Subject: Re: greeks and love (was RE: [lojban] registry of experimental cmavo - new pr...

From: [email-masked]
Date: Thu, 19 Jul 2001 18:57:47 EDT

In a message dated 7/19/2001 12:08:20 PM Central Daylight Time, 
[email-masked] writes:

> Lord Byron used the word love
> because that is the ONLY word for it in his language (english, which Jesus
> 
Maid of Athen ere we part, give Oh give me back my hear; or since that has 
left my breast, keep it now and take the rest. Hear my vow before I go, zoe 
mou sas agapo.
Same verb. Byron, a hero of the Greek war for independence, knew a bit of 
Greek. 

<The greeks had three different roots which meant love>
Had and still have three roots that we translate into English as "love" -- 
and a number of other things as well. 

<The eskimos actually
speak aglutinative languages in which there can be as many words for snow as
you want, but around five roots that meant snow - but these often referred
to other things as well, as does English (powder might mean snow if
encountered in a poem, for instance.) >
Depends on how narrowly you define "Eskimo" : not all the Polar native 
languages are agglutinating, they have widely varying number of roots for 
snow of one sort and another, though none that has only one root regularly 
used in that way. 

<Eros was
ALWAYS the sexual kind, for example, while philo was ALWAYS a more 'how you
feel' kind. how you felt varied with philo; in plato and aristotle it was
more like friendship than love>
Pedophilia, not friendly though I suppose it could have something to do with 
how you feel (gently or roughly, say). For that matter, philarguria, the 
love of money, 1 Tim 6:10. Non-sexual eros is a tad harder to come up with 
since it does always seem to involve strong desires and the like -- quite 
inappropriate for philosophers, one supposes. But there is erasichrematos 
"covetous, avaricious" -- passionate, perhaps, but not sexual (certainly not 
preFreudianly) -- and a general sense of "to desire passionately" of things. 
Agape is even harder to pin down but seems to turn up in all the senses so 
far explored. I can't remember which one the Symposium is officially about.

<I think having iu not mean mi prami is good, because it makes lojban the
only language that does not need body language or smileys - the best English
gloss for ui is not happiness but :-), which would never do in a formal
paper. >
There was no choice in the matter, since the two are from totally different 
language functions (pace xod) and every language has both, though the 
expressive is usually not so well-regulated as in Lojban. But generally, 
"Whee" is probably a little to enthusiastic for {ui}; I go with "yay!" when 
pressed.

<Whatever happened to total unambiguity?>

Never was any, never will be. No theory -- and certainly no practice -- 
allows it in language. And if you think the descriptive component has 
problems, imagine what happens in the emotive one, where there is not even a 
"common ground" against which to check things.