Subject: Re: [lojban] RE^n+1: literalism

From: "Bob LeChevalier (lojbab)" <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 24 Oct 2000 09:37:11 -0400

At 09:13 PM 10/23/2000 -0400, pycyn wrote:
>lojbab:
><<We still need some examples where non-literal works better than
>literal.>>
>I don't think I ever said non-literal *works* better than literal. I did
>say that some moves require non-literals,

But we're lacking examples.

>and I did say that, if a
>lujvo works, then the fact that it is not literal should not count
>against it

I don't think it will, IF it is "required" per your above. But given two 
tanru for a concept, one literal and the other non-literal, I think the 
literal will win every time.

>(indeed, I probably said that it should count for it, because
>it opens up a new area).

I don't see this as necessarily so, or else I am missing what you mean by 
"new area".

><<But since a raccoon is not any kind of a cat, that is a metaphor that
>misleads. But a robber-mammal would work, and it presumably would have an
>acceptable place structure using conventional analysis (as would a cat
>metaphor, I will note - all the animal gismu have approximately the same
>place structures). Now I ask - are you claiming that robber-mammal is the
>same concept as "mammal" simply because it has the same final term? Or is
>it the same as "robber"? The argument is NOT that you cannot be
>metaphorical, but rather that the metaphors should preserve the place
>structure logic. >>
>
>^robber mammal^ is not the same as ^mammal^ or ^robber^, but it
>is already implicit in ^mammal^

What is?

>and so, so long as the expression
>"robber ammal" is used literally -- and so could cover pack rats,
>Peter Cottontail, ordinary robbers, etc., etc. -- it is not a new
>concept. If it came to mean ^raccoon^, then it would be a new
>concept, but at least ^robber^ would have been changed in the
>process.

Being the modifier, that is easier to do. But really all that is going on 
is the elision of a term. "robber-appearance-mammal" makes "robber-mammal" 
explicit. But why is the latter "new" if it applies to raccoons, but the 
former is not?

>I wonder, by the way, why no one likes "robber cat"or "washer cat"
>but seem relatively comfortable with "washer bear"

I am not the least comfortable with washer-bear, nor did I see sign that 
anyone else was. Someone pointed out that it was another source language's 
tanru for racoon, not that it should be the Lojban tanru.

>: raccoons are
>about equally removed from both groups (and from dogs too), as
>far as I can recall, and are in most respects much more feline than
>ursine (they even divide into head scratchable, chin scratchable and
>belly-scratchable, like cats).

They have some taxonomic category, even if we don't know what it 
is. People are on the whole insisting on preserving modern biological 
taxonomic conventions when doing this sort of thing.

>Of course, I like it because it clearly
>opens the way for otters and weasels (and skunks, regularly cats in
>English -- ahah! is that the prolem?).

No.

>I am also rather suspicious of the favor for borrowing,which seems
>the most culturally biased way to deal with a new concept

Borrowing for plants and animals would almost always use the Linnean 
name. Lojban does have a cultural bias towards scientism %^)

><<it's not a question of purity, but rather of whether we want to
>enshrine a bunch of metaphors that may prove seriously misleading
>when substantial numbers of non-european learners are trying to
>figure out what sort of thing scrapes the sky when there isn't a
>sky to scrape.>>
>I gather that this is the answer -- that metaphors may mislead
>someone (why just worry about non-europeans?).

Because we are European language speakers and know our own language and 
culture. We *assume* we are biased towards European metaphors, so we 
eschew them.

>But, as these
>threads bear witness, "perfectly literal" tanru and lujvo mislead
>people all the time.

No they don't. The mean exactly what the literal tanru/lujvo seem to 
mean. That meaning just doesn't seem to coincide with some people's 
primary meaning for the English term being translated. the solution of 
course is to realize that there WON'T be a one-to-one mapping of English to 
lOjban words.

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