From lojbab@lojban.org Thu Oct 26 18:07:56 2000 Return-Path: X-Sender: lojbab@lojban.org X-Apparently-To: lojban@egroups.com Received: (EGP: mail-6_2_1); 27 Oct 2000 01:07:56 -0000 Received: (qmail 32558 invoked from network); 27 Oct 2000 01:07:55 -0000 Received: from unknown (10.1.10.27) by m3.onelist.org with QMQP; 27 Oct 2000 01:07:55 -0000 Received: from unknown (HELO stmpy-1.cais.net) (205.252.14.71) by mta2 with SMTP; 27 Oct 2000 01:07:55 -0000 Received: from bob.lojban.org (209-8-89-120.dynamic.cais.com [209.8.89.120]) by stmpy-1.cais.net (8.10.1/8.9.3) with ESMTP id e9R17rF40907 for ; Thu, 26 Oct 2000 21:07:54 -0400 (EDT) (envelope-from lojbab@lojban.org) Message-Id: <4.3.2.7.2.20001025201852.00c196d0@127.0.0.1> X-Sender: vir1036/pop.cais.com@127.0.0.1 X-Mailer: QUALCOMM Windows Eudora Version 4.3.2 Date: Wed, 25 Oct 2000 20:33:12 -0400 To: lojban@egroups.com Subject: Re: [lojban] RE^whatever:literalism In-Reply-To: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"; format=flowed From: "Bob LeChevalier (lojbab)" At 10:52 AM 10/25/2000 -0400, pycyn@aol.com wrote: >lojbab: ><culture. We *assume* we are biased towards European metaphors, so we >eschew them.>> >Guilty until proven innocent, with a guarantee that the latter proof >will not be allowed to come forward -- since the form has already >been rejected. Not a great plan and a long way from "let usage >decide": it can't decide in favor of something we are forbidden to >use. No one forbids anything. Note that the list of lujvo I've asked people to give keywords to (and later place structures) consists of ALL the ones I found used in text, not just ones that someone likes. At this point I want all proposals to be treated equally, and make decisions about which to include in the dictionary later (based on usage or on other factors yet to be determined). Unfortunately, most people who are volunteering, instead of doing the relatively simple job of analyzing what we have now, are instead choosing to analyze concepts and try to find better words for those concepts. That is a legitimate exercise, and it might justifiably be slanted against non-literals, but it is hardly "usage" at all, much less usage in the quantity needed to "decide". What people actual use when they write about raccoons remains to be seen, (unless there is some prior usage I don't know about). But even if we presumed that the bias affected usage to the extent of calling it "forbidding", malglico usages are mostly "forbidden" to native English speakers, not to speakers of other languages. It is really "using a non-literal metaphor from your native language for a concept that may not be restricted to your culture, and where the non-literal metaphor might suggest something quite different to another culture" that is discriminated against. We are especially hard on English because Lojban is dominated by English speakers and it is a justified fear that English-based metaphor meanings will creep in and tend to dominate and perhaps displace other meanings for the metaphor (good old "man-do" as a TLI Loglan example). lojbab -- lojbab lojbab@lojban.org 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