Subject: Re: [lojban] Re: Literal and Metaphor (was: pages)

From: John Cowan <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 17 Aug 2001 08:15:49 -0400 (EDT)

Nick Nicholas scripsit:

> Lojban doesn't do prototype semantics. 

I think it does, or can. Note the brief discussion in the Book about
whether a teddy bear cu cribe (answer: yes). Predicate logic does not
demand that we know, for every P and x, whether P(x).

> [I]f it's good for
> {botpi} (though I think the whole bottle-requires-lid thing is wrong ---
> but that's by the by), then it's just as good for {cukta}.

That is different. A teddy bear fits the cribe paradigm: it has a proper
x1 (Teddy himself) and a proper x2 ("teddy"). A bottle-sans-lid
does not have a proper x4.

> Things with pages (physical books) are a subset of books

This was actually discussed at a Logfest, many and many a year ago. IIRC,
the outcome was that "Pass me that cukta" is actually a kind of
raising, or metaphor, or something of the sort: all cukta are in fact
abstract.

> The issue is, rather, is this a good lujvo for Web, *for people other than
> you and me*? If someone sees {balcukta}, will they be able to tell, without
> looking it up, that it means the Web?

I think it is rather too much to demand of any lujvo that someone be able
to identify its x1 as being a unique object like the WWW. Similarly,
IMHO cakcinki is a unique and memorable lujvo for "beetle" (member of
Coleoptera), but it would be difficult to guess that that was what it
meant *a priori*, and the more you know about cinki, the harder.
(IIRC, Mark has made this argument about fu'ivla vs. lujvo in Klingon already.)

> And is that recognisability a proper
> or valid criterion for whether something is a good lujvo or not? Will they
> remember it, once they have seen it? Will they rankle against it -- just
> like Jay the other day objected to {selma'o} for 'lexeme' on the Wiki? Is
> {jordatnymu'e} any better? Is {samclupa}? Is {skamrxuebe}? Is {la'ogy. WWW
> gy.}?

I think the last is best, actually.

-- 
John Cowan [email-masked]
One art/there is/no less/no more/All things/to do/with sparks/galore
--Douglas Hofstadter