is my imagined reconstruction from what I read, anyway. But I doubt that the words {malglico} et al have anything to do with Esperanto. They just reflect a (healthy) attitude against relying too much on English idioms for Lojban, given that English is (at least for now) the one common language of Lojbanists. (As an aside, I think {malglico} is a badly formed lujvo, it should be {glimabla}, but that's another thing, and probably too late to do anything about it.) >By the way, if by "metaphor" you mean >something inaccurate, in what way is "skyscraper" one and >"airplane" not? Neither is a metaphor in English today, they are words with well established meanings. The way I understand it, a metaphor is the use of a word or phrase to refer by analogy to something other than its ordinary meaning. If I referred to a tree as a "skyscraper for birds" then I would be using a metaphor, because trees are not really skyscrapers. Very tall buildings are skyscrapers, even if they don't really scrape the sky. Using {tansraku} for "skyscraper" or {varplita} for "airplane" in Lojban is, in my opinion, the wrong way to go about it. If the words really acquired those meanings they would not be metaphors anymore, but they would be exotic compounds as seen from inside Lojban. Having said that, we have the additional problem that the word "metaphor" is used in Lojban literature (as are several other words) with a meaning only tangentially related to its common meaning. For some reason I can't understand, any tanru is called a metaphor in Lojban, even if used with the most pedestrian literal meaning. >Well, tanru don't need to be binary, except in the technical sense that >they will always be analyzed that way. They do if we accept the gi'uste definition of tanru: "x1 is a binary metaphor formed with x2 modifying x3, giving meaning x4 in language x5." The word "metaphor" in that definition is not to be taken with its usual English meaning. It only means "tanru". But the place structure practically forces it to be binary, even if one or both of the components can themselves be tanru. co'o mi'e xorxes _________________________________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free E-mail from MSN Hotmail at http://www.hotmail.com. Share information about yourself, create your own public profile at http://profiles.msn.com.